A yearlong effort to expunge marijuana-related convictions in San Francisco has been completed, with more than 9,300 crimes removed from people's records, prosecutors announced Monday.
Given that recreational marijuana is now legal in California and that the war on drugs has had a disproportionate effect on minorities, District Attorney George Gascon said his office's effort is aimed at removing barriers a criminal conviction poses for individuals long after they've served their sentence.
In an announcement last year, Gascon said his office would review every marijuana-related conviction to find ones eligible for expungement under Proposition 64, passed by voters in 2016. Though individuals can request expungements themselves, the process is known to be difficult to navigate and relatively few attempt it.
Gascon's office initially began the expungement process by hand and found about 1,000 cases to clear, but then teamed up with Code for America, a national nonprofit that uses technology to make government more efficient.
Coders there created an algorithm that combed through San Francisco's digitized criminal records going back to 1975 in just minutes.
The program automatically fills out the required forms and generates a completed motion in PDF format. The district attorney's office can then file the completed motion with the court.
After about a year of work, Gascon announced on Monday they'd found 9,362 cases that were eligible to be expunged. All that's left to be done is for the courts to process the requests, he said.
"It was the morally right thing to do," he said. "If you have a felony conviction, you are automatically excluded in so many ways from participating in your community."
Limitations that some people encounter after they've served their sentences are less well known, Gascon said, like barriers to education, housing, employment and even being barred from a child's school field trip because of a conviction.
Proposition 64 legalized, among other things, the possession and purchase of up to an ounce of marijuana and allowed individuals to grow up to six plants for personal use. The measure also allowed people convicted of marijuana possession to petition the courts to have those convictions expunged as long as the person does not pose a risk to public safety. People also can petition to have some crimes reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, including possession of more than an ounce of marijuana by a person who is 18 or older.
"This isn't a political thing. This is about dignity. People pay their debt to society. People pay the consequences for something we no longer consider a crime," he said. "They should not be jumping through hoops for this. They should just get it."
Only stand-alone marijuana convictions were eligible for expungement, Gascon said. Marijuana convictions that were tied in with other offenses in a single criminal case such as a robbery, burglary or DUI, were not expunged, officials said.
In the end, the project removed what had been a disproportionate number of convictions hanging over the heads of the city's blacks and Latinos. Though San Francisco is about 5 percent black, that community saw a third of all marijuana-related convictions. Latinos make up about 15 percent of the city, but 27 percent of marijuana convictions, Gascon's office said.
Gascon, who is not seeking a third term in office, said his ambition is to show what Code for America's algorithm did in San Francisco and take that approach statewide.
"Until something has been shown, it is hard for people to believe it will work," said Jennifer Pahlka, founder and executive director for Code for America. "Our theory of change is if you show what's possible you can reset the expectation bar."
The expungements only date back to 1975, the earliest digitized records that San Francisco prosecutors maintain, Gascon said.
In Los Angeles County, District Attorney Jackie Lacey said last year that petitioning through the courts would be faster for people seeking relief than waiting for her office to review the case files.
The same month, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion to develop a plan to help make it easier for people to reduce or clear minor pot convictions.
The Los Angeles County district attorney's office estimates there have been 40,000 felony convictions involving pot-related offenses since 1993. It is unclear how many of those people are eligible for relief or how many have petitioned for it.
Code for America plans to expand the pilot program to other California counties with the target of clearing 250,000 convictions by 2019. The organization has previously delved into the realm of criminal justice. In 2016, it created Clear My Record, an online application that connects people with lawyers to clear criminal records across California.
