In Georgia, fingerprintable charges are every felony arrest plus a specific list of misdemeanors spelled out in O.C.G.A. 35-3-33 — things like drug offenses, certain weapons and property crimes, prostitution and pandering, commercial gambling, and contributing to the delinquency of a child. If your charge falls in one of those buckets, the arresting agency has to collect your fingerprints during booking and send them to the Georgia Crime Information Center (GCIC), where they become part of a statewide criminal history record that can show up on background checks for years.
The Misdemeanors That Trigger Fingerprinting
Felonies are easy: all of them require fingerprinting, no exceptions. The misdemeanor list is narrower, and O.C.G.A. 35-3-33 names specific offenses rather than applying a general standard:
- Drug offenses involving dangerous drugs, marijuana, and narcotics
- Dealing in stolen property, burglary tools, and worthless checks
- Firearms, dangerous weapons, and explosives offenses
- Prostitution, pandering, and sexual offenses where children are victims
- Commercial gambling and dealing in gambling devices
- Contributing to the delinquency of a child
Disorderly conduct is a special case. The charge itself isn’t on the list, but if the underlying conduct relates to one of the categories above — a disorderly conduct arrest that actually stems from drug activity, for example — fingerprinting is still required.
A few other situations trigger prints regardless of the specific offense: anyone arrested as a fugitive from justice, anyone confined to a prison or penal institution, career or habitual offenders, and anyone charged with an offense the Attorney General has specifically designated as fingerprintable. That last category lets the state add offenses without the legislature acting.
Juveniles Follow a Different Statute
If a child is charged, the rule comes from O.C.G.A. 15-11-702, not 35-3-33. Any child charged with an offense that would be a felony if committed by an adult must be fingerprinted, and the statute sets no minimum age. A 12-year-old facing a felony-equivalent charge is treated the same as a 16-year-old. Juveniles whose cases get transferred to adult court are also fingerprinted.
Juveniles have a cleanup path adults don’t. If no delinquency petition is filed, the proceedings are dismissed, or the child is found not delinquent, the child can apply to have the fingerprints and photographs removed from the file and destroyed. The court notifies the GCIC, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation treats those records like restricted adult criminal history records.
What Happens to Your Prints After Booking
Most Georgia agencies now take prints electronically with livescan devices instead of ink cards. The prints are transmitted to the GCIC, which verifies that they’re linked to the correct person and the correct charges, then stores them in a centralized database accessible to law enforcement statewide. From that moment, you have a criminal history record. It gets shared with authorized agencies for investigations, background checks, and identification.
The verification step matters. A mismatch can attach someone else’s history to your record or yours to someone else’s, which is one reason it’s worth checking your own file periodically.
Getting the Record Restricted Later
Georgia doesn’t do traditional expungement. What it offers is “record restriction,” which limits who can see the arrest and disposition. The path depends on how your case resolved and when the arrest happened.
Non-Convictions
If you were arrested on or after July 1, 2013, and the case ended without a conviction, restriction is supposed to happen automatically once the clerk or prosecutor enters the disposition into the GCIC database. No application needed. It applies when charges were dismissed or nolle prossed, you were acquitted, the grand jury returned two no bills, or the arrest was never referred for prosecution and the waiting period has run: two years for misdemeanors, four years for most felonies, and seven years for serious violent felonies or certain sexual offenses involving victims under 16.
“Supposed to” and “does” aren’t always the same thing. Dispositions sometimes aren’t entered promptly, and the arrest stays visible. If your case resolved favorably and the record is still showing, call the prosecuting attorney’s office and push the disposition through.
Arrests before July 1, 2013, work differently. There’s no automatic restriction. You submit a written request to the arresting agency, which forwards it to the prosecutor; the prosecutor has 90 days to decide. If approved, the agency restricts the record within 30 days. If denied, you can file a civil action in superior court, but you’ll need clear and convincing evidence that the arrest qualifies and that your privacy interest outweighs the public interest in keeping the record available.
Convictions
Convictions are harder. Under O.C.G.A. 35-3-37(j)(4), you can petition the sentencing court to restrict a misdemeanor conviction if you’ve completed your sentence, gone at least four years without a conviction in any jurisdiction (minor traffic offenses don’t count), and have no pending charges. The lifetime limit is two misdemeanor restriction petitions. A denied petition can be refiled on the same conviction after two years.
For felonies, you need a pardon from the State Board of Pardons and Paroles first, then a petition to the sentencing court. Pardon eligibility opens five years after you complete your sentence, provided you’ve lived a law-abiding life in the interim. Some offenses are permanently excluded even with a pardon: murder, armed robbery, kidnapping, rape, and several sexual offenses involving children.
Certain dispositions carry their own restriction pathways. Conditional discharge for drug offenses under O.C.G.A. 16-13-2, underage alcohol offenses sentenced under O.C.G.A. 3-3-23.1, and successful completion of drug court, mental health court, or veterans treatment programs followed by dismissal all qualify.
What Restriction Actually Hides
Restriction is not erasure. Private employers, landlords, and licensing boards running standard background checks won’t see the record. Law enforcement agencies and judicial officials still can, and they can use restricted records when setting bail or sentencing in a future case. Certain government entities retain access under circumstances outlined in O.C.G.A. 35-3-37.
So a restricted record disappears from a commercial background check but not from a courtroom or a law enforcement employment screening. People get surprised by this; it’s worth knowing up front.
Checking Your Own Record
You can inspect your own criminal history record held by the GCIC. The fee is $10 if your fingerprint cards are already on file, or $25 if you need to be fingerprinted at GBI headquarters. If you find something inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading, you can request a formal review; the GCIC verifies your identity through fingerprinting before granting access.
Given how often disposition data lags, especially for post-2013 cases that should restrict automatically, pulling your record every so often is worth the cost. If the disposition entered doesn’t match what actually happened in your case, the restriction won’t trigger.
A Note for Non-Citizens
If you’re not a U.S. citizen, Georgia record restriction does not solve the immigration side of a fingerprintable arrest. Federal immigration authorities use their own definition of “conviction” that can survive a state restriction or expungement, and several of the misdemeanors on the fingerprintable list — stolen property, drug offenses, worthless checks — can qualify as crimes involving moral turpitude under federal immigration standards. A conviction that no longer shows up in a GCIC background check may still appear in federal databases and still be used as grounds for removal, visa denial, or a bar to naturalization. Treat the immigration consequences as a separate problem from the criminal case.