Can an expunged record be accessed by law enforcement ?
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Expunging can be simply defined as omission, sealing, deletion or obliteration of records. |
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As per the law, expunging a record means to extract or isolate all the available criminal records from the criminal justice database including those that have been filed in any court by any law enforcement or criminal justice agency with regard to a person’s arrest, detention, apprehension or trial and get all the records erased upon the direction of the court.
However, this process is not as easy as it is written. In order to get his records expunged, a person must file a petition in the court requesting for the same. The entire process might get completed within few days or it might take several months before the court orders for an expunction.
Even though, the court orders for expunction of a person’s records, this data would still be available in the database for future reference. However, expunged data would not be reported or taken into consideration while applying for private jobs, opening bank accounts, getting credit cards, taking loans or getting admitted into schools. There are certain situations where expunged records might need to be shown up upon the direction of court. These situations include criminal investigations from an authorized criminal justice agency and petitioners seeking employment in the judiciary branch or into any law enforcement agency.
There are certain types of convictions that cannot be expunged from the database. These include convictions or arrests involving homicide, kidnapping, murder, rape, drug peddling, sexual assault, false imprisonment, robbery, child abuse, sexual abuse, perjury and cheating.
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