Vacated convictions do not appear on background checks
In Washington state, a vacated conviction will no longer appear on state or federal background checks, opening up opportunities in employment, housing, and education.
Our Eligibility Tool helps free those impacted by the justice system from the harmful consequences of a lifetime of discrimination because of their record, even decades after it occurred.
Less than 3% have actually vacated their convictionsAre you one of the 97% of people eligible to vacate?
How can we help you vacate a conviction?
Gather all the documentation you have regarding your conviction. That includes previous records and all other legal documents.
Eligibility Tool
to determine your eligibility to vacate your misdemeanor or felony conviction by answering a fewyes
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questions.Conviction Vacation FAQs
Vacating a conviction is the process of clearing a conviction from your record so it is not visible to the public anymore. Vacating your conviction can remove that crime from some background checks, and you can say legally that you were never convicted of that crime.
The courts can still reference a vacated conviction in a future criminal proceeding, and not all convictions are eligible for vacation.
In Washington, criminal convictions cannot be "expunged."
To "vacate" a conviction means that, as far as society is concerned, the conviction never happened. Your landlord and your workplace won’t be able to see your record, but it will still be visible to the police and courts.
Conviction records always exist in court databases, although vacated records are not visible to the public.
To expunge a conviction erases it entirely. Society, the police, and the courts will all treat you like the conviction never happened.
To be eligible to vacate, there are specific criteria that your conviction must meet.
You can use our eligibility calculator to check if your misdemeanor or felony qualifies for vacation.
To vacate your Washington conviction, the process takes on average three to four months, depending on your individual circumstances, the court’s caseload at the time, and whether there are any objections to vacating your conviction.
You will receive a court order vacating the conviction—which has the effect of withdrawing the guilty judgment and dismissing the charges against you. You can then legally state that you were not convicted of the offense.
No.
Your conviction will still be in court records and computerized court indexes to court records. If a conviction was a domestic violence case, these records and indexes will still show the case type.
Information about the court records from the cases that led to the convictions are still public. You can still find them on www.courts.wa.gov.
Prosecutors can still use evidence of vacated convictions in a later criminal prosecution. They can still use them in a sexually violent predator commitment proceeding.
FBI records and private background check records may still have information about the convictions.