FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (CBS12) — For three years, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office produced its own crack cocaine, so it could sell it to people that deputies would then arrest for buying crack cocaine.

It was a practice the Florida state Supreme Court repeatedly described as “outrageous” in its 1993 ruling that such reverse-stings violated an individual’s right to due process. More than 30 years later, though, a routine audit of documents found hundreds of those arrests and convictions are still on the books and part of people’s criminal records.

On Friday, the State Attorney for Broward County Harold Pryor announced his office planned to do something about that, declaring, “it is never too late to do the right thing.”

“These records may be a dim memory or an unfortunate part of history to many, but they have had a long-lasting and severe impact on the lives of the people who were arrested – as well as their families and the wider community,” Pryor added.

The State Attorney’s Office explained that despite the Supreme Court’s decision, many of the cases were never vacated. That means they could still weigh on the lives of those prosecuted under the unconstitutional program, affecting their ability to get a job, find a home, or appearing in criminal history checks.

Anyone who thinks they may be affected by the effort is asked to reach out to the State Attorney’s Office. According to numbers cited in the statement, some estimates have placed the number of cases involved may be as high as 2,600.

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Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony was made aware of the plan to vacate or remove the judgements and sentences for those who were arrested and convicted as part of those reverse-stings and supports the plan, according to Pryor’s office.

“These matters were well before our tenures. However, I am of the opinion that the State has an ethical duty and obligation to correct this injustice before destruction [of old records] is initiated,” Pryor wrote in a letter to Tony on Thursday explaining his office’s intentions.

Many of the records discovered during the audit were still on hand even though they were past the statutory requirement to be retained. Some of them were slated for possible destruction.

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