California: a new bill to automatically erase old cannabis convictions

California Assemblyman Rob Bonta has proposed a bill to make it easier to remove old cannabis penalties now that it's legal in California.

Proposition 64, the text legalizing the cannabis in California, The French law already contained a number of ways of doing this, but was criticized on this point, as the modification had to be paid for by the applicant, including legal fees.

Reassessing a criminal record allows certain crimes to be reclassified as misdemeanors, misdemeanors as infractions or removed from the criminal record, but remains difficult for people with no means of support, who may already have difficulty finding housing or accessing employment due to the presence of minor cannabis-related crimes on their criminal record.

As of September 2017, 5,000 people had requested this change, whereas 10,000 people could be eligible. according to Laura Thomas of the Drug Policy Alliance. Laura adds that the vast majority of people she spoke to were unaware of the possibility of having previous convictions removed from their records.

Ron Bonta's bill would simplify the criminal record reevaluation process by requiring courts to identify eligible convictions themselves, automatically expunging them and notifying individuals that their record has been modified. The obligation would thus be shifted from the individual to the state, explains Rob Bonta, giving «deserving individuals [...] a fresh start to which they are entitled.»

This re-evaluation process was included in Proposition 64 in order to repair the consequences of a prohibition that targeted more ethnic minorities and the poor, as Jay-Z aptly recounts in the video below.