What is an expungement?
An Expungement is the extraction and isolation of all records on file within any court, detention or correctional facility, law enforcement or criminal justice agency concerning a person’s detection, apprehension, arrest, detention, trial or disposition of an offense within the criminal justice system.
An expungement of record is a process by which the records of a criminal conviction are destroyed or sealed. This includes records in files, on computer, or in any other depositories. Following an expungement, it is as if the criminal case never existed. When a case is expunged in Charleston County, the court’s computer records are modified so that all references to the defendant’s name are removed from the record. Typically, an expunged case record will contain a reference such as “June 1998 Expungement” in place of the name of the defendant, and will contain no references to the defendant’s name, address, or any other personal information such as driver’s license number, age, etc. The case number is left on the system in order to provide an accounting of all case numbers, and so that caseload statistics can be properly gathered. (For example, the court would still need to know how many criminal cases of a certain nature were disposed in a given year, so the case number is left on the
Expungement is the removal of records from public inspection. In Maryland, records may be expunged from Motor Vehicle Administration files, police files, and court and police files. The process must be done through the proper agency. No process expunges the records from all agencies. For more information, see Expungement.
