The intersection of cannabis legalization, criminal record relief, and emerging adulthood
State-level efforts to legalize cannabis for recreational use involve a multitude of considerations, such as market creation and regulation, criminal code enforcement, and relief from records of prior enforcement of laws criminalizing marijuana. When record clearance measures are adopted, procedures...
| Authors: | ; ; ; ; ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Ohio State journal of criminal law
Year: 2025, Volume: 22, Issue: 2, Pages: 235-271 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Summary: | State-level efforts to legalize cannabis for recreational use involve a multitude of considerations, such as market creation and regulation, criminal code enforcement, and relief from records of prior enforcement of laws criminalizing marijuana. When record clearance measures are adopted, procedures can include both automatic (in which the state carries the burden of initiating the expungement petition) and automated (in which algorithmic means are used to expunge large volumes of data) mechanisms. In some states, marijuana record expungement has served as a catalyst for expanding other forms of record relief, driven in part by the state’s new responsibility to update the systems required to expunge large volumes of criminal records under these new relief provisions. However, within the broader context of recreational cannabis legalization, little is understood about which mechanisms predominate and whether they are positioned to provide expeditious relief on a meaningful scale, despite the centrality of such reparations in some states’ approaches to legalization. This Article analyzes one component of recreational cannabis legalization: novel provisions for criminal record relief enacted in states where cannabis has been legalized for adult recreational use. We focus on record relief because it is the component of a social equity paradigm of cannabis legalization poised to generate the greatest impact for individuals with records. The analysis proceeded in two phases. First, we provide comparative analyses of the statutory construction of laws aimed at removing the presence of criminal records of drug arrests and/or convictions. These records are disproportionately concentrated within disadvantaged communities in accordance with historical practices of law enforcement and prosecution of laws criminalizing marijuana. We situate our coding scheme and results within the complex literature on criminal record reform to appraise the potential benefits of these laws for relief recipients. Secondly, we describe the potential benefits of these reforms for emerging adults in their teens and twenties—a transitional life phase in which records carry elevated risks for long-term disadvantage. We contextualize our results with considerations of how these laws are implemented on the ground, attending to the multiple and overlapping data systems, agencies, and actors that must be coordinated if expungement efforts are to be fruitful. We also detail limitations to current approaches, including “dirty data” problems, lack of compliance by private sector background screeners, gaps and holes in legislation (such as partial expungements), and lack of notice to people who have received an expungement. Taking stock of our results and implementation literatures, we conclude with assessments of the current state of legalization-induced record reforms across three important dimensions: (1) how trends signal state-level commitments to social equity in legalization; (2) whether laws have the potential to reduce these mechanisms of inequity and marginalization; and (3) the pronounced significance of these reforms for young adults during this transitional period in which records can be a barrier to taking on adult roles. |
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