The Time Served Act of 2025; enact
House Bill 301, titled the "Time Served Act of 2025," would create automatic criminal record relief in Georgia for certain people after they have completed their sentences and remained conviction-free for a specified period. The bill amends existing record-review law to require automatic restriction of criminal history records for qualifying felony, misdemeanor, or single-incident series of offenses five years after sentence completion, while excluding serious violent felonies, sexual offenses, human trafficking, elder abuse, child exploitation offenses, and certain violent offenses against law enforcement officers.
The bill also adds a new automatic sealing framework for certain covered individuals, including people arrested but not convicted, people convicted of marijuana or other controlled-substance offenses, and people convicted of nonviolent offenses. For these cases, records would be sealed automatically five years after all sentence terms and conditions are completed, and acquitted or exonerated cases would be sealed automatically within 60 days. The bill further requires the Board of Pardons and Paroles to issue certificates of employability to eligible parolees or conditional releasees, sets out access limits and disclosure rules for sealed records, requires the Attorney General to create an automatic sealing process for state agencies, and imposes penalties for unauthorized access or disclosure.
HB301 would significantly expand Georgia’s record-restriction and record-sealing laws by shifting many eligible cases from a petition-based process to an automatic one. It would affect criminal history records maintained by state agencies, courts, and law enforcement, and would create new rights and obligations for people with qualifying convictions or arrests, employers, the Board of Pardons and Paroles, the Attorney General, and criminal justice agencies. The bill also creates a certificate of employability program tied to parole and conditional release, with reporting requirements for the Board.
Based on the bill text and the absence of recorded committee debate or votes in the provided materials, the overall sentiment appears supportive of expanding second-chance opportunities and reducing barriers to employment and reintegration for people with older or lower-level criminal records. The bill’s structure suggests a policy goal of automatic relief rather than discretionary relief, indicating a reform-oriented approach.
The main points of contention likely concern the scope of automatic sealing and the balance between rehabilitation and public safety. The bill excludes serious violent, sexual, trafficking, child exploitation, elder abuse, and certain law-enforcement-related offenses, which suggests lawmakers anticipated concerns about limiting relief for more serious conduct. Potential debate may also focus on whether automatic sealing should apply to marijuana and other controlled-substance offenses, how employers and background-check systems would be affected, and whether law enforcement and high-trust positions should retain access to sealed records.