New analysis of a decade of Indiana court records shows that petitions to seal or expunge criminal convictions have grown by more than half in the state since the mid-2010s, a sustained rise that parallels broader Clean Slate momentum across the Midwest. The growth tells one story about how Hoosiers are responding to expanded eligibility rules; the slower part of the story is that getting relief still requires navigating filing fees, waiting periods, and a process that has not been fully streamlined even as the number of people trying to use it has climbed.
What the data shows
Reporting from the Indiana Capital Chronicle and corroborated by regional outlets including the Elkhart Truth and the Herald Bulletin found that the number of expungement filings in the state has risen by roughly 52 percent over the past ten years. The increase has been steady rather than sudden, with the largest jumps coming in years following changes to Indiana's expungement statute that broadened which convictions could be sealed and shortened the wait periods for some categories. The rise spans both urban counties like Marion and Allen and smaller rural counties, suggesting that the underlying demand is not confined to a few metro areas where legal aid is more concentrated.
What has been driving the increase
Indiana's 2014 Second Chance Law and the subsequent expansions to the statute over the last decade are the main engines behind the rise. The original law allowed sealing of certain arrests and convictions after a waiting period, but the categories were narrow and the process was expensive. Subsequent amendments expanded eligibility to additional misdemeanor and low-level felony categories, reduced some waiting periods, and adjusted filing fees. Each round of expansion produced a predictable spike in filings that took several years to fully work through the courts, and the compounded effect over a decade is the 52 percent rise the data shows.
Public awareness campaigns from legal aid organizations, county prosecutor offices, and the Indiana Judicial Branch have also contributed. Free expungement clinics hosted by Indiana Legal Services, the Indianapolis Bar Association, and a number of county-level programs have moved thousands of petitions in single-day events. The clinics have been particularly effective at reaching people who would not otherwise have been able to afford an attorney or navigate the petition process on their own, and they explain part of the rural and small-metro growth.
Why relief still takes time
Even with the rising filing numbers, the process remains slower than most petitioners expect. Indiana's expungement statute imposes waiting periods that range from a few years for some misdemeanor categories to as long as a decade or more for higher-level felonies, and the clock generally starts from the date the sentence was completed rather than the date of arrest. For people whose convictions are eligible, the procedural steps — obtaining certified court records, completing the petition, paying the filing fee, serving notice on the prosecutor's office, and waiting for a hearing or for the prosecutor's response — routinely take several months from start to finish, and longer for cases involving out-of-state charges or older convictions where records are harder to locate.
For people without a clean record of their own case history, the first practical barrier is reconstructing the docket. Many county clerks charge per-page fees for certified copies, and some counties have moved portions of their older records into electronic systems that are still indexed inconsistently. Free legal help exists but does not cover every county, and statewide legal aid programs are stretched thin. The result is that the population most likely to benefit from expungement — people with older misdemeanor and low-level felony convictions who cannot afford an attorney — is also the population most likely to encounter barriers at the documentation and filing stages.
The cost question
Filing fees for an Indiana expungement are set by statute and vary depending on the type of petition and whether the case was a misdemeanor or felony. The statutory fee has not changed materially in recent years, but the cumulative cost of certified records, service of process, and any attorney time is meaningful for petitioners with limited income. Fee waiver forms are available for people who qualify, but the eligibility threshold is not generous, and many petitioners end up paying out of pocket even when their income is close to the line. Free expungement clinics reduce this burden significantly for the people they can serve, but clinic capacity is finite and demand has been climbing alongside the filing numbers.
What the rise suggests for the coming year
The trend line points to continued growth in filings rather than a plateau. Several Indiana counties have expanded their clinic schedules, and there is ongoing interest at the state level in further simplifying the process for low-risk convictions. The federal background check system does not always reflect state-level sealing in real time, which means some petitioners whose records have been sealed continue to experience the practical effects of those convictions during the lag, but that is a separate issue from the state process itself. For people with eligible records who have not yet filed, the rise in filings reflects a system that is being used more heavily than it was a decade ago, not a system that has become dramatically easier to use — and that distinction is the most important thing to understand about the new data.