The photos easily tell the story: the Grammy-nominated musician standing in the governor’s mansion, hugging it out in front of a Christmas tree, finally getting official recognition that he’s not the same person he was at 17 or 23. That his decade in and out of jail does not define who he is at 41. That he’s earned a second chance.
While it’s a beautiful story and I genuinely like and am happy for Jelly Roll, it should make you furious.
Not at Jelly Roll; I fully believe he deserves this. Instead, you should be furious at a system that makes redemption a luxury reserved for people lucky enough to become famous, wealthy, or connected enough to navigate a months-long bureaucratic maze that most people with records can’t even afford to attempt.
Seventy million Americans have criminal records. Most of them aren’t celebrities. Most of them can’t hire prominent Nashville attorneys to shepherd pardon applications through state parole boards. Most of them just wake up every day and try to survive a system designed to keep punishing them long after they’ve served their time.
Jelly Roll’s pardon is worth celebrating. But it’s also a reminder of how very broken the system is for the rest of us.
We Love Redemption Arcs—When They’re Convenient
Here’s what made Jelly Roll an ideal pardon candidate, according to Governor Lee: his story is “remarkable” and “redemptive.”
Translation: he got famous. And yes, he has done some truly incredible things. He testified before Congress about fentanyl. He donated to charities. He sold out arenas. He became somebody that powerful people recognize and respect.
Jelly Roll absolutely put in the work. He turned his life around. He used songwriting as therapy while locked up and built a career on radical honesty about his past. He’s advocated for second chances and worked with people still inside the system. He earned this. What he’s done should be celebrated, hands down.
But what about the person who did the same thing without the platinum records?
The guy who turned his life around, got clean, held down a job for 15 years, coaches little league, volunteers at his church, and can’t get promoted because his background check still shows a drug conviction from 2008. Where’s his pardon? Where’s his Christmas photo op with the governor?
What about the woman who made one mistake at 19, served her time, got her degree, and still can’t get a cosmetology license because state law says people with felony records aren’t allowed to cut hair? Who’s throwing her a pardon party?
The redemption arc only counts if people are watching, it seems. And most people with records are invisible.
What a Pardon Actually Does (And Doesn’t Do)
In Tennessee, a pardon doesn’t actually erase a conviction. It doesn’t seal records or make background checks come back clean.
It’s “a statement of forgiveness.” It can restore some civil rights, like voting. It makes international travel easier, which is why Jelly Roll wanted it, so he can tour without mountains of paperwork explaining why a guy with robbery and drug felonies should be allowed into other countries.
For regular people, a pardon might help. Might. But it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem: their record is still out there, still searchable, still the first thing employers, landlords, and licensing boards see when they Google someone’s name.
And here’s the thing about Tennessee pardons: you’re not even eligible until five years after your sentence expires. Then you go through a months-long review process. Then the parole board makes a non-binding recommendation. Then the governor decides.
It took Jelly Roll’s application from October 2024 until December 2025 to get approved. That’s over a year of waiting with a prominent attorney handling the paperwork, civic leaders writing letters of support, and the sheriff of Davidson County vouching for him.
Most people with records don’t have all that. They have public defenders who barely had time to handle their case in the first place. They have few people if anyone writing letters. Some have no idea the process even exists.
The system isn’t designed for redemption. It’s designed to look like it cares about redemption while keeping the barriers exactly where they are.
The Financial Punishment Never Ends
Here’s what really doesn’t get talked about enough: criminal records are a poverty tax.
One in three American adults has a criminal record. That’s over 70 million people locked out of opportunities, not because they’re currently doing anything wrong, but because they did something wrong once, or were accused of doing something wrong and the charges were dismissed, which still shows up on background checks.
The employment barriers alone are staggering:
- In 2014, felony conviction-related employment barriers cost the U.S. economy at least $78 billion and kept 1.7 million people out of the workforce entirely.
- People with criminal records face unemployment rates approaching 27%, higher than the peak unemployment during the Great Depression.
- 72% of all post-release restrictions impact job opportunities, from blanket bans in licensed occupations to employer screening practices that filter out anyone with a record.
- Research from the National Employment Law Project shows that even “Ban the Box” policies (which delay when/where in the process employers can ask about criminal history) have limited effectiveness because records are still accessible later in the hiring process.
