Criminal Law Review

In legal terms, an expungement is a legal procedure where someone who is a first time offender tries to have the records of their offense sealed by the courts, thus making them unable to be seen in police and federal criminal databases. When the record is sealed, the legal term commonly used is that it has been “expunged”, essentially making it as if it never even happened. You should not get the terms “expunge” and “pardon” confused however, as they both mean very different things in the legal system. When a criminal record is expunged, as far as everyone is concerned, the record never existed in the first place. If someone is granted a pardon, they essentially given forgiveness, but the record still remains on their profile and is never erased.

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