Montgomery County ARD: Eligibility, DUI Rules, and Expungement

The Montgomery County ARD program is a diversion option run by the District Attorney’s Office that lets eligible first-time offenders resolve criminal charges without a conviction. If the DA accepts you and you complete every condition the court imposes, your charges are dismissed and your arrest record becomes eligible for expungement. The DA has sole authority over admission, and that decision is discretionary.¹

Who Qualifies

ARD is generally open to first-time offenders with no prior criminal convictions and no previous ARD participation. The DA reviews all facts and circumstances of the case before approving or denying an application, and the office is not required to accept anyone.¹ Pennsylvania’s Rules of Criminal Procedure deliberately leave the question of which offenses or offenders qualify to each county’s district attorney.² In Montgomery County, most ARD cases involve first-time DUI charges or non-violent offenses.

DUI Disqualifiers Written Into State Law

For DUI cases, the state vehicle code sets hard bars the DA cannot waive. You are automatically ineligible if:

You were convicted of or accepted ARD for a DUI within the past ten years.
Someone other than you was killed or suffered serious bodily injury in a crash connected to the current offense.
A passenger under 14 was in the vehicle you were driving.

These exclusions apply statewide, not only in Montgomery County.³

How To Apply

The application form lives on the Montgomery County DA’s website. Submit it to the ARD Unit as soon as possible after your preliminary hearing; waiting too long can complicate or derail the process.¹

The packet requires personal identification, your court docket number, and the charging documents from your preliminary hearing. You will also sign a waiver of your Rule 600 rights, which is your right to a prompt trial. The waiver is standard because entering the program pauses the normal trial timeline.⁴

DUI applicants have one more requirement: the results of a Court Reporting Network (CRN) evaluation. This is a standardized 45-minute interview covering family history, medical background, drinking patterns, and personal attitudes toward substance use. Pennsylvania law requires every DUI defendant to undergo this assessment, and it helps the court decide what treatment or education conditions to attach.³ The CRN evaluation typically costs around $75.

The Court Hearing

If the DA approves your application, you are scheduled for a hearing before a judge in the Court of Common Pleas in Norristown.¹ The judge reviews the proposed conditions, and in DUI cases conducts an on-the-record inquiry to make sure you understand what you are agreeing to and are entering voluntarily.³ You must attend in person. Once the judge signs the order, you are a program participant and your case moves off the prosecution track.

Program Conditions, Costs, and Length

The conditions a judge can attach to ARD mirror what a court could impose after a conviction, with one exception: no fine. Costs, restitution, community service, drug and alcohol treatment, and administrative fees are all on the table.⁵ Expect to pay court costs and program administrative fees; the total varies by charge. Community service hours are typically served through local organizations the ARD program partners with.⁶

Supervision tops out at two years.⁵ Most participants are placed on probation for somewhere between six and twenty-four months. During that time you must avoid any new arrests and maintain regular contact with your probation officer.

Extra Requirements for DUI Cases

DUI participants also complete Alcohol Highway Safety School, a 12.5-hour classroom course covering the effects of alcohol and controlled substances, the nature of addiction, and highway safety.³ Depending on your CRN results, the court can also order outpatient counseling or more intensive treatment.

License Suspension Still Applies for DUI ARD

ARD is not a conviction, but the court is still required to suspend your license based on your BAC at the time of testing:

BAC below 0.10%: no suspension.
BAC from 0.10% to below 0.16%: 30-day suspension.
BAC of 0.16% or higher: 60-day suspension.
Unknown BAC, refusal, controlled substance charge, or accident with injury or property damage: 60-day suspension.
Minor at the time of the offense: 90-day suspension.

These periods are mandatory.³

Driving on an Ignition Interlock Limited License

If your license is suspended through ARD, you can apply to PennDOT for an Ignition Interlock Limited License. First-time DUI offenders in ARD are eligible to install a breathalyzer device on a vehicle and drive without further restriction while the interlock is active.⁷

After the court accepts you into ARD, PennDOT sends a suspension notice with a start date, typically about 35 days out. You contact an approved interlock vendor, have the device installed, and submit the interlock license application to PennDOT, which must approve it within 20 days of filing. You can only drive vehicles with the device, though family members or employers can install an interlock on their own vehicles so you can drive those too.

To get a full license back after the suspension period ends, your interlock vendor must certify to PennDOT that you had no violations in the last 30 days. Violations include attempting to start the car with a BAC of 0.08% or higher, failing a rolling retest, or missing a scheduled device maintenance appointment.⁸

What Happens if You Violate ARD

If the DA believes you violated a program condition, you will be brought before the judge. Failing to appear results in a bench warrant. At the hearing, the prosecution must establish the violation, and the judge can either extend your probation up to the two-year maximum or terminate you from the program.⁵ Termination revives the original charges, leaving you with the same two choices any defendant has: go to trial or plead guilty.²

The DA has one year from the date of revocation to bring the case to trial. Time spent in the program, community service hours already completed, and costs already paid do not carry over and do not count in your favor during the subsequent prosecution.

Dismissal and Expungement

Once you satisfy every condition, you file a motion asking the court to dismiss the charges. The DA has 30 days to object. If no objection is filed, the judge dismisses the charges.²

Pennsylvania law requires the judge to order expungement of your arrest record at the same time, unless the Commonwealth objects. If the DA does object, the court holds a hearing where both sides argue.⁹ Objections to ARD expungements are uncommon in practice.

After the judge signs the expungement order, agencies still need time to purge records from their databases. Expect up to a year for all agencies to fully process the order. Once complete, the arrest and prosecution records are destroyed and will not appear on standard employment or housing background checks.

Jobs and Professional Licenses

After a successful expungement, Pennsylvania law allows you to respond to questions about criminal history as if the offense never happened. You can legally deny that you were ever convicted or arrested for that incident.

Two caveats are worth knowing. First, if your professional license comes up for renewal after you are accepted into ARD but before the expungement is final, you may still need to disclose ARD participation on the renewal. That disclosure obligation disappears for state licensing purposes once the expungement is finalized, and Pennsylvania’s 2018 amendments further restricted state licensing agencies from accessing sealed or expunged records.

Second, federal law is a different story. If a federal regulatory agency requires criminal history disclosure for your profession, state expungement does not override that requirement. This affects fields like banking, securities, and some healthcare positions subject to federal background check mandates. If you work in a federally regulated industry, talk to an attorney about how ARD and expungement interact with your specific licensing obligations before assuming the record is invisible.

1
Montgomery County, PA. ARD Program
2
Pennsylvania Code and Bulletin. Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure Chapter 3 – Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition
3
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes Title 75, Section 3807 – Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition
4
Pennsylvania Code and Bulletin. Pennsylvania Code Rule 600 – Prompt Trial
5
Justia Law. Pennsylvania Code Part B Rule 316 – Conditions of the Program
6
Montgomery County, PA. Court-Ordered Community Service
7
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Ignition Interlock Limited License
8
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Statutes Title 75 Section 3805
9
Legal Information Institute. Pennsylvania Code Rule 320 – Procedure for Expungement Upon Successful Completion of ARD Program