And it’s not just employment. Criminal records block access to:
- Housing: Between 30-50% of parolees in major cities are homeless because landlords won’t rent to people with records.
- Education: Financial aid restrictions make it harder to get degrees that might help overcome employment barriers.
- Occupational licenses: Want to be a barber, cosmetologist, addiction counselor, or work in dozens of other licensed professions? Many states have automatic disqualification rules for people with felony convictions, regardless of how long ago the offense occurred or whether it has anything to do with the job.
- Public benefits: Restrictions on SNAP, housing assistance, and other programs make it nearly impossible to stay afloat while trying to rebuild.
These aren’t collateral consequences. They’re punishment. And unlike jail time, they never end.
You serve your sentence. You pay your debt to society. You do everything right. And then you spend the rest of your life explaining a mistake you made 10, 15, 20 years ago to every potential employer, landlord, and licensing board that Googles your name.
The system doesn’t want you to succeed. It wants you to fail so it can say, “See? Once a criminal, always a criminal.”
The Research Says: Let People Move On
Here’s the uncomfortable truth that undermines the entire logic of permanent criminal records: if someone doesn’t commit a new crime within four to seven years of release, their likelihood of reoffending drops to the same rate as people without records.
Now, read that again.
After four to seven years, a person with a criminal record is statistically no more likely to commit a crime than anyone else. The record stops predicting behavior. It becomes irrelevant, except we keep treating it like it matters forever.
In 2024, the University of Chicago released research examining whether clearing criminal records improves employment outcomes. Their findings were sobering: policies that simply reduce felony convictions to misdemeanors don’t significantly change employment rates, largely because the damage is already done; you can’t unwind the clock. Criminal charges scar people’s work histories in ways that are hard to undo; resume gaps, lost experience, discouragement, destroyed professional and personal networks. You effectively have knocked someone down the ladder to the bottom rung.
But here’s the key finding: the harm happens immediately when someone is charged, not years later when they’re trying to move on. Which means the longer we make people carry records, the more we’re punishing them for something that no longer reflects who they are or what risk they pose.
Other research shows that when people with records do get jobs, outcomes improve across the board: lower recidivism, better community stability, increased tax revenue, reduced criminal justice costs. Philadelphia estimated that employing formerly incarcerated people would generate nearly $2 million in additional income tax contributions and save over $2 million in reduced criminal justice costs annually.
Employment doesn’t just help individuals. It helps communities. But we’ve built a system that makes employment nearly impossible for millions of people, then acts shocked when they struggle.
Clean Slate Laws: The Solution We’re Too Scared to Scale
Thankfully, some states are finally catching on.
Pennsylvania passed a Clean Slate law in 2018 that automatically seals non-convictions and certain misdemeanors after a waiting period. Michigan, Utah, Virginia, Connecticut, Delaware, Oklahoma, and others have followed with their own versions.
These laws work by removing the burden from individuals. Instead of requiring people to navigate complex legal processes they don’t understand and can’t afford, the state automatically seals eligible records after a set period. No application. No fees. No lawyers. Just: you’ve stayed out of trouble for X years, here’s your clean slate.
It’s not radical. It’s reasonable. It’s what every person who talks about “paying your debt to society” should support.
But most states don’t have these laws. Most states still require people to petition for expungement, a time-consuming process that requires filing fees, court appearances, sometimes hiring attorneys, and waiting months or years for a decision. It’s expensive. It’s complicated. And most people with records never attempt it because they don’t know it exists or can’t afford to try.
So records remain. And opportunities remain blocked. And people remain stuck.
The Council of State Governments Justice Center has been documenting the thousands of collateral consequences attached to criminal convictions, over 38,000 statutes across the country that restrict jobs, housing, benefits, and civil rights based on criminal history. More than 80% of those restrictions relate to employment.
We’ve built a system of permanent caste of punishment and mislabeled it as justice. And then we act surprised when people can’t escape poverty, when families stay trapped in cycles of incarceration, when communities never stabilize.
What It Says About Us
Jelly Roll’s pardon happened because he became someone “worth saving” in the eyes of power.
He had the right story. The right trajectory. The right advocates. The right attorney. The right mix of contrition and success that makes politicians feel good about offering grace.
