Despite the dramatic impact of erasing felonies, some former felons whose cases were retroactively resentenced will be slow to seize their newfound opportunities because they don’t know their conviction has changed. In at least a few California counties, felonies were downgraded in bulk without any involvement from the defendants.

In these counties, public defenders rushed to file as much Prop 47 paperwork as possible, deciding there was no time to track down former clients before petitioning to have them retroactively resentenced. The cases were initially racing against a three-year deadline, but the window to reduce felonies was extended to 2022 in September.

“It’s our obligation – our duty – to try to give them this benefit that they may not know about,” said Christine Kroger, a deputy public defender in San Joaquin County, where more than 5,400 felonies have been reduced, but many defendants are likely unaware. Kroger said she would try to notify her clients that their records have been changed, but because so many are transients, most of their contact information is out of date. Other public defenders said they mail notification letters, but many are returned.

Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014, took broad steps toward ending long-term incarceration for low-level offenders. The law reduced drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, increased the threshold for felony theft and released at least 13,500 inmates out of state and county prisons. Ever since, the impact of the law has been debated by politicians, police, academics and the public.

However, far less attention has been paid to the retroactive aspects of Prop 47, which allowed anyone with a felony conviction for theft or drug possession to petition a county judge to downgrade it to a misdemeanor. Even if the crime occurred decades ago, and the sentence was long served, criminal records could still be changed.

Until now, it’s never been clear how often this actually happened because no California agency was required to track the number of felonies reduced on a county or state level. This story is the first to measure one of the most dramatic, and yet least studied, impacts of Prop 47.

o calculate an estimate, reporters from four newspapers – The Desert Sun, The Ventura County Star, The Record Searchlight and The Salinas Californian – compiled records from courts, prosecutors and defense attorneys in 21 counties that account for more than 70 percent of the state's population. Reporters also studied more than 1,300 pages of handwritten case notes borrowed from a judge in Riverside County and compared data with the Judicial Council of California, which counted all Prop 47 petitions filed but had no idea how many were approved.

To read more of Brett Kelman and Cheri Carlson's article, please click here.