L.A. to Use Tech to Wipe Out Tens of Thousands of Old Pot Convictions

Los Angeles-area prosecutors are joining other district attorneys to use technology to wipe out or reduce as many as 50,000 old marijuana convictions, more than a year after recreational use of the drug became legal in California.

The county is working with Code for America, a San Francisco-based nonprofit tech organization, which uses algorithms to find eligible cases that are otherwise hard to identify in decades-old court documents. It comes after San Francisco successfully cleared convictions using a similar approach, one that other cities and states nationwide said they will try to replicate.

"This collaboration will improve people's lives by erasing the mistakes of their past and hopefully lead them on a path to a better future," L.A. County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a statement Monday.

San Joaquin County also announced their partnership with the group to remove up to 4,000 cases.

California voters approved eliminating some pot-related crimes and wiping out past criminal convictions or reducing felonies to misdemeanors when they legalized adult marijuana use in 2016. The law went into effect at the beginning of 2018.

But there was no easy way to identify an estimated 200,000 cases statewide. Past offenders had to file petitions on their own to get their records changed or hire lawyers for help with the process.

After partnering with the group, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announced last month that 9,300 cases dating to 1975 will be dropped or reduced for free, in many cases without the offenders’ knowledge.

It began when his office started sifting through thousands of criminal cases last year to identify eligible marijuana convictions after only 23 people who hired lawyers had taken advantage of the new law.

A few months later, after managing to dismiss just over 1,000 cases during the painstaking process, Gascón partnered with CFA.

Computer coders with the group, which aims to make government more efficient, developed the Clear My Record algorithm to quickly identify eligible cases and automatically fill out forms to file with the courts.

"When we do this right, we show that government can make good on its promises, especially for the hundreds of thousands who have been denied jobs, housing and other opportunities despite the passage of laws intended to provide relief," said Jennifer Pahlka, executive director of Code for America. "Clear My Record changes the scale and speed of justice and has the potential to ignite change across the state and the nation."

Prosecutors in a host of cities across the country, including Baltimore, Seattle and Chicago, have expressed interested in clearing eligible marijuana convictions. And in Michigan, which legalized pot last year, officials said they would eliminate pot crimes and allow past convictions to be erased or reduced.