Using tech, California counties have cleared 140,000 marijuana-related convictions

More than 70 million Americans have a criminal record in the United States. This means that almost every time nearly one in three Americans applies for a job or to college, signs up for public assistance programs, or tries to find housing, their history of arrests — even those that didn’t lead to a conviction or for which they were found innocent — haunts them, creating a barrier to the essential elements of a stable life and economic mobility. Because almost half of all children in the U.S. have a parent with a criminal record, the socioeconomic barriers carry across generations and create lasting ripple effects that impact upward mobility.

Code for America has set out to change that. The non-profit’s Clear My Record initiative has been working to automate the record expungement process at the county level, chiefly regarding marijuana convictions in California, since 2016. As of last fall, Code for America reports that half of California counties have used the tool, resulting in 140,000 convictions reduced or dismissed.

The project started with a simple question, says Alia Toran-Burrell, the associate director of Clear My Record: Why is the burden put on people with convictions to clear their records when it’s possible to do it automatically?