New and Improved Clemency Application Forms

The Office of the Pardon Attorney (PARDON) strives to maintain a clemency process that is accessible and transparent for all our applicants. In 2022, we committed to updating our application forms. Our efforts are part of an administration-wide push to expand access to justice by simplifying public-facing forms and documents.

Timeline of the revision process

PARDON and the Office for Access to Justice begin collaborating on the pardon application. Methods include:

• Human-centered design and simplification
• Feedback sessions with prior clemency recipients, justice-impacted individuals, stakeholders, and advocates
• Requests to the public for comment

An improved pardon application

PARDON’s collaboration with ATJ contributed to the launch of Access DOJ and showcases how government can improve its programs and services. The effort was recently highlighted in the White House report, Tackling the Time Tax: Making Important Government Benefits and Programs Easier to Access, which features some of the key improvements in the new application form:

• Focusing on who the applicant is today instead of who they were when they committed the offense.
• Limiting the collection of personal history.
• Eliminating notarization requirements to reduce the burden on applicants and the people who write letters of support.
• Explaining sensitive questions to create a less stressful process.
• Improving plain language, word count, sentence length, and reading grade level.

News related to the new pardon application

• The Office of the Pardon Attorney Releases New Presidential Pardon Application
• Justice Department Launches Access DOJ
• DOJ launches a CX-focused initiative - Government Executive (govexec.com)
• Justice Department launches initiative to improve accessibility | Legal Newsline
• New 'Access DOJ' Aims To Nix Barriers, Boost Accessibility - Law360