About 20% of Virginians have a criminal conviction or past arrest. That can keep them from jobs or rental agreements. Virginia legislators passed a law to allow the sealing of that history years ago, but it’s just going into effect this week.
“We’ll see a lot of people see relief and be able to move forward with their lives without answering that question about whether they have a criminal conviction in their history,” said Sheba Williams with NoLef Turns, an advocacy group for the formerly incarcerated. She and others say Virginia’s system for sealing criminal records was long out of date and made it harder for returning citizens to truly return to a normal life.
That changed in 2021… kind of.
Democrats, at their own admission, rushed through a series of reforms that aimed to make the process easier. It took another four years of amendments to get it right. And in 2025 a new law was passed that now creates an automatic sealing process for some crimes like marijuana offenses and felony charges that ended without a conviction.
It’s something Lynchburg Republican Senator Mark Peake doesn’t support. But he said if it was going to happen, he’d take part in the fix.
“I still disagree with the philosophy of the bill, I disagree with the underlying bill," Peake told Radio IQ, noting it broke his long-running rule not to fix Democrats "bad legislation."
"But I had to do something to make this awful bill less bad,” he said.
Peake was a yes vote in the end. And now thousands of Virginians are on track to have those records sealed. But it’s not quite that easy.
Rob Poggenklassis with Justice Forward.
“It requires people go conviction free for 7 years after a misdemeanor or for 10 years after a felony," Poggenklass said. "So, they have to demonstrate a level of rehabilitation before they’re going to be eligible to qualify for this. It’s not going to get sealed the moment they’re convicted.”
A spokesperson for the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorney's, the folks who will have to process the requests, said they were given funding for 70 new positions but noted they started the year down over 200 and there are 120 Commonwealth's Attorney offices across the state.
“We’re still understaffed and we’ll continue to appropriately share that message,” the spokesperson told Radio IQ.
