Expungement Efforts Highlighted on 2nd Anniversary of Prop 207

PHOENIX, ARIZONA—November 3, 2022—Adult recreational use of marijuana in Arizona was legalized on this date two years ago with the passage of Proposition 207, also known as the Smart & Safe Arizona Act. With legalization, Prop 207 also created a path to expungement, which is the process of sealing certain criminal records from the public. Thus, in a state with more than 192,000 marijuana-related convictions and arrests, the Arizona Marijuana Expungement Coalition’s Reclaim Your Future campaign was born.

Prop 207’s expungement law (ARS § 36-2862) went into effect on July 12, 2021. Since then, at least 17,350 petitions for expungement have been filed in Arizona, with an overwhelming majority of those petitions filed in the state’s population hub of Maricopa County, based on available data provided to the Coalition by prosecutors’ offices across the state.

Meanwhile, the Reclaim Your Future campaign—which is funded by the Arizona Department of Health Services and led by legal aid providers based in Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff—has conducted scores of free legal clinics and information sessions all over Arizona. In the first fiscal year of the campaign, nearly 90 legal clinics were conducted across the state providing free legal services to more than 670 attendees. And Coalition partner Just Communities Arizona was largely responsible for leading 105 information sessions, educating more than 1,600 attorneys, service providers and community-based organizers to help facilitate expungements.

Additionally, Coalition partners at the ASU Post-Conviction Clinic successfully litigated the early release of two people in prison and one person from community supervision, whose sentences were enhanced by marijuana convictions that have since been expunged.

“It’s amazing all the work our Coalition has put into this,” said attorney Martin Hutchins, the program manager for the Reclaim Your Future campaign. “But we know this is just the beginning of our efforts to help people seek better employment opportunities, find safe housing, and remove the stigma of a conviction or arrest from their background.”

The Coalition has several in-person clinics planned in the coming months, where people seeking expungement can receive free assistance to file their petitions. Reclaim Your Future also offers an Online Petition clinic at its website, azexpunge.org, where visitors can also find a full calendar of upcoming events.

Additionally, the Coalition will continue to encourage prosecutors’ offices across Arizona to take the lead on expungement, as Section (I) of the expungement law gives prosecuting agencies, including county attorneys and municipal prosecutors, the authority to file expungement petitions on behalf of people prosecuted by their offices. The Arizona Attorney General may also seek expungement for anyone prosecuted anywhere within the state. So far, only the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has exercised this option and has filed 16,957 petitions for expungement to date.

“Our Coalition has built a large network and important relationships across Arizona in order to continue identifying people with eligible cases,” Hutchins said. “But because prosecutors’ offices have the greatest access to records, they are in the best position and have the greatest resources to get these records sealed to help people move on.”

“Prosecutors need to step up,” Hutchins added, “and take the initiative to correct past injustices created by the criminalization and over-policing of marijuana.”

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