Brittanie poses with her awards earned during her time at Hopkinsville Community College.
BOWLING GREEN, KY. – For thousands of Kentuckians, a past mistake can follow them long after they’ve fulfilled their debt to society through incarceration, which creates a barrier to stable employment, housing, and a chance to move forward. But expungement can change that.
By clearing eligible charges from a person’s record, individuals gain access to better-paying jobs, stronger career pathways, and the opportunity to build brighter futures for themselves and their families, while strengthening Kentucky’s workforce in the process.
Through its expungement program and partnerships with legal advocates and workforce organizations, Goodwill Kentucky has been working to remove these barriers and create second chances for justice-impacted individuals. This April, during Second Chance Month, Goodwill Kentucky is highlighting a significant milestone in that work: more than 20,000 criminal charges expunged through its program since launching the initiative in 2021.
Goodwill Kentucky became involved in expungement work to help remove barriers to employment, directly supporting its mission of helping Kentuckians find pathways out of poverty. The organization and its partners, including UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Kentucky, the Kentucky Department of Corrections, legal aid agencies, and others, offer the clinics for free, covering an average cost of $600 per person, and provide guidance and connections to resources so justice-impacted Kentuckians can get a fair chance to succeed.
One of those individuals is Hopkinsville native Brittanie Bogard, one of Goodwill Kentucky’s first expungement clients. She described her past as “a generational curse,” shaped by a childhood spent in group homes and juvenile detention centers, followed by three years in prison as an adult. Determined to break that cycle, she took a first step in 2021 by enrolling in the expungement program. Through the program, she successfully cleared multiple charges from her record, opening the door to new opportunities.
Since then, Brittanie has transformed her life through education and service. She earned two associate degrees from Hopkinsville Community College, where she was named to the dean’s list and received the Emerging Leader Award. She went on to graduate from Murray State University with a bachelor’s degree in social work, maintaining a 4.0 GPA and earning honors for academic achievement. Today, she is continuing her education in a master’s program at the University of the Cumberlands.
Now a Hopkinsville City Council member, Brittanie is a powerful advocate for second chances. From her kitchen table, she has helped more than 400 individuals begin the expungement and pardon process—often driving them to appointments and guiding them every step of the way. She has also shared her story at the state and national levels, including in Frankfort and Washington, D.C., helping advance policies that expand access to second-chance opportunities.
“I have worked diligently to become a productive citizen in my community,” she said. “I am now empowered. I no longer have to live my old life—I’ve mastered a new journey. I do this work because Goodwill did it for me.”
To learn more about Goodwill Kentucky’s expungement program, visit GoodwillKY.org/Expungements.
About Goodwill Kentucky
For more than 100 years, Goodwill Kentucky has helped Kentuckians find pathways out of poverty through the transformative power of work. Operating in 103 of Kentucky’s 120 counties, Goodwill Kentucky places over 3,000 Kentuckians into jobs each year through its 1,400-plus employer partners and its own retail stores. These life-changing opportunities are made possible through donations to Goodwill Kentucky stores and community support. The organization reinvests approximately 90 cents of every dollar earned in its retail stores into job training and workforce programs. When you give to Goodwill, you do a lot of good.
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