CHANGING THE PAST TO MOVE FORWARD
AS THE GREEN revolution blooms, activists of all stripes are having a say in how legalized markets develop. There are organizations that support women, Native Americans, people of color, veterans and other marginalized groups, and their voices are being heard in the legal cannabis world. Some voices are louder than others and there’s room for improvement, but one area in which activists’ goals are being realized, albeit unevenly, is in criminal justice.
Expungement (also called “expunction” in some circles) is the erasure of an arrest or a criminal conviction. The erased record may be said to be “sealed,” which is a way of conceding that it still exists but cannot do any more harm. Anyone who has ever been arrested and/or convicted of a crime—anyone who has ever “been in the system”—knows exactly what that harm can be. Finding a job or a place to live is next to impossible for people with criminal records, and so is finding access to education, voting rights and public assistance.
We feel intuitively that erasing
