Techniques are described herein for detecting and recovering over-erased memory cells in a flash memory device. In one embodiment, a flash memory device is described including a memory array including a plurality of blocks of memory cells. The device also includes a controller to perform a leakage-suppression process. The leakage-suppression process includes determining that a given block of memory cells includes one or more over-erased memory cells. Upon the determination, the leakage-suppression process also includes performing a soft program operation to increase the threshold voltage of the over-erased memory cells in the given block.