Michigan Decided One Million People Had Carried It Long Enough

Cedar Valley News
April 21, 2026
Michigan Decided One Million
People Had Carried It Long Enough
By George Khan

There are people in their sixties and seventies in Michigan who have spent the majority of their lives with a felony conviction on their record. Not because they are still dangerous. Not because they have done anything wrong in decades. Because a word was stamped on them when they were young, and no one ever came to take it off.

Last week, Michigan announced it had automatically cleared nearly 1.6 million criminal convictions under the state’s Clean Slate Act. Misdemeanors after seven years. Felonies after ten. No petition required. No lawyer. No courthouse. The state found the records and cleared them.

Kamau Sandiford runs the clean slate program for Safe and Just Michigan. He described something worth sitting with. He said they sometimes encounter people in their sixties or seventies who have spent the majority of their lives with a conviction on their record. And he said it is not always because they want better housing or a better job. Sometimes they simply want the stigma removed. They want to die knowing they are no longer considered a convicted felon.

I went to prison at twenty. I came back to Cedar Valley in my forties. What I know about the sentence is not the twenty years — it is the walk back in. The way a word you were given follows you into every room before you do. The job application. The apartment. The handshake from someone who already knows the story and is deciding what to do with it. The record does not serve the time with you. It serves an indefinite sentence of its own, and no one announced when yours was finished.

My family never stopped believing I was worth more than what I had done. I spent years trying to understand why, and more years trying to earn something they had already given me. What Michigan did for one point six million people is not nothing. It is the state saying: You have served your time. The record has served its time, too.

Michigan’s Clean Slate Act was signed in 2020 and began automatically processing records three years ago. The law clears misdemeanor convictions after seven years and felonies after ten, provided the person has not reoffended. It is bipartisan legislation. More than thirty states have some version of this. Most require a petition. Michigan made it automatic.

The difference matters more than it sounds. The people most likely to miss a petition process are the people who need it most. They do not always know the law exists. They are working, raising families, surviving. The state of Michigan decided not to wait for them to find the door. It opened it.

One point six million records. Some of those belong to people who have been living quietly decent lives for thirty years while the word sat in a database, available to anyone who searched their name. They may not know yet. Some will find out when a barrier simply is no longer there.

I think about Owen. He is seventeen. He has his whole life in front of him, and I know better than most how fast one moment can change what follows. I also know how much it matters — when someone who was judged becomes someone who gets to walk through a door held open. Not because he earned it on someone else’s terms. Because someone decided the past had been carried long enough.

Cedar Valley is not Michigan. But Cedar Valley has people carrying old records. It is worth knowing what your state allows. It is worth telling someone who might not know to look.

If you know someone in Cedar Valley who has been carrying a record for years and has not looked into what might be possible, come tell us. The Cedar Valley News Facebook group is where the conversation can continue. https://bit.ly/40p8jKy

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series, written by Evan Swensen, Publisher, Publication Consultants, and Claude Marshall, AI Developmental Editor. While the people and town of Cedar Valley are fictional, Michigan’s Clean Slate Act, Kamau Sandiford, Safe and Just Michigan, and the data described are real.

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