The archive · Public & Social · Marketing decision · 2024
JPMorgan Chase builds 38 statues from legal paperwork to push Clean Slate laws
JPMorgan Chase built 38 statues at Independence Hall — one per state without Clean Slate — from two million sheets of expungement paperwork.
JPMorgan Chase
What it had to solve
One in three Americans has a criminal record, and the complicated, expensive paperwork needed to clear it keeps millions from landing jobs and taking part in society. Clean Slate legislation would automatically clear eligible records, but 38 states had yet to pass it, and JPMorgan Chase wanted that waiting made visible.
How it works
One in three Americans has a criminal record, and the complex, expensive paperwork needed to clear those records keeps millions from landing jobs and participating in society. Clean Slate legislation would automatically clear all eligible records, yet 38 states have still not passed it.
JPMorgan Chase commissioned The Waiting Workforce to make that gap visible: 38 statues, one for each state that has not passed a Clean Slate law, made from two million sheets of the very legal paperwork that holds people back.
The statues were placed at Independence Hall in Philadelphia — the first state to pass such legislation — so the 38 missing laws stood in the same public space where American law itself was signed.
The D&AD archive lists the work with JPMorganChase as brand and client. It records no response figures, so the case stands on the gesture itself: an invisible policy failure given 38 physical bodies in a place every American recognizes.
Why it lands
- The medium is the argument: building the figures from real expungement paperwork makes the barrier tangible instead of a statistic about records and forms.
- One statue per holdout state gives each absent law a body, so citizens can see and count what is missing rather than read about it.
- Independence Hall supplies the contrast: the birthplace of written rights becomes the place where 38 states' denial of a second chance is exhibited.
- A major bank financing the work lends scale and credibility to a policy idea that would otherwise depend on affected individuals speaking up alone.
What it did
The 38 absent laws became 38 physical figures in the public square where American law was born, turning an abstract policy gap into something passers-by could meet face to face. The D&AD archive page records no response figures.
What you can take
Make an invisible policy failure physical: when paperwork is what keeps people waiting, build the argument out of that paperwork and put it where the law began.
Since then
The D&AD archive lists The Waiting Workforce with JPMorganChase as brand and client, and the page records no response figures. The documented result is the work itself: 38 statues for the 38 states without Clean Slate laws, made from two million sheets of the very paperwork that keeps millions waiting, standing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the first state to pass such legislation.
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