At Checkr, we believe a criminal sentence should never be a life sentence to unemployment. We believe that the past shouldn't limit human potential, and we work to expand people’s opportunities.
To promote our mission of fair-chance hiring, we built an affordable end-to-end expungement process for candidates with certain eligible charges in California.
What are expungements?
Generally, expungements seal or remove criminal charges from public record. Several factors affect the availability of expungements:
- Jurisdiction of originating charge
- Charges in multiple jurisdictions
- Charge type and severity
- How long ago the charge happened
- Rehabilitation procedures and opportunities
- Fines and fees for the charges and potential expungements
Several states have enacted mandatory expungement policies for certain charges, but this process isn't universally available. Many candidates and employers are unaware of these policies and find it difficult to determine which records qualify.
Checkr facilitates expungement services in two ways:
- Identify potentially expungeable records for certain charges in California.
- Help candidates through the petition process.
Expungement-eligible records
Checkr helps both customers and candidates identify which records might qualify for expungement:
- For customers: The Checkr Dashboard identifies potentially expungeable records.
- For candidates: For potentially expungeable records for certain charges in California, Checkr contacts candidates directly and the Candidate Portal identifies the record.
Expungement process
After Checkr identifies candidates with charges eligible for expungement in California, Checkr refers them to Avenues Legal LLP, a law firm in California. Avenues Legal LLP further evaluates candidate eligibility and processes the expungement petitions. All service costs go directly to Avenues Legal LLP.
The expungement process has the steps below:
- Checkr notifies the candidate that they have a potentially expungeable record using the methods below:
- SMS text
- The background check in the Checkr Candidate Portal
- If the candidate wants to seek an expungement, they complete a questionnaire in the Checkr Candidate Portal to determine whether the record qualifies.
- If the record qualifies, Checkr passes the information below to Avenues Legal LLP:
- The candidate’s contact information
- The candidate's eligible charge information
- The underlying background check report
- The candidate chooses whether to pay the legal and processing fees for filing their petition for expungement.
- Avenues Legal LLP creates and files the candidate’s petition and communicates results.
- After the expungement order is granted or expungement isn't approved, Checkr emails the candidate.
Interested in getting involved?
Checkr is currently seeking opportunities to partner with nonprofits, government entities, and companies to sponsor expungements to enable more candidates to benefit from a clean slate. If you're interested, contact expungements@checkr.com.