Clean Slate is a new Pennsylvania law that has sealed over 40 million criminal cases and counting, as well as expanded sealing to include more types of misdemeanors. Employers, landlords, and schools won’t be able to see sealed cases on your record, although those cases still will be seen by law enforcement agencies and a few others. Clean Slate will help many people across the commonwealth to get a fresh start. Read on for more information.
1. Clean Slate is here!
Automated sealing in Pennsylvania began on June 28, 2019. Pennsylvania started the automated sealing of arrests that did not result in convictions, summary convictions from more than 10 years ago, and some second and third-degree misdemeanor convictions, as long as you have not had any other misdemeanor or felony convictions for a period of 10 years after the time of conviction. By 2022, Pennsylvania sealed more than 40 million cases.
2. You can help yourself benefit from Clean Slate
See what is on your record. To find out what is on your public court record, and to check whether your cases have been sealed once automated Clean Slate begins, you can look yourself up for free on the courts’ website.
Get more information. You can learn more about Clean Slate at www.MyCleanSlatePA.com or by checking with your local legal aid program.
File a sealing petition. Even if you aren’t eligible to have your conviction automatically sealed, you may be able to petition the court to seal your old misdemeanor convictions. Each court has different processes to file petitions so you should contact your local court or legal aid program for more information. There are fees to file your petition(s), but you may be able to have them waived if you are low-income or represented by a legal aid program.
3. You need to pay restitution, if it was ordered, to be eligible for Clean Slate
You can now seal your record even if you owe court fines and costs. Previously, court fines and costs had to be paid before a case could be sealed. You can now file a sealing petition even if you owe fines and costs.
However, restitution must still be paid before a record can be sealed. Restitution is ordered in about 1 in 4 cases, so it is important to look up your record and see if you owe restitution. To find out what you owe, review your docket sheet by going to the courts’ website.
Click ‘Participant Name’ and enter your full first and last name along with any other information you have about your case. Make sure to include a wide date range in the ‘Date Filed” field. When your case appears, click the letter “D” on the right and review the docket sheet. Fines and costs information can be found towards the end of each docket.
To find out what you owe, either review your docket sheets on the courts’ website using the information above, or contact the court in the county where you had your case. You can pay fines and costs you owe for some cases online if you have a credit card, or you can pay at your county courthouse. If your cases are from Philadelphia, you can also go to the Basement of the Criminal Justice Center (1301 Filbert St.) to find out what you owe, get on a payment plan, or make payments.
4. You do not need to disclose a record that has been sealed
If information regarding criminal history is requested by an employer, school, or landlord, a person whose cases has been sealed by Clean Slate may respond as if the offense did not occur. If your whole record has been sealed, you can say you do not have any record.
This is not true if the information is requested by a criminal justice agency or disclosure is required by federal law. Also, if the job requires an FBI background check, you should report your sealed record because they will still show up on the FBI records. Most jobs do not use FBI records. You will know that you are getting an FBI check because you will have to provide fingerprints.
Most employers still cannot make decisions based on sealed records, so normally you should not be denied a job based on a sealed record that shows up on an FBI background check. If your sealed record continues to cause problems for you, or if you know your job requires FBI background checks, you may want to seek a full expungement, if possible. Learn more about expungement.
5. Even if Clean Slate can’t help you, you might be able to get a pardon
Generally, the only way to remove a felony conviction from your record in Pennsylvania is by receiving a pardon from the Governor. The pardon process is long and pardons are difficult to get. The longer that you have gone without an arrest or conviction, the better chance you have. Learn more here about the pardon process.