When we launched the first version of Clear My Record, it was as a tool that made it easier for people with criminal records to connect with a lawyer to apply for record clearance. Through this service, we gained an in-depth understanding of bottlenecks in a process that put the burden of record clearance on each individual. This caused us to ask the game changing questions: “What if an individual didn’t have to apply to clear their record in the first place?” “What if our goal was to clear ALL eligible records instead of just a few thousand a year?” To help people at scale, we had to pivot our approach and rethink the process to fundamentally change the system. We need to partner with local government to build trust in how to leverage technology to implement policy reforms, and we need to join the national stage to advise on broader policy reforms. We are now building a model that can scale across the U.S. and be a blueprint for automatic record clearance in all jurisdictions.

We officially launched Clear My Record in a pilot project in May in partnership with the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. Our partnership has facilitated a state-level process to provide county jurisdictions with bulk access to criminal record data, which will allow the tool to work fully at scale. In the meantime, we have processed over 3,500 records: 3000+ misdemeanors and 500+ felonies. Our tool can process over 100 records in under 5 minutes. We are working actively with partners to gain that bulk access, which is the biggest risk in the project. With access to bulk criminal record data, our work should quickly accelerate.

We recently secured our second partnership with Contra Costa County, and we will begin processing the records in November. We are in the final stages of selecting our remaining three county partners, including Los Angeles County, Sacramento County, San Joaquin County, and Santa Clara County. We aim to finalize our partnership cohort by mid-October.

San Francisco DA Gascon was a crucial partner in the shift to an automatic clearance model. He was interested in proactively clearing convictions eligible under state law, but expected the effort to take years. Because of our goals alignment, we approached him with with our technology as a much more efficient alternative to increased government staffing. This collaboration was the jumping off point for DAs across the country to see that doing the right thing could be economically feasible.

District Attorneys offices are a key user/stakeholder, as Clear My Record enables the government to review more records and generate more motions with its limited resources.And the tens of millions of people across the country with criminal records are the intended beneficiaries, as automatic record clearance removes the significant barriers to work, education, health, housing, and more.

While we are early in the launch of our initiative, we have several key outcomes and impacts as a result of our work. Through our first partnership with the San Francisco DA, we have further refined the algorithm to maintain an accuracy rate of 100 percent. Our tool consistently processes 100 criminal records in under 5 minutes, compared to the 20-30 minutes it takes for a paralegal/attorney to review 1 record. In our partnership with San Francisco, we are on track to affect over 7,000 convictions in 6 months (only 6,200 petitions have been filed with the court in the 16 months since the passage of Prop 64 in California). With a full cohort of partners, we will measure five key outcomes to ensure that our work impacts individuals with criminal records: number of records (RAP sheets) received; number of motions created; number of motions filed with the courts; number of motions granted by the courts; and number of individuals who no longer have felony or felony/misdemeanor on record.

The greatest challenge we have faced since launching our pilot in May has been in obtaining access to RAP sheets in bulk. We are working actively with partners to gain it, but the speed of that access remains the biggest risk in the project. The reason this is hard on the government side is a result of out-of-date technology. Once we get access to bulk RAP sheets, our work quickly accelerates.

The policies themselves also remain an obstacle: Nearly all states have record clearance statutes, but not necessarily robust automatic record clearance policies with an expansive view of the types of convictions eligible. And implementation often serves as a reason to not deliver on them.

A final risk is that while open source technology builds trust and reduces cost, many governments don’t have the know-how to pick up the technology and modify/use it. This means our organization is needed to partner in implementation and we are relatively small compared with the size of the opportunity.

The most important condition for success for our innovation is partnership with state governments who share our vision about the importance of automatic record clearance. In the words of San Francisco DA George Gascon: “California has decriminalized recreational cannabis use, but a marijuana conviction continues to serve as a barrier to employment, housing, student loans and more. Lack of access to employment and housing are two primary drivers of recidivism, so until we clear these records, it’s government that is effectively holding these people back and impeding public safety. I’m hopeful that this partnership will inspire many prosecutors who have cited resource constraints to join this common sense effort and provide this relief.” If we are able to find like-minded government partners across the country, we can move towards clearing tens of millions criminal records at a national scale.

The Clear My Record (Automatic) tool has not been replicated at this stage. We are building the tool in full partnership with government, with the intent to deliver the tool directly to governments across California and across the country. Indeed, in the four months since our launch, we have identified a way to scale the technology across the country. We are interested in leveraging the technology and insights from our partnerships to shape broad, bipartisan policy reforms to ensure automatic record clearance laws are a reality in every state. In addition to expanding to counties across California and states across the U.S., we also plan to expand the types of convictions that can be cleared proactively through the use of the tool.

It is important to invest time in building trust with your stakeholder in the design, technology, and application of the innovation. We have also found that it is important to understand the political landscape such that you are able to identify unique opportunities to leverage technology to affect larger policy change. Our deployment of user-centered design methodology in building the initial service ensured that we had proximity to those most impacted by criminal records. Through that delivering that service, we gained key insights into the experience of finding a lawyer to help file the record clearance paperwork with the court. Those insights positioned us to say, like many have said before us, “There has to be a better way.” However, our organizational structure and approach allowed us to try something new to find a better way.