But grace shouldn’t require fame. Redemption shouldn’t require wealth. Second chances shouldn’t depend on whether you can afford to navigate bureaucratic processes designed to keep people out.
If we believe in redemption (and we claim to, loudly, whenever a celebrity gets pardoned) then we need to build systems that offer it to everyone, not just the people whose stories make good PR.
That means:
Automatic record sealing for eligible offenses. No applications. No fees. No waiting for someone to figure out they’re allowed to ask. Just make it easy: your time is done, your record is sealed, go live your life.
Shorter waiting periods. If research shows people are no longer a risk after four to seven years, why are we making them wait longer? Why are we treating 20-year-old convictions like they happened yesterday?
Ban the Box…everywhere. Employers shouldn’t be asking about criminal history on initial applications. Let people get through the door based on their qualifications, not their worst day.
End automatic disqualification rules. Occupational licensing laws that ban anyone with a felony conviction, regardless of the offense or how long ago it happened, serve no public safety purpose. They just keep people poor.
Stop charging people for their own expungement. It costs money to file petitions. It costs money to hire attorneys. We’re charging people to erase the consequences of punishments they already served. That’s not justice. That’s extortion.
Recognize that punishment should have an expiration date. If someone serves their sentence and stays out of trouble, at some point we need to actually let them move on. Right now, we don’t. We just keep punishing them, quietly, through systems designed to look neutral but function as permanent exclusion.
We Know Better. We’re Just Not Doing Better.
The research is clear. The outcomes are documented. We know what works.
We know that blocking people from jobs doesn’t make communities safer; it makes them more desperate. We know that permanent records don’t reduce crime; they increase the likelihood that people will end up back in the system because they can’t survive outside it. We know that automatic sealing works, that shorter waiting periods work, that giving people actual second chances works.
We know all of this.
And we still make 70 million people live with the weight of their records, every day, forever.
Jelly Roll’s pardon is a story about what’s possible when someone gets a real second chance. When someone is allowed to be more than their worst moment. When the system finally says, “Okay. You’re done paying for this.”
Everyone with a record deserves that story.
Not because they’re famous. Not because they have the right connections or the right attorney or the right narrative arc that makes politicians comfortable. Because they’re human. Because they served their time. Because at some point, punishment has to end.
Jelly Roll stood in the governor’s mansion and got his moment. Good for him. He absolutely earned it.
Now let’s build a system where 70 million other people don’t have to wait for a pardon, a celebrity moment, or a Christmas miracle to get the same thing.
Let’s just give people their lives back.
Additional Reading
Associated Press. (2024, December 18). Tennessee governor pardons country star Jelly Roll, who has sought redemption from criminal past. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jelly-roll-pardoned-tennessee-governor/
Avery, B., & Lu, H. (2024, April). Research supports fair chance policies. National Employment Law Project. https://www.nelp.org/app/uploads/2024/04/Research-Supports-Fair-Chance-Policies-Apr.2024.pdf
Bucknor, C., & Barber, A. (2016). The price we pay: Economic costs of barriers to employment for former prisoners and people convicted of felonies. Center for Economic and Policy Research. https://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/employment-prisoners-felonies-2016-06.pdf
Doleac, J. L., Hansen, B., & Landers, M. (2024). Can you erase the mark of a criminal record? Labor market impacts of criminal record remediation (BFI Working Paper No. 2024-57). Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, University of Chicago. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insights/can-you-erase-the-mark-of-a-criminal-record-labor-market-impacts-of-criminal-record-remediation/
National Conference of State Legislatures. (n.d.). Barriers to work: People with criminal records. https://documents.ncsl.org/wwwncsl/Criminal-Justice/Barriers-to-Work-People-with-Criminal-Records.pdf
Rodriguez, M. N., & Avery, B. (2016). Unlicensed & untapped: Removing barriers to state occupational licenses for people with records. National Employment Law Project.
Solomon, A. L. (2012, June 14). In search of a job: Criminal records as barriers to employment. National Institute of Justice. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/search-job-criminal-records-barriers-employment
The Marshall Project. (2023, April 1). How criminal records hold back millions of people. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/04/01/criminal-record-job-housing-barriers-discrimination
