Employment is important to reducing recidivism, but a criminal record – or mistakes in one – can pose a significant barrier for job seekers.

An updated online resource seeks to ease that challenge, providing people who have been involved with the criminal justice system – including roughly 2 million New Yorkers – the latest information on their rights and how to ensure accurate records in New York and four adjacent states.

Developed by the Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative (CJEI), the Criminal Record Online Toolkit pulls together in one place relevant federal, state and local laws and forms across jurisdictions in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

“Navigating the criminal justice system can be overwhelming and unnecessarily complex,” said Esta Bigler, director of ILR’s Labor and Employment Law Program. “The online toolkit serves as crucial a hub for accessing and understanding information about your record and moving forward with employment opportunities.”

The revised toolkit reflects the current legal landscape and will be updated regularly, Bigler said. It includes expanded resources focused on civil rights restoration and sentence commutations. To improve accessibility, sample forms demonstrate how and to fill out various documents.

The toolkit is organized into three main sections:

• About Your Record: Explains records of arrests and prosecutions, or “rap sheets,” and how to request one from the FBI or, using a dropdown menu, agencies in any of the five covered states. The toolkit shows that New York residents must submit fingerprints and pay a fee, for example, and provides a sample letter for requesting a fee waiver.
• Fix Your Record: Criminal records may contain errors, commonly including incomplete entries, wrong entries, double entries or references to open warrants or sealed cases. Each state has a different process for making corrections, outlined in the toolkit. Individuals may also be eligible to petition for a record to be sealed or expunged, meaning the public and many employers cannot see it. Under a New York law, certain convictions for smoking or possessing marijuana were to be automatically expunged – but Bigler said people may want to confirm that that has happened.
• Legal Rights: This section includes primers on rights bestowed by federal laws such as the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, and state and local statutes. For example, New York State Correction Law Article 23-A requires employers and agencies to complete eight steps before denying someone a job or license because of a criminal record. So-called “ban the box” laws prevent employers from asking about criminal records on job applications – but rules vary across municipalities. Toolkit users can access the dropdown menu to research rights where they are applying to work. The toolkit also explains where documents such as a “certificate of good conduct” or “certificate of rehabilitation” may be available.

“The toolkit is really one-stop shopping to figure out what your rights are when you’re looking for a job, you’re looking to rent an apartment, or a criminal background check comes out and it’s incorrect,” Bigler said.

CJEI launched the online toolkit in 2016 through the Cornell Project for Records Assistance, part of a class-action settlement in a case involving the U.S. Census Bureau. ILR student Caroline Scharf ’26 led efforts to update the resource.

“The world has changed dramatically since we launched the online toolkit,” Bigler said. “Our goal is the same: To provide the kind of help that people who’ve been involved in the criminal legal system need.”

The toolkit is part of broader CJEI efforts to advance employment opportunities for people with criminal records, working with employers, job seekers, reentry organizations and correction and government officials. A recent initiative, the Restorative Record project, is developing tools including an app to help job candidates with criminal records create nontraditional resumes that highlight core competencies and micro-credentials. Restorative Records at CJEI is an initiative of the Center for Applied Research on Work's Yang-Tan WorkAbility Incubator.   

“If people are employed, it’s good for families and good for communities,” Bigler said. “We want the person who’s got a record to be in control of their lives, to have the information they need. They’re entitled to a second chance, they’re entitled to move forward with their lives.”