Another haul of cannabis expungements hit Los Angeles today as District Attorney George Gascón announced he will dismiss nearly 60,000 cannabis convictions as part of a collaborative effort with the Social Impact Center.
This will include many who were not included in the initial wave of Angelenos who have had their records cleared due to some kind of technicality. The day marks a significant moment in the continuing process to repair the harms of marijuana and criminal justice policies of the past.
Gascón started the conference by noting the major impacts cannabis convictions have on things like housing and employment, and the compounding impact that has on families.
“And one of the things that we knew, we went in and said, the, the impact of this was very heavily visited upon the residents of LA County,” Gascón said, “And we also knew that even when LA County came very late on providing relief under Prop 64 the numbers still were not reflective of the actual numbers of people that were impacted. So today we have identify approximately 60,000 additional cases with a support of The Social Impact Center of people that qualify for this relief that were sort of left behind, if you will, when the office, found, you know cases last year approximate 66,000 cases that were getting relief.”
We asked the DA’s office what the biggest hurdle they cleared in this effort that kept these people from being a part of the initial wave of expungements? It was not so much as a hurdle as it was different data sets. That first wave of expungements was based on California Department of Justice data while this effort was led by The Social Impact Center’s work to fill in the holes they found in how the DOJ data was used following the first mass expungements.
“We’ve been doing this work for a number of years, and in dialogue, we were just really wondering why so many people who had cannabis-related convictions were still popping up,” Felicia Carbajal, the Social Impact Center’s executive director, told L.A. Weekly.
Last year, Carbajal was participating in a panel hosted by the USC Dornsife Prison Education Project.
“And during this conversation, it came up again in terms of a discrepancy that we had noted from an article that came out in 2018 that had stated there were 200,000 plus people who would qualify,” Carbajal said.
At that time, Carbajal wondered why only roughly 67,000 expungements had taken place. Even before she had the chance to talk with a friendly district attorney on the issue, she’d participated in groups questioning the numbers. A few days after the USC panel she followed up with the DA’s office. They were very receptive and not long after she found herself in a room with the DA and Public Defenders Office trying to figure out what they could do moving forward.
At that meeting, they spoke about the massive incarcerated population in Los Angeles and the reality that there was still a lot to be done in the wake of Prop. 64. At the next meeting, the DA’s office told Carbajal they agreed with her and were moving forward with today’s action.
“I’m still processing all of that because it’s also led to other conversations surrounding other propositions and other expungement and other qualifications for other harms that I see from the war on drugs,” Carbajal said.
Why has it taken so long to get this far in implementing the will of the voters five years ago?
“We don’t have progressive district attorneys across California that would do these kinds of fearless steps that the Gascón is doing,” Carbajal said. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”
As for what’s next? Carbajal wants to take these efforts statewide. She reasonably presumes there are a lot of other people that have been left behind in the expungement process the last five years. Carbajal believes this should have already been taken care of and there shouldn’t be this much of a discrepancy. Carbajal said the Social Impact Center board is looking at conducting a wider analysis to determine how many people were left out of the original clearings.
“What does this look like across the state and across the nation?” Carbajal asked.
Carbajal went on to explain that through the process, she’s found the problem is actually deeper than the conviction itself.
“I caught a lot of folks who didn’t qualify for a litany of reasons, which also made me sad. A few too many folks I talked to don’t even have an arrest record was the feedback we get from the public defender’s office,” Carbajal said. “Like, they’ve never even been arrested.”
Carbajal would reach out to these folks and explain there’s no record and ask if they’ve ever been arrested for any charge. She would ask them what makes them think they had a criminal conviction? Many of these people just presumed when they were getting stopped by the police for their money or weed they now had some kind of criminal record even if they’d never ended up in handcuffs or a cell.
“And it just made me think of how many people in the city of Los Angeles, potentially, who’ve gotten stopped, had their cannabis taken away from them, their money taken away from them, and ultimately, we’re just jacked,” Carbajal said.
The nation’s oldest marijuana reform organization weighed in on the news.
“Legalizing marijuana is an issue that, at its core, is about justice,” NORML executive director Erik Altieri told L.A. Weekly. “As more states continue to end their failed prohibition on marijuana, it is imperative they also work to remedy all the damage these laws have caused and this action from the Los Angeles District Attorney is a great step in that direction.
Altieri is crossing his fingers that more municipalities and DAs will follow in L.A.’s footsteps.
“Hopefully this inspires more localities in California and elsewhere to free the countless thousands of other nonviolent marijuana offenders from the oppressive collateral consequences that go with having these charges on your record,” Altieri said.
The post L.A. District Attorney to Dismiss Nearly 60,000 Pot Convictions appeared first on LA Weekly.
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