A legal expungement means that a conviction or arrest is “sealed,” or erased from a person’s criminal records.  After completing the expungement process, a criminal conviction does not need to be disclosed by the person who was arrested.  In addition, a person who has had an arrest or conviction expunged does not need to disclose that information on an job application or job application, for example.

An expunged conviction is not really “erased.”  It is still viewable by certain government agencies, law enforcement, and criminal courts.  Because the accessibility to the record is limited, this is sometimes referred to as a criminal record that is “under seal.”

After completing the exponent process, in most cases, no record of an expunged arrest or conviction will appear to a potential employer, to an educational institution, or to any company that conducts a public records background search or inspection of an individual’s criminal record.