New Jersey Clean Slate Summary

Legislation passed date: December 18, 2019. P.L. 2019, c.269 (S4154 1R)

Effective date: June 2020, delayed to February 2021 due to COVID.

Implementation Date: June 15, 2020

Appropriation: $15,000,000.

Other relevant legislation: Bill A3265 (2024). Expands expungement eligibility; eliminates cap on number of convictions person may expunge; eliminates limitation on number of times person may be granted expungement. 2026-2027 Session includes Senate Bill S3069. 

Records are Expunged. Expungement in New Jersey is effectively the same as sealing in that records are retained and restricted from public disclosure. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C;52-1.

New Jersey records relief is a mixture of petition-based and state-initiated processes. The state will initiate expungements for all charges that do not result in convictions, including dismissals, acquittals, and charges not filed by prosecutors. This does not apply retroactively. Effective July 1, 2021, certain low-level marijuana related convictions are also expunged by the state per the decriminalization law. All other conviction expungements are petition-based and described below.

Petition Eligibility Criteria:

• 5 years from last conviction in any jurisdiction and outstanding court fines/fees, or
• 5 years from last conviction, or release from probation/parole/incarceration (whichever is later) and completion of court ordered fines/fees
• 4 years where the applicant can show “compelling reasons” to begin the expungement process early.
• Records of conviction pursuant to statutes repealed by this Code for the crimes of murder, manslaughter, treason, anarchy, kidnapping, rape, forcible sodomy, arson, perjury, false swearing, robbery, embracery, or a conspiracy or any attempt to commit any of the foregoing, or aiding, assisting or concealing persons accused of the foregoing crimes, shall not be expunged. 

Agencies Involved:

• New Jersey State Courts, Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC)*
• New Jersey State Police (NJSP) (criminal history records repository).

Status: Implemented

Approach:

• Petitioner completes and files expungement request via e-filing or at the court.
• Court will review eligibility and notify stakeholders if expungement is granted. Stakeholders include petitioner, law enforcement, prosecutors, and State Police – who maintain the criminal history repository.
• NJSP receives electronic expungement orders in real time and conducts research to match order with criminal history records and update accordingly.

Reported/anticipated challenges:

• Significant and growing backlog of expungement orders at NJSP that include marijuana expungements and significant increase to the volume of clean slate expungements.
• NJSP staff conduct manual review of expungement records and typically encounter orders that cannot be matched to a person’s record due to insufficient identification data.
• Data quality issues are associated with sharing court information. Court records sometimes contain inconsistent charge codes, charge descriptions, aliases of defendants, which requires additional research by NJSP to identify the appropriate criminal history record, if possible.

Notifications

• When the judge issues the order of expungement, it also goes to the defendant or their attorney.

Outcomes to date

• The New Jersey Judiciary expunged more than 362,000 marijuana and hashish cases from court records since the Marijuana Decriminalization Law because effective July 1, 2021. Eligible cases were expunged automatically by the Judiciary.
• The number of final expungement orders received jumped significantly after the ‘clean slate’ law took effect – from a total of 36,120 between 2018 and 2020 to 144,071 between 2021 and 2023. The number of final orders processed completely totaled nearly 110,000 in 2023 and the first three months of 2024 combined. As of the end of March 2024, the Expungement Unit has processed 58,198 final orders since it was established. There were 19,874 applications, including recently received requests, pending as of the end of March. NJSP intends to continue working with other stakeholders within the criminal justice system to further reduce this backlog.