One Year of Move the Box: Bringing the Courthouse to the Community
A criminal record can follow someone for years. It can keep a qualified applicant from getting a job, make finding housing harder, or stand in the way of a fresh start. Even when someone is eligible to have their record cleared, figuring out where to begin can be a barrier of its own.
A year ago, Make-A-Day launched Move the Box, our mobile expungement initiative, to bring legal support into the communities where our guests live. Instead of asking people to work through an unfamiliar system alone, we partner with legal teams to make the process easier to reach.
Before each Pop-Up Care Village, our team canvasses neighborhoods and resource centers across Franklin County, handing out flyers and talking with community partners. Vanessa dropped flyers off at one site on her route, where a coordinator agreed to pass them along to their clients.
On Tuesday, she recognized that coordinator at the event. As she welcomed them, they got emotional and shared that they needed expungement services too. Their record had been keeping them from applying for jobs they were qualified to do.
They were one of 60 guests seen that day by volunteer attorneys from the Ohio Office of the Public Defender and Bar Foundation Fellows. By the end of the event, 28 guests (and counting) had their records cleared. The work was completed and filed from the event itself, so no one had to make a separate trip to the courthouse.
One year of removing barriers
Since launching Move the Box in October 2025, 241 guests have received expungement support through our Pop-Up Care Villages, street outreach, and one-on-one case management.
Guests have told us what a cleared record means for them:
“I am more confident that once I start looking for housing, I will be able to get stable housing and a better paying job.”
“This gave me a new outlook on life and a realization that people are willing to give me a second chance.”
“Life changed dramatically for the better, and I really appreciate it. I can look for a better job now, not something temporary.”
“These expungement events are really good; I got my medical administrative associate’s degree.”
Most of these people already had the skills, experience, and drive. What they were missing was legal help to get past the record.
You don’t have to arrive knowing what you need
One of the moments I’ll remember from October 6th happened beside our food truck.
A woman was waiting in line for a meal, and I asked how she was doing. She told me she hadn’t known the event was happening and had just stopped by to see what was going on. She left with her 2009 criminal record expunged.
She came without a plan to meet an attorney, a list of legal questions, or a goal in mind. She saw something happening in her community and decided to stop, and she found support that had been out of reach for years.
She wasn’t the only one who ended up on the other side of the table.
One guest came to have his record expunged. When he mentioned he was a licensed barber with his clippers in the car, he stayed to give haircuts to other guests. Another barber came to cut hair and ended up sitting down with an attorney about his own record. One of our volunteers stepped away from their post to get an old college charge cleared.
People came to give support and ended up receiving it, and some did both.
This is a big reason we bring services into the community. Someone can arrive for a meal and find legal help. A volunteer can realize they have a barrier they can address, too. A simple question about how someone’s day is going can lead somewhere neither person expected. We can’t always know what someone needs before they walk up, so we try to make sure they have the chance to find out.
One afternoon, many barriers removed
Expungement was the focus of the October 6th Pop-Up Care Village, and other services were on site as well:
20 individuals were seen by the Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities vision bus.
11 guests received HIV and HepC testing through Central Outreach Wellness’s mobile unit.
18 guests received free haircuts and shaves.
30 guests received warrant support through the Franklin County Tap In Center.
Each partner stayed focused on the people in front of them, and each service ran on its own. Watching guests move between tables, checking one, two, or three things off a list that might have felt overwhelming when they arrived, showed me what putting these services side by side does. Fewer separate appointments and fewer trips means more people actually get things done, and needs come up naturally in conversation along the way.
The people providing support can need it too. The barber, the volunteer, and the neighbor stopping by for lunch all deserve access to the resources that help them move forward.
Move the Box is made possible in part by the Ohio State Bar Foundation, the CPPS Heritage Fund, and Franklin County’s TCAP grant, whose investments fund the staff, legal coordination, and outreach needed to bring expungement services into community spaces. We are also thankful to our partners at the Office of the Ohio Public Defender for joining each pop-up to provide legal expertise and expungement support, and the Ohio State Bar Foundation Fellows for joining this pop-up! Their support helps remove financial and structural barriers to record relief and gives residents most affected by systemic inequities a real chance to move toward housing, employment, and long-term stability.