LANSING — Aaron Kinzel is developing his Monroe County farm into a safe haven for former prisoners, as well as homeless veterans who had been incarcerated..

He currently holds workshops for them to develop job skills at his Petersburg farm as part of a nonprofit he co-founded, Second Chance Battalion.

That would not have been possible without a farm loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture – a loan that would have been inaccessible if an old felony had not been expunged – removed – from his record through the Michigan Clean Slate Initiative.

The law, which went into effect on April 11, 2021, changed the paper application processes and eligible offenses that may be set aside, according to the State Police.

At the same time, a related law took effect which created an automatic process to set aside certain convictions without an application.

Due to the complexity of creating an automatic system to expunge convictions, a two- year planning stage was set into motion, and the new system was launched last April.

Those with misdemeanor convictions punishable by jail for 92 days or less can have an unlimited number of convictions automatically expunged. There is a four-misdemeanors limit for charges punishable for longer, according to the State Police website.

All misdemeanors can be expunged seven years after a sentence was imposed.

There is a limit of two felony expungements after 10 years following sentencing.

As of Feb. 5, around 1,394,000 convictions had been set aside automatically, according to the State Police. Around 907,000 ex-offenders have had at least one conviction set aside automatically.

Since the start of automatic expungements, 282,282 people now had a clean record as of Feb. 5, State Police figures show..

Kinzel, who now is a faculty member in criminology and criminal justice at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, had a long history with the justice system. He served time behind bars from the ages of 18 to 28 and pursued higher education after being released.

He worked with advocacy groups, including Safe & Just Michigan, to push for the Clean Slate Initiative.

“We were the lead organization for the Clean Slate campaign here,” said John Cooper, the executive director of the group.

Safe & Just Michigan, alongside the Attorney General’s Office and other organizations, has been running expungement fairs across Michigan since the law went into effect.

“We’ve done between 50 and 100 fairs since April 2021,” Cooper said. “Every corner of the state, we’ve gone to the UP and done fairs there.

“We’ve done a ton of them across Southeast Michigan, West Michigan, Mid-Michigan, and it’s been a great experience for everybody,” he said.