Expungement of Criminal Records
A criminal record can affect your future in a number of ways from employment opportunities and even where you are allowed to live. If you’ve 1) completed your sentence, 2) are not on parole or probation, 3) your last conviction was over 5 years ago, and 4) your conviction did not involve a violent crime, you may be eligible for a pardon or certificate of employability.
A pardon can completely erase your criminal record, wiping the slate clean. While a certificate of employability ensures that future employers cannot deny you a job based on your criminal record. These possibilities can create a sense of relief if you have been through the criminal justice system.
Connecticut's Clean Slate Law
Connecticut's Clean Slate law is designed to automatically erase certain criminal records for people who remain crime-free for an extended period. Here's how it works:
The Clean Slate program in Connecticut aims to lower barriers by erasing certain crimes from criminal records, giving people a fair shot at building a future without being limited by past mistakes.
Some key aspects of the law include:
Eligibility is based on time periods and offense type:
- Misdemeanors can be erased after seven years
- Lower-level felonies (Class D, E, and unclassified felonies with imprisonment terms of less than five years) can be erased after ten years.
Certain offenses are not eligible for erasure, including family violence crimes and sex crime convictions.
The law significantly improves upon the previous system. Before Clean Slate was passed, the only way to apply for erasure of a criminal conviction was through a time-consuming and expensive expungement process through the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles, with often subjective results.
For offenses committed before January 1, 2000, individuals must file a petition with the court to get their conviction erased under Clean Slate, rather than receiving automatic erasure.
When a record is erased in Connecticut (sometimes called expungement), all records are sealed, and it is legally as if the conviction never existed. A person with an erased record may swear under oath that they have not been arrested or convicted.