California Penal Code 851.93: Automatic Relief and Eligibility

California Penal Code 851.93 requires the state Department of Justice to review its criminal history databases every month and automatically grant relief on arrests that never led to a conviction. If your arrest qualifies, you do not file a petition, pay a filing fee, or appear in court. The DOJ marks the record, notifies the court that handled the case, and public access is restricted from that point forward.¹ The statute took effect January 1, 2021 under Assembly Bill 1076 and shifted the work of identifying eligible records from individuals to the state.²

How the Monthly Automatic Process Works

Each month the Department of Justice scans its statewide criminal justice databases for arrest records that fit the eligibility criteria in the statute. When it finds a match, it adds a notation to the record indicating that relief has been granted under PC 851.93, then sends electronic notification to the court with jurisdiction over the case. The court in turn restricts public access to its own records.³

Relief is not erasure. The arrest still exists in the underlying databases. What changes is who can see it and what legal effect it carries. Once the notation is in place, the arrest is treated as if it did not occur for most purposes, and you can answer “no” to most questions about prior arrests on job and housing applications.¹ If you need the record physically destroyed, that requires a separate factual innocence petition under PC 851.8, which is covered briefly at the end.

Who Qualifies

The arrest must have occurred on or after January 1, 1973, and it must fall into one of the following categories.¹

Misdemeanor arrest where the charge was dismissed.
Misdemeanor arrest where no case was filed, at least one year has passed, and there was no conviction or there was an acquittal.
Standard felony arrest where no case was filed, at least three years have passed, and there was no conviction or there was an acquittal.
Serious felony arrest carrying a potential prison sentence of eight years or more, where no case was filed, at least six years have passed, and there was no conviction or there was an acquittal.
Any arrest where you successfully completed a qualifying diversion program, including prefiling diversion, drug diversion, deferred entry of judgment, or pretrial diversion.

The waiting periods exist so prosecutors have a window to decide whether to file charges. Once that window closes without a filing, the DOJ marks the record during its next monthly sweep, assuming the needed information is actually in the electronic database.

How to Check Whether You Received Relief

The DOJ does not notify you when it grants automatic relief. It notifies the court. To confirm what the state did with your record, request your own criminal history from the DOJ through a Live Scan fingerprint submission at an authorized location. A processing fee applies.³ When your record arrives, look for a notation next to the arrest entry stating that relief has been granted under PC 851.93.

If you believe you qualify but no notation appears, the most common cause is incomplete disposition information in the DOJ’s electronic records. Court records and law enforcement records do not always sync cleanly with the state database, so the DOJ cannot confirm eligibility even when the facts would support it. In that situation you may need to file a petition to seal under PC 851.91, which is the parallel court-based remedy for arrests that did not lead to conviction.⁴

What Relief Does

Once relief is granted under PC 851.93, the arrest is legally deemed not to have occurred. You are released from the penalties and disabilities that resulted from the arrest and, in most settings, you can lawfully state that you were never arrested.¹ Private employers running standard background checks will generally not see the arrest, and most landlords will not either.

What Relief Does Not Do

The statute carves out several situations where the arrest stays visible and legally relevant even after relief is granted.¹

Peace officer employment. You must still disclose the arrest when applying for a peace officer position, and the DOJ will provide the record to the hiring agency.
Criminal justice agencies. Law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies can still access and use the record as if relief had never been granted.
Firearms. Relief does not restore firearm rights. If the arrest triggered a prohibition on owning or possessing a gun, that prohibition remains.
Future prosecution. A district attorney can still file charges on the underlying offense within the statute of limitations.
Public office. Any disqualification from holding public office that flows from the arrest stays in place.
State and local licensing, and sensitive background checks. Agencies conducting fingerprint-based checks under Health and Safety Code provisions governing childcare, elder care, and similar fields may still receive the arrest information, depending on the statute that authorizes their check. California also requires you to disclose the arrest when applying for public office, when applying for a state or local license, and when contracting with the California State Lottery Commission.³⁵

One further boundary matters because people routinely miss it: PC 851.93 binds state and local agencies, not the federal government. Federal agencies, including the FBI and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, retain access to records that California has restricted. If you are applying for naturalization, a green card, or any other immigration benefit, you must disclose every arrest regardless of whether California has granted relief. USCIS policy states that an expunged or sealed record does not remove the underlying event for immigration purposes, and the applicant is responsible for obtaining their records even when a court has sealed them.⁶ Failing to disclose a sealed arrest on an immigration form can be treated as misrepresentation. Federal security clearance applications and most federal employment work the same way.

If Automatic Relief Does Not Reach You

Not every eligible arrest gets picked up by the monthly sweep, and some arrests fall outside the automatic process entirely. Two other statutes provide paths you can pursue in court.

PC 851.91 lets you petition a court to seal an arrest record when the arrest did not result in a conviction. It covers situations where the statute of limitations has run with no charges filed, where charges were filed but dismissed and cannot be refiled, where you were acquitted, or where a conviction was vacated on appeal with no possibility of refiling. In most cases sealing is granted as a matter of right once eligibility is shown, with a narrower standard that applies to certain domestic violence, child abuse, and elder abuse arrests. The Judicial Council provides Form CR-409 for the petition and Form CR-410 for the sealing order.⁴⁷⁸

PC 851.8 is a separate and harder path that leads to a judicial finding of factual innocence and the eventual destruction of the arrest record. The court must conclude that no reasonable person would believe you committed the offense, which is a higher bar than “not guilty.” You generally have to file within two years of the arrest or filing of charges, whichever came later, though the court can waive the deadline for good cause. If granted, the record is sealed for three years from the date of the arrest and then permanently destroyed. This is the only California path that ends in actual destruction rather than restricted access.⁹

Whichever route applies, keep copies of your DOJ record showing the relief notation, any court order, and any confirmation you receive. Private background check companies sometimes continue to report old arrest data after the official record has been restricted, and having the paperwork lets you dispute inaccurate reports directly with those companies.

1
California Legislative Information. California Code Penal Code 851.93
2
California Legislative Information. AB-1076 Criminal Records: Automatic Relief
3
State of California – Department of Justice – Office of the Attorney General. Automatic Record Relief – Penal Code Sections 851.93 and 1203.425
4
California Legislative Information. California Code Penal Code 851.91
5
California Courts. Record Cleaning: Arrest With No Conviction
6
USCIS. USCIS Policy Manual Volume 12 Part F Chapter 2 – Adjudicative Factors
7
California Courts. Petition to Seal Arrest and Related Records (CR-409)
8
California Courts. Order to Seal Arrest and Related Records (CR-410)
9
California Legislative Information. Penal Code Section 851.8