Fifty-two people have been granted clemency by Gov. Pat Quinn for crimes that date back decades.
Quinn announced Friday that he has expunged the records of these offenders. In most cases, he's also granting full pardons.
The Democratic governor also rejected 136 clemency requests.
Quinn is whittling away at a backlog of 2,500 requests that piled up under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Now in prison himself, Blagojevich rarely took any action on clemency.
Most of the people whose requests were granted Friday had committed relatively minor offenses.
Twenty-five involved theft. Sixteen involved drugs. Eight offenses included some kind of violence, such as misdemeanor battery.
The oldest incident took place in 1958, the most recent in 2005.