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.