Pennsylvania Expungement and Clean Slate Law: Eligibility and Filing

Pennsylvania expungement and Clean Slate law give people with a criminal record two different ways to clear it: expungement, which destroys the record entirely, and limited access sealing, which hides it from most public background checks while leaving it visible to law enforcement and a few other entities. Which one you qualify for depends on the offense, how long you have gone without a new conviction, and whether every court-ordered fine, fee, and restitution has been paid. A 2023 expansion known as Clean Slate 3.0 opened sealing to certain felony drug and property convictions for the first time.

What Expungement and Sealing Actually Do

Expungement is permanent destruction. Once a judge grants it, the record is removed from state databases, and no employer, landlord, licensing board, or law enforcement agency can pull it up afterward.

Limited access sealing is not destruction. The record still exists; it is just walled off from ordinary public searches. Standard commercial background checks should not turn it up. But criminal justice agencies keep full access, and so do state licensing boards, employers required by federal law to check criminal histories, and county child welfare agencies. If your goal is a professional license or a job that runs an FBI check, sealing may not be enough.

Who Qualifies for Expungement

Pennsylvania’s expungement statute is narrow. It applies mainly to minor offenses, non-convictions, and pardoned cases:¹

Summary offense convictions, once you have gone five years without a new arrest or prosecution.
Underage drinking convictions, once you are 21 or older and have completed every term of your sentence, including any license suspension.
Non-conviction records, including acquittals, dismissals, and cases where no disposition was recorded within 18 months of arrest.
Any record, if you are at least 70 and have been arrest- and prosecution-free for 10 years since your final release from confinement or supervision.
Records of a person who has been dead for three years.
Any offense that has received an unconditional pardon from the governor.

Expungement After ARD

The Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program is a pre-trial diversionary track typically offered to first-time, non-violent offenders. Completing ARD and satisfying every condition results in dismissal of the charges, and you can then petition to expunge the record. Because there is no conviction to work around, ARD expungement is one of the most common ways Pennsylvanians erase a case entirely.²

Clean Slate Sealing: Automatic and Petition-Based

For convictions that fall outside expungement, limited access sealing is the main remedy. It comes in two forms.

Automatic Sealing

The state’s Clean Slate system periodically scans criminal records and seals eligible ones on its own. You file nothing. To qualify, you need the required crime-free period and full payment of every court-ordered financial obligation:³

Summary offenses: 5 years without a new conviction.
Second- and third-degree misdemeanors: 7 years without a new conviction.
Qualifying drug felonies: 10 years without a new misdemeanor or felony conviction.

Whether a drug felony qualifies turns on the sentence actually imposed, not the statutory maximum. Cases where a prison sentence of 30 months to 60 months or more was imposed are excluded, which filters out trafficking-level offenses.

Petition-Based Sealing

More serious offenses require you to file a petition and satisfy the court that you have completed the waiting period and paid restitution:⁴

First-degree misdemeanors and ungraded offenses carrying up to five years: 7 years with no new conviction punishable by a year or more in prison.
Third-degree felonies for specific property crimes: 10 years with no new conviction punishable by a year or more.
Qualifying drug felonies: 10 years with no new conviction punishable by a year or more.

The eligible property-related felonies are listed in the statute: criminal mischief, criminal trespass, theft and related offenses, forgery and fraud offenses, and welfare fraud. Only third-degree felonies and ungraded felonies within those categories qualify. First- and second-degree felonies do not.

This felony sealing option is new. Act 36 of 2023, known as Clean Slate 3.0, extended sealing past misdemeanors for the first time, with the automated felony provisions taking effect in June 2024.⁵

Offenses That Cannot Be Sealed

Some convictions are off-limits no matter how much time has passed. A petition will be denied if the offense falls into any of these categories:⁴

Crimes involving danger to a person punishable by more than two years in prison, with a narrow exception for misdemeanor terroristic threats.
Offenses against the family punishable by more than two years.
Firearm offenses under Chapter 61 of the Crimes Code.
Sexual offenses requiring registration under Pennsylvania’s sex offender statutes.
Corruption of minors.
Murder, first-degree felonies, or any offense punishable by 20 or more years.

There is also a 15-year look-back. If you were convicted within the past 15 years of a felony involving violence, firearms, sexual offenses, or offenses against the family that carries seven or more years, no record of yours is eligible for sealing during that window.

