When a person is charged with a crime or convicted of a crime, the information stays on the person’s criminal record and may be accessed by the court or other federal, state, municipal, or county agencies—or by private persons or entities conducting a background check. Under limited circumstances a person with a criminal record of arrest or conviction may be able to have the criminal record expunged—meaning the record will be permanently destroyed or deleted so it is no longer accessible by the court or other federal, state, municipal, or county agencies—or by private persons or entities conducting a background check.
Such an expungement or expunction of a criminal record is different from having a record sealed—which means the record still exists, but access to it is limited. A person whose only criminal record has been expunged may truthfully answer “no” when asked on an employment, licensing, or other application whether the person has ever been convicted of a crime. Under both state and federal law, in most cases it is not possible to have a person’s criminal conviction expunged.
Under state laws a person who has been convicted of a crime, pleaded guilty, or pleaded no contest (nolo contendere) is often ineligible to have their criminal record expunged. When a person is eligible to have a criminal record expunged, it is often dependent upon the person successfully completing a probation or deferred adjudication program. And in some states juveniles may be eligible to have a criminal record expunged if the criminal offense was committed before they turned 17 years of age, for example.
Expungement or expunction laws vary from state to state and are generally located in a state’s statutes—often in the penal or criminal code.
In Texas, expungement, also known as expunction, is a legal process that allows an individual to remove a criminal record from public access. This means that once a record is expunged, it is destroyed and cannot be accessed by courts, agencies, or private entities conducting background checks. Texas law permits expunction in specific circumstances, such as when an individual is acquitted, wrongly charged, pardoned, or if the charge did not lead to a final conviction and certain waiting periods have been met. However, individuals who have been convicted of a crime, pleaded guilty, or no contest are generally ineligible for expunction. There are exceptions for certain juvenile offenses and for those who have completed a probation or deferred adjudication program for some misdemeanors. Sealing a record, or non-disclosure, is a separate process that restricts access to the record but does not destroy it. The eligibility criteria and procedures for expunction and non-disclosure are detailed in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, primarily in Chapters 55 and 411.
