More than 1,300 Big Island residents had a low-level drug arrest wiped from their record last year, and many of them may not even know it.

The state Attorney General’s Office recently completed the first year of a pilot project to expunge certain arrest records without the arrestee having to petition the state, according to a report to the Legislature submitted in December.

The office focused on people in Hawaiʻi County with prior charges for possession of less than one ounce of marijuana or similarly classed drugs who were never convicted. The state in 2019 decriminalized possessing small amounts of weed.

Hawaiʻi already has an expungement process through which people can apply to have their records wiped, but advocates say the procedure is complicated and time-consuming. Fewer than 1% of those eligible apply for expungement each year.

The idea of the pilot program was to have the state initiate the expungements without requiring people to pay a $35 application fee and go through the often-daunting procedure.

“It’s a multi-step process, it costs money, and people are intimidated and they don’t do it,” said state Rep. David Tarnas, who introduced the bill in 2024 that established the pilot project.

In Hawaiʻi, about one-third of the population has at least one arrest that is eligible for expungement, according to the AG’s Office. Arrests and charges will often still show up on a background check, even if the person charged was found not guilty, pleaded no contest or the charge was dismissed.

Tarnas said he wants to see a permanent state-initiated expungement process that would help more people get clean records. Thirteen other states have such procedures in place.

“I just am trying to make it easier for people,” Tarnas said, “so they have a second chance at becoming productive members of our community.”

A ‘Clean Slate’

Michelle Manalo knows what it’s like to have a criminal record interfere with your life.

In 2013, she was trying to move out of the Big Island Substance Abuse Council housing program in Hilo. She was living there after going through the drug court program following a 2011 conviction for promoting a dangerous drug. At least eight apartment applications in a row were denied, she said.

“So many closed doors on trying to acquire permanent housing,” she said.

The treatment program let her stay for an additional year working as a house manager, and eventually she found housing through a relative’s former landlord who didn’t ask for a formal application.

“I don’t think he’s aware of my history,” said Manalo, who now works as finance director for Going Home Hawai‘i, a Big Island nonprofit helping formerly incarcerated people reenter society. “But he has said I’m his favorite tenant.”

Though Manalo’s record wouldn’t be eligible for expungement under the AG’s pilot program, which only deals with people who were never convicted, she thinks it’s a great start for helping other people with criminal histories get back on their feet.

Manalo also serves on the state’s Clean Slate Expungement Task Force, which the Legislature created in 2024 to help develop a state-initiated expungement program. A final report from the task force is due before the start of the 2027 legislative session.

“People can change,” she said, “and they deserve a fresh start if records are preventing them from moving forward and creating a better life for themselves and their families.”

In Hawaiʻi, anyone who was charged with a crime but never convicted can petition for expungement. People with convictions also can apply to have their records expunged in some limited cases.

When a charge is expunged, the record is cleared from a statewide criminal history database as well as from the arresting agency’s records. For a conviction to be expunged, the court must issue an order of expungement, but the arrest information may still exist at the arresting agency, according to the AG’s Office. Expunged records may be maintained in a confidential file by the state.

In Hawaiʻi, about 432,000 people have at least one record eligible for expungement, according to the legislative report. But each year, the AG’s Office reported that fewer than 1,500 people apply.

Even fewer convictions are cleared each year. In 2024, 12 convictions were expunged; last year the number was 13.

Through the pilot program, which dealt only with people charged with possession of a Schedule V drug —including marijuana as well as medications like codeine — the AG’s Office expunged 1,321 records in addition to those granted via petition.

Tarnas said having the state initiate the process will result in many more people getting their records expunged each year. But it also places a heavy burden on the state, the AG’s Office said in its report.

During the pilot program, employees with the AG’s Hawaiʻi Criminal Justice Data Center spent 888 hours clearing the records, according to the legislative report. The center worked in partnership with the Hawaiʻi County Police Department to manually review more than 2,200 arrest records that were potentially eligible. Once a record was approved for expungement, the report says it took the police department an average of 45 days to confirm the record had been removed from its system.