Juvenile Records

Juvenile records follow their own rules, and the waits are generally shorter. The statute requires 30 days’ notice to the district attorney before any juvenile expungement.⁶ Eligibility turns on the disposition:

Informal adjustment or consent decree: eligible six months after successful completion, if no new proceeding is pending.
Summary offenses committed before age 18: eligible six months after satisfying all sentence terms, once the person turns 18, with no felony conviction, misdemeanor conviction, or delinquency adjudication and no pending proceeding.
Misdemeanor adjudications: eligible two years after final discharge from probation or placement, with no subsequent convictions or pending proceedings. Firearms offenses and certain sexual offenses are excluded.
Felony adjudications and excluded misdemeanors: eligible five years after final discharge, with no subsequent convictions or pending proceedings.

Underage drinking committed before 18 has its own rule: eligible six months after satisfying all sentence terms, once the person reaches 18.

When Only a Pardon Will Work

For convictions that qualify for neither expungement nor sealing, a governor’s pardon is the only path. It is slow and never guaranteed. An unconditional pardon triggers automatic expungement of the pardoned offense, so the record is destroyed rather than merely sealed.¹

Applications go through the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons. As of January 2026, the Board requires a specific application version and rejects older forms. Non-incarcerated applicants can apply online or by mail to the Board of Pardons at 555 Walnut Street, Suite 704, Harrisburg, PA 17101. Incarcerated applicants submit through their facility or by mail to PADOC at 1920 Technology Parkway, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050. The application must include the criminal complaint, the affidavit of probable cause, the sentencing order, and documentation showing the status of your financial obligations. A denial carries a 12-month wait before reapplying, and a second denial extends that to 24 months.⁷

How to File for Expungement or Petition-Based Sealing

Automatic sealing needs nothing from you. For expungement and petition-based sealing, you prepare and file paperwork. Start by pulling three identifiers for the case:

The Offense Tracking Number (OTN), an eight- or nine-character alphanumeric code assigned at arrest.
Your State Identification Number (SID), your identifier in the state criminal records system.
The docket number, the court’s case-specific identifier for each charge.

You can look these up through the Unified Judicial System’s online case search portal.⁸ File the petition with the Clerk of Courts in the county where the charges originated.⁹ The district attorney receives a copy and has 60 days to consent, object, or take no action. If no objection is filed, the court typically issues the order.¹⁰

Filing fees vary by county. Chester County, for example, charges $168 per petition, and costs rise when a case involves multiple docket numbers that require separate filings. If you cannot afford the fee, you can request a hardship waiver. Attorney fees, when you hire one, vary widely with the complexity of the case; simple summary expungements cost far less than contested petitions that go to hearing. Automatic Clean Slate sealing costs nothing.

After Your Record Is Cleared

An expungement order destroys the record. A sealing order restricts it. In practice, sealed records should not show up on standard commercial background checks, but the private screening industry does not always keep up. Background check companies maintain their own databases built from earlier court data, and Pennsylvania courts have no direct pipeline to update every private aggregator. Sealed records sometimes keep appearing, especially when the screening company scraped the data before the sealing order was entered.

Your Rights If a Sealed Record Shows Up

The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires background check companies to use reasonable procedures to ensure maximum possible accuracy. The Federal Trade Commission has flagged reports that include expunged or sealed records as evidence those procedures may fall short.¹¹

If a background check turns up a record that should have been cleared, you can dispute the report with the screening company, which is then required to investigate and correct inaccurate information. If the company refuses to remove the sealed record, you may have a claim under the FCRA. This is the most common problem people run into after sealing, and many do not realize the law is on their side.

Federal Convictions

Everything above applies to Pennsylvania state charges only. Federal convictions run on a separate system, and the options are far narrower. There is no general federal expungement or sealing authority. Federal courts have extremely limited inherent power to grant record relief, and the few statutory exceptions cover specific situations, such as deferred adjudication for a first-time misdemeanor drug possession (with expungement available if the defendant was under 21 at the time) and vacatur for survivors of human trafficking. If your record includes federal charges, Clean Slate cannot touch them.

1
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 91 Section 9122 – Expungement
2
Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure
3
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Section 9122.2 – Clean Slate Limited Access
4
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 91 Section 9122.1 – Petition for Limited Access
5
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Clean Slate Act
6
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 91 Section 9123 – Juvenile Records
7
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Apply for Clemency
8
Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania. Case Search
9
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Apply for Criminal Record Expungement
10
Pennsylvania Code and Bulletin. Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 790 – Procedure for Obtaining Expungement in Court Cases
11
Federal Trade Commission. What Employment Background Screening Companies Need to Know About the Fair Credit Reporting Act