Clean Slate Engine
From RAP sheet to court-ready petition.
Shared record-clearance infrastructure for legal aid organizations, public defender offices, and reentry programs.
Illustrative record, not a real person.
Overview
The Clean Slate Engine reads a client's criminal history record, identifies the California laws that allow a conviction to be dismissed or reduced, and generates court-ready petitions for attorney review, cutting preparation time by an estimated 80%.
Proven in a statewide pilot
Pro bono hours mobilized
Petitions filed
Counties
Petitions granted
CSE builds on a three-year pilot with the California Community Colleges' Rising Scholars Program. The results were independently verified by Professor Sarah Lageson of Northeastern University.
How It Works
Every case follows the same five stages, from intake to filing, with two mandatory checkpoints: an attorney's review and a person signing and filing.
Intake
Staff upload a client's RAP sheet, and the RAP Scanner extracts each case and conviction. Staff can also enter cases by hand.
About the RAP ScannerAnalysis
The engine applies 23 statutes and checks each conviction against its code-section lists, covering the code section, sentence, probation history, dates, and supervision and registry status. Six pre-check rules flag any missing information.
Attorney review
A licensed attorney reviews and confirms the full analysis. Confirmation is restricted to attorney accounts and locked until every conviction has been analyzed. All actions are recorded in an audit log.
Packet generation
The engine selects the forms based on the county and remedies found, fills every mapped field, and adds a cover page listing the forms produced and any fields left blank.
Filing
Staff download, print, sign, and file the packet with the court.
Time savings
Central California Legal Services compared how long its record-clearance work takes before and after adopting the Clean Slate Engine.
End-to-end time cut by
78%
70 minutes saved per client
RAP sheet review time cut by
90%
54 minutes saved per RAP sheet
About 1 minute to scan, then a 5-minute attorney review.
End-to-end times are as recorded by CCLS. RAP sheet review times are averages from CCLS attorney reports.
The RAP Scanner
The RAP Scanner turns a California RAP sheet into a structured record of convictions, using more than 800 explicit parsing and interpretation rules.
- 1
Text extraction
AWS Textract converts the PDF to text and preserves the page structure.
- 2
Parse
The text becomes structured rows, one per charge or event, keeping the sheet's wording.
- 3
Interpret each row
Rules separate statute codes, identify courts and counties, and read custody and probation terms.
- 4
Connect the record
Later court actions are linked to earlier convictions, duplicate entries merged, and dismissed counts identified.
Step 1 is OCR; steps 2 to 4 run on explicit rules. The extracted cases populate the client's profile, alongside a color-highlighted copy of the RAP sheet and a RAP Summary. Every value is stored with the rule and source line that produced it.
The Legal Engine
The engine evaluates nine California record-clearance remedies by applying 23 statutes and checking each conviction against code-section lists covering roughly 760 offense statutes across 22 codes.
Nine forms of relief
- PC 1203.4
- Dismissal for any conviction with probation, once completed
- PC 1203.4a
- Dismissal for misdemeanors and infractions without probation
- PC 1203.4b
- Relief for people who served in a conservation (fire) camp
- PC 1203.41
- Relief for felony jail and state prison sentences
- PC 1203.42
- Relief for older prison sentences now punishable in county jail
- PC 17(b)
- Reduces a felony wobbler to a misdemeanor
- PC 17(d)(2)
- Reduces a misdemeanor wobblette to an infraction
- Proposition 47
- Reclassifies eligible theft and drug felonies as misdemeanors
- Proposition 64
- Reduces or dismisses eligible cannabis convictions
How the rules work
Every rule tests structured facts with 21 yes-or-no operators. There is no free-text interpretation. Code-section matching is exact.
Kept current
County details, form templates, and field mappings are stored as database records and kept current for all 58 California counties.
Security & Data Isolation
Each organization's data is isolated at four layers, from the data model through identity, API, and files.
Data model
Every record carries an organization key, and every query filters on it.
Identity
A sign-in token carries the user's organization, role, and firm. The organization comes from the token, not the request.
API
On every request, a shared handler validates organization and role. When a record is created, the caller's organization overwrites any submitted value.
Files
Document storage keys are prefixed by organization, and downloads pass through a gateway that verifies the token and organization.
Volunteers with a firm assignment see only that firm's clients. Reference data (forms and county filing rules) is shared by design. Client, case, conviction, document, and user data stay isolated.
Security details
- Encryption
- AES-256 at rest. TLS in transit, with plaintext connections refused.
- Sign-in
- Invite-only, with email verification, password complexity rules, and per-user or organization-wide MFA.
- Roles
- Three roles: Attorney, Staff, and Volunteer.
- Audit
- User actions are logged.
- Retention
- Client profiles auto-delete one year after creation unless held, with a 90-day export window at offboarding.
- Hosting
- AWS us-west-2 (Oregon).
For Organizations
Clean Slate Engine is built for California legal aid organizations, public defender offices, reentry nonprofits, and pro bono programs operating record-clearance practices.
Unlimited users
Every subscription includes unlimited attorney, staff, and volunteer accounts, with no per-user fees.
Built-in pro bono coordination
Assign volunteers to law firms and clients within the platform. Volunteers see only their firm's clients, while attorneys and staff manage assignments and oversight.
Two engagement options
Operate independently through a self-directed subscription, or receive hands-on support from TAP with implementation, workflow design, and ongoing operations.
Reach out at cse@accessprojectca.org. We're always glad to talk through partnerships, legal review, or technical and security questions.
Need help clearing your own record?
The Clean Slate Engine is designed for organizations that provide record-clearance services. If you need help clearing your own record, contact a legal aid organization in your area.
Find a legal aid organization