Pennsylvania Clean Slate Summary

Legislation passed date:

• Clean Slate 1.0: 2018 Act 56 (HB 1419), June 28, 2018. Effective June 28, 2019.
  • The first law in the country to use automation technology to seal eligible cases (largely those that did not result in conviction) without a petition being filed, removing barriers to sealing faced by eligible individuals and reducing demand on valuable court resources.
• Clean Slate 2.0: 2020 Act 83 (HB 440), October 29, 2020. Effective December 28, 2020.
  • Allowed cases to be sealed when fines and court costs are still owed, removing a financial barrier to sealing.
• Clean Slate 3.0: 2023 Act 36 (HB 689), December 14, 2023. Effective February 12, 2024. Target Implementation Date: June 11, 2024 (though full implementation has been delayed).
  • Less serious drug felonies will be eligible for sealing after 10 years without a subsequent misdemeanor or felony conviction. (Drug felonies will not be eligible for sealing if a sentence of 30 to 60+ months or greater imprisonment was imposed). Other property-related felonies, such as thefts, will be eligible for sealing after 10 years upon granting of a court petition. It will also shorten waiting periods for sealing convictions of misdemeanors to 7 years and summary convictions to 5 years. (See, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, Clean Slate 3.0 Eligibility Summary Chart).

Records are Expunged/Sealed.

Eligibility Criteria:

Eligible Offenses

Only a subset of offenses eligible for records clearance through the petition-based process in Pennsylvania are eligible for sealing under Clean Slate. (See figure below).

• All non-conviction records, which include dismissed or withdrawn charges and findings of not guilty, are eligible after 30 days have passed since the court entered the disposition.
• Convictions for summary offenses (which include minor crimes such as underage drinking, disorderly conduct, and low-level retail theft) are eligible.
• Certain misdemeanor convictions may also be sealed: first-degree misdemeanors with a potential penalty of 2 years or less; second- and third-degree misdemeanors; and ungraded offenses punishable by up to 5 years.
• All pardoned offenses.

Comparison of Petition-Based and Clean Slate Processes in PennsylvaniaSource: Technical and Operational Challenges of Implementing Clean Slate: Technical Appendix – Profiles of 11 Study States, Clean Slate Profile: Pennsylvania, (SEARCH Group, Inc.: Sacramento, CA, 2023), p. H-9 [pdf p. 104].

Certain offenses are not eligible to be sealed under Clean Slate, including: 

• Felonies,
• Two prior convictions that carry a potential prison sentence of over 2 years in prison or four prior convictions that carry a potential sentence of over 1 year in prison, and
• Certain cases that involve firearms, sex offenses, crimes against family, and similar offenses.

Eligibility Waiting Periods

Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate legislation automatically seals non-conviction charges within 30 days of final disposition by the courts. Records of qualifying misdemeanor adjudications may be sealed after 10 years of the individual being conviction-free, and there is no lifetime limit for the total number of eligible summary and misdemeanor records that may be sealed.

See, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, Clean Slate 3.0 Eligibility Flowcharts.

Agencies Involved:

• Administrative Office of the Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC)*
• Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) (criminal history records repository).

Status: Implemented and testing expanding application.

Approach: The Clean Slate process in Pennsylvania is initiated by the AOPC, which transmits a record of any conviction eligible to the PSP central repository on a monthly basis. PSP reviews the cases and validates eligible cases. If PSP determines that a case is ineligible based on information housed within the state criminal history repository, it is added to a list of non-qualified records that is returned to AOPC each month. Ineligible cases are removed from future batches of records provided to PSP, and these cases would need to be sealed via the petition-based process. After attempting to match all of the offense tracking numbers (OTN), name, date of birth, and social security matches, PSP also returns a list of records that lack a reliable match in their system.

Once PSP has reviewed cases for eligibility, cases are processed in batches through a CPCMS software screen to produce a court order and final report. At that point, Common Pleas judges may review a report listing each case and offense in a batch prior to issuing an order. Once an order is issued, AOPC restricts the cases and offenses from the Public Web Docket sheets and indicates its limited access status on the CPCMS screen to make court personnel aware that records may not be

Clean Slate Process in Pennsylvania

Source: Technical and Operational Challenges of Implementing Clean Slate: Technical Appendix – Profiles of 11 Study States, Clean Slate Profile: Pennsylvania, (SEARCH Group, Inc.: Sacramento, CA, 2023), p. H-11 [pdf p. 106].

Reported/anticipated challenges:

• Data quality issues are associated with sharing court information. OTN (Offense Tracking Number) is administered by AOPC. For Summary Offenses the fingerprint may be missing at PSP, since no fingerprints captured for citations in lieu of an arrest. Pennsylvania has 85% compliance with fingerprinting, with approximately 1,300 local law enforcement agencies.
• Court records contain aliases of defendants, which require additional research by PSP to identify the appropriate criminal history record, if possible. The court will seal the record but it may not be in the PSP CCH database.

Notifications

According to Title 18 § 9122, “notice of expungement shall promptly be submitted to the central repository which shall notify all criminal justice agencies which have received the criminal history record information to be expunged.” Similarly, the court must notify PSP and other record custodians of any arrests or convictions that must be sealed under Clean Slate so that any copies maintained by other governmental agencies will be appropriately shielded from public or other unauthorized access.

Sealed or expunged records are removed from the AOPC’s public website and are entered in the LifeCycle File, which is provided to bulk purchasers of the state’s data, such as consumer reporting agencies that offer private background checks. The LifeCycle File is updated monthly to include new court information together with a list of sealed or expunged cases that must be removed from any existing data files. The LifeCycle file is sent to the PSP so that it may remove or seal records from their databases based on the courts’ orders. 

Individuals are not notified when their records are sealed but may access their own court records online at no charge by using the Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania Web Portal. Individuals can search using appellate court information, attorney, calendar event, citation number, complaint number, date field, docket number, incident number, organization, OTN, parcel, participant name, or a State Identification Number (SID), which is assigned by PSP when a person is first fingerprinted.

Individuals may also request a copy of their records maintained by PSP. To request results of a name-based search of PSP records, individuals must submit a completed form SP4-170 along with a certified check or money order for $20 and a copy of a valid government-issued identification card by mail to PSP. Criminal history records will be returned to the requestor by mail and may take 3 months or longer to process. The name-based PSP check only includes records maintained by PSP, but individuals may also wish to review records maintained by the FBI, as they may include additional information (e.g., sealed records from Pennsylvania and/or out-of-state records). 

Outcomes

Pennsylvania Clean Slate Statistics (June 28, 2019 – September 30, 2023)
Processed Clean Slate and Petition-Based Counts
Type of Case/Offense	Number	Grand Total
Non-Conviction Cases	20,677,891	45,178,422
Conviction Summary Cases	24,324,601
Conviction Misdemeanor Cases	172,608
Petition: Limited Access Cases*	3,322
Non-Conviction Offenses	42,554,694	67,458,201
Conviction Summary Offenses	24,683,220
Conviction Misdemeanor Offenses	213,662
Petition: Limited Access Offenses*	6,625

Source: AOPC, Processed Clean Slate Numbers – County.