Hawaiʻi County police Maj. Sandor Finley said in an email said the process involves multiple steps.

It takes two to three weeks for a record to be expunged from the department’s system, he wrote. After that, the records supervisor has to review the AG’s expungement order and send a formal letter with the chief’s signature to the AG’s Office to confirm the expungement has been completed.

The Hawaiʻi Criminal Justice Data Center is still working on expunging 860 records determined eligible through the pilot program.

Making state-initiated expungement permanent would be burdensome and costly for the AG’s Office, the report says. Expunging all eligible records without receiving the $35 application fee would cost around $15 million.

The state would also miss out on important information collected during the application process, such as the applicant’s current address, phone number and email. Without that information, the AG’s Office can’t notify people about their expungements because sensitive information can’t be sent through the mail unless the agency is sure the person still resides at the address, Toni Schwartz, spokesperson for the AG’s Office, wrote in an email.

The office opposed the bill that created the pilot program in 2024, writing in testimony that it would be “practically impossible” to identify and locate everyone eligible for expungement without some kind of application process.

“This process has already been reduced to a simple, one-page form, with a minimal fee,” the agency wrote. “Those fees offset the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center personnel, equipment, and operational costs.”

Clean Slate Laws In Other States

It’s clear from the low number of people who utilize the application process in Hawaiʻi that it’s not working, said Adrian Rocha, who serves on Hawaiʻi’s Clean Slate Expungement Task Force and is the policy director for the Last Prisoner Project, a national nonprofit focused on marijuana policy reform.

The pilot has already benefited more than 1,300 people who may not otherwise have had their records cleared, Rocha said.

While continuing with a state-initiated expungement program might be costly at first, he said the state may see an economic benefit over time as more people who were previously unable to get jobs reenter the workforce.

“These are really people who are trying to move past what was once the worst day of their life, and they are impeded by the fact that this criminal record continues to drag them behind,” he said.

Thirteen other states have some kind of state-initiated expungement process.

The first state to pass such a law was Pennsylvania in 2018, when it allowed all low-level misdemeanors to be automatically sealed after a 10-year waiting period. The law has since been revised multiple times. The waiting period for misdemeanors was lowered to seven years and non-violent felonies now are eligible for automatic seal after 10 years.

In 2022, California passed a law requiring all cannabis-related charges to be automatically sealed within a year, which has resulted in more than 216,000 people getting their records cleared, Rocha said. Recreational use of marijuana was legalized in that state in 2016.

Many so-called “clean slate laws” are initiated around marijuana legislation so that people don’t have lasting criminal records for a drug that has been legalized or decriminalized. But clean slate legislation overall is about more than just marijuana charges, said Aditi Sherikar, public policy director for the Clean Slate Initiative, a national organization working on laws to automate record sealing and expungement across the country.

“It’s about giving as many people as possible a chance to successfully meet their potential without the burden of an old criminal record hanging over them,” she said.

Most people who have been convicted of a crime don’t go on to reoffend, according to a 2024 study from RAND, a national research organization. Seventy-five percent of people with a first conviction are not convicted of another crime within 10 years, the study says, and the likelihood that a person will reoffend declines over time.

Illinois is the most recent state to pass a clean slate law. Under the law, which passed last year, the Illinois State Police is required to identify records eligible for automatic sealing and notify circuit court clerks who will seal the record in the court system and notify the arresting agencies to do the same.

All misdemeanor convictions, ordinance violations and certain non-violent felonies are eligible for automatic sealing after a waiting period. All non-conviction records — including cases resulting in dismissal, acquittal and successfully completed supervision and probation periods — are eligible as well.

Tarnas said he will consider crafting clean slate legislation in Hawaiʻi next legislative session. He wants to give the AG’s Office a chance to finish expunging the 860 records left over from the pilot project and he also wants to receive the final report from the state’s Clean Slate Expungement Task Force, due at the end of the year.

“I believe in redemption, and I believe in giving people a chance to rebuild their lives after they made a stupid mistake,” he said. “I think that’s the fair thing to do.”

 

Story originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

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