Move the Box: A Mobile Expungement Initiative

Clearing records. Opening doors. Building pathways forward.

A criminal record does not expire. For people who have served their time, paid their fines, and tried to move forward, it keeps showing up: on job applications, housing forms, background checks. It is one of the most persistent and least visible barriers keeping people stuck in poverty and homelessness, and it is one that the legal system rarely helps people navigate on their own.

Move the Box is MAD's mobile justice navigation initiative. We meet people through our outreach and pop-up events, build trust, and then walk with them through the process of understanding their legal history, identifying what can be cleared, and connecting them to legal help to get it done. We do not do the legal work ourselves. We do the work that makes the legal work possible: helping people understand their options, gathering what they need, and making sure they do not fall through the cracks of a process that was not designed with them in mind.

Since launching in October 2025, Move the Box has completed more than 100 legal engagements, connecting neighbors with expungement screening, reentry navigation, ID support, and mailing address assistance.

Warrant clearance through the Franklin County Tap In Center

Outstanding warrants create a separate but equally serious barrier. They prevent people from accessing housing, employment, and basic services, and they make every interaction with systems feel dangerous. MAD partners with the Franklin County Tap In Center, which provides the legal support to help neighbors clear non-violent misdemeanor warrants and have their cases recalled and rescheduled. During outreach and pop-up events where the Tap In Center has been present, more than 60 neighbors have been served, some of whom connected directly through MAD's outreach work.

We bring people to the table. The Tap In Center does the legal work.

What Move the Box includes:

Expungement screening and eligibility review, connection to legal partners for record sealing and clearance, ID recovery and mailing address support, housing and employment navigation following record clearance, coordination with the Franklin County Tap In Center for warrant resolution, and integration with MAD's broader Stabilize and Restore services so legal progress connects to housing and employment progress.