Jamaica: Expungement Backlog Is Gone, and Ganja Records Qualify

On 13 September 2026, Jamaica’s justice minister said the country no longer has a backlog of expungement applications. For anyone carrying an old ganja conviction from a Jamaican court, that queue was the distance between a criminal record and a clean one.

Delroy Chuck made the disclosure at the Eastern Region Assize Church Service at East Queen Street Baptist Church in downtown Kingston, the service opening the 2026-2027 legal year, with Chief Justice Bryan Sykes present. Chuck credited amendments under the Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) (Amendment) Act, 2026, reported by the Jamaica Gleaner. The board that rules on applications grew from five members to nine, and now sits in teams of four or five so files move in parallel.

Why this reaches cannabis records

Chuck spoke about expungement generally and did not break out ganja cases. The link is procedural. Minor cannabis convictions clear through that same board, on the most generous terms available. The Criminal Records (Rehabilitation of Offenders) (Amendment) Act, 2014, in force from October 2014, removed the waiting period for small-quantity possession and smoking convictions. Then justice minister Mark Golding put it plainly to the Jamaica Information Service in February 2015: “In the case of the small quantity of ganja or smoking, you do not have to wait for any rehabilitation period. You can immediately apply for expungement and you’re immediately entitled to it; there is no discretion, it’s a right that you have.”

Other offences carry a rehabilitation period that has to run before an application can be filed. Ganja possession carries none. What it did carry was the wait for the board to reach the file.

The records still in the system

The people holding those records are mostly not this winter’s visitors. Possession of 2 ounces (56 grams) or less has been a ticketable petty offence since the Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, 2015, settled with a J$500 fixed penalty inside 30 days and producing no criminal record at all. The files in the queue come from convictions before 2015, or from charges above the 2-ounce line, which stay criminal matters and do appear on a police certificate.

That certificate is the practical problem. A drug conviction on a Jamaican police record is what surfaces in a US visa interview, a Canadian border check, or an overseas job application. The supply of new records has not stopped either, with police raids on ganja growers continuing through this year’s reform push.

What This Means

If you are a resident, or diaspora with an old possession conviction from home, the route was already open as of right. The wait at the board is what just changed. Applications run through the Criminal Records Office, and ganja cases need no waiting period first.

For visitors, nothing at the herb house counter moves. The 2-ounce rule, the US$10 temporary medical authorisation, and the ban on public smoking stand where they stood last week. What makes this worth tracking is how a country handles the records it made under an older law. Jamaica made a lot of them.

What to watch

Chuck said more is planned. “Further amendments will be made so that, maybe five years, persons who commit no further offence and can be recommended as persons who have been rehabilitated can have their sentence or their crime record expunged,” he said, pointing toward a lower threshold for non-custodial sentences. There is no bill and no date yet. Watch too for the Ministry publishing case counts, because a cleared backlog with no numbers attached is a statement rather than a record.