When the Record Keeper Knows What It’s Like to Be in the Records

In New Orleans, Calvin Duncan - a man who spent 30 years incarcerated for a murder conviction later vacated - has just been elected clerk of criminal court. His victory isn’t just historic; it’s a reminder that the people most harmed by the criminal legal system often understand its failures better than anyone else. 

Click Here for Audio Version

For decades, Duncan fought simply to access the records that shaped his life: transcripts, filings, police reports, all the documents that many incarcerated people, sex workers, and survivors are routinely denied.

His election matters because records matter. 

They determine whether someone can appeal a conviction, prove misconduct, clear their name, or even understand what the state is holding over them. And in a city where files are still kept in paper stacks, dumped into storage rooms, or allowed to go “missing,” Duncan knows the power and the peril of record-keeping from the inside out.

Why This Matters for Criminalized Communities

People in the sex trade and survivors of trafficking know this terrain intimately: the state keeps files on you that you cannot see, cannot correct, and often cannot challenge. Arrest reports, court records, “rescue” documentation, trafficking task-force write-ups - these pieces of paper shape your future more than your own truth ever can. And this is where we have to confront a larger hypocrisy. 

The public spends infinite energy debating sex workers’ “risk,” yet the Epstein files - thousands of pages detailing violence against minors, corruption, and state complicity - remain sealed. 

Dozens of powerful men go unnamed while entire communities are criminalized in full public view. That secrecy is not an accident; it is a choice. A system that can’t keep track of a sex worker’s court file will move mountains to protect the powerful from scrutiny. 

Duncan’s story stands in stark contrast. It reminds us that transparency is not just a concept, it's a form of justice, and that justice doesn’t come from hiding records - it comes from releasing them.

What Duncan’s Win Teaches Us

Duncan’s election underscores that records are a frontline of power. When they are withheld or manipulated, communities are controlled. When they are accessible, challenged, or corrected, people can fight for their freedom. It also shows that survivors and formerly incarcerated people belong in the rooms where those records are stored, organized, and released.

Administrative roles like clerk of court are not neutral - they shape the entire ecosystem of accountability. Lived experience belongs in leadership, not locked away like an inconvenient file.

Duncan’s win is not just symbolic; it is a model for how systems change when those who survived them finally get a hand on the levers.

What Our Community Can Do Right Now

One of the most powerful steps we can take is simply to share Duncan’s story and connect the dots. When people directly harmed by the system lead it, transparency becomes possible, and the narrative changes. We can also demand access to our own records - arrest files, court documents, trafficking task-force reports, “rescue” paperwork. 

Request them. 

Help others request theirs. 

Large numbers of coordinated record requests force institutions to respond. 

Communities can build literacy around documentation by hosting teach-ins, mutual-aid workshops, or online spaces to explain what records exist, how they’re used against us, and what rights we have to view or challenge them. Calling out the double standard is equally important: when the Epstein files remain sealed while sex workers’ mugshots hit the news within hours, name it. When police hide misconduct records but broadcast trafficking “raid” press releases, they expose the hypocrisy. Public pressure shifts public norms, and it's our collective action that can make this shift.

Reclaiming Records as Community Power

Transparency doesn’t happen by accident - it happens because communities push for it. We can demand open-file policies from elected officials, from clerks to public defenders to county commissions: digitized public access, faster release of documents, clear retention policies, and accountability when files disappear. Showing up - emailing, speaking at town halls, asking questions - matters. Supporting survivor-led and formerly incarcerated-led organizations also strengthens transparency work; these groups are already modeling the world we’re fighting for.

And we can start treating records as tools of community power rather than bureaucratic clutter. 

Talk with your own people: 

What documents shape our lives? 

Our mobility? 

Our safety? 

Our credibility? 

How do we reclaim that power together?

Because if a man who spent half his life fighting for access to his own paperwork can now run the office that controls those filings, then it’s time to reimagine who gets to control all our institutions of justice - and who they are meant to serve.