For Minnesotans with minor criminal records, the wait for a clean slate is nearly over after a four-month delay.

The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) on Monday began sending criminal records to the state court system for expungement. Under the new Clean Slate Act, which became official Jan. 1, an estimated 2 million criminal records will eventually come off the books, said Drew Evans, the BCA superintendent.

Evans likened the process to "turning on a spigot instead of a firehose," adding that officials are starting with the cases that are easiest to review. By noon Monday, the BCA had sent 345 records to the Minnesota Judicial Branch, with more to come. The courts have 60 days to review the records. If there is no objection, the convictions for some minor and nonviolent crimes will be wiped from the state's conviction database.

Evans said it's too early to know how long it will take to expunge all the records that are eligible to be removed.

"The ultimate goal is to work through the easier record sets," he said. "And give more time to work with more complicated records."

Jon Geffen, an attorney with the Legal Revolution law firm in St. Paul, has been calling on the state to finally begin the work that defense attorneys and advocates expected to begin on Jan. 1.

"I think we're elated that it's started. I don't think there's been great transparency to this process," Geffen said. "I just hope they give us more transparency as they continue to roll it out."

The Clean Slate Act was passed by the Legislature in 2023 and requires the automatic expungement, or sealing, of several types of criminal records from a person's BCA criminal history that in the past would require the person to petition the court to expunge.

But developing a computer program to sift through 16 million criminal records and more than 16,000 criminal statutes has taken time, Evans said.

The BCA finished the initial programming needed to expunge records in September 2024 and over the past several months has worked with the courts to test the new programming. Those tests, the BCA said, "are a critical part of making sure that the automated process will work as expected, expunging only those records that qualify and, just as important, ensuring that records that should not be expunged for public safety reasons remain visible to the public."

Geffen said he understands the process takes time. He doesn't want it to take too much time.

The idea is that, by wiping away records for relatively minor convictions for which people have already served their sentence, they'll have a better chance to rebuild their lives. When Minnesota passed the Clean Slate Act in 2023, it became one of 12 states to enact such laws.

"If it will be a few months, we understand," he said. "If it's five years? We'll have to talk more about this."