New “Clean Slate” NJ Expungement Law

Changes to Expungement Eligibility Requirements

On December 19, 2019, New Jersey established a “Clean Slate” expungement law. The law takes effect on June 15, 2020. This law makes major changes to the New Jersey Expungement Process.

Convictions for drug-related offenses will, for expungement purposes, be considered to be convictions for Disorderly Persons offenses. As such, an individual seeking expungement is not barred from having their expungement denied for having more than one drug offense. Now, an individual can have up to five expunged. The law also raised the amount of Disorderly Persons offenses eligible to be expunged from four (4) to five (5).

Furthermore, the waiting period before getting an expungement has been lowered from six (6) years to five (5) years.

Dismissals in both municipal court and Superior Court, that are not part of a plea deal, will be automatically expunged. Now, an individual can file to have their criminal record expunged even if they already had a criminal expungement. This removes the complete bar on expungement to those individuals who had previously expunged their criminal histories.

Most importantly, the State is creating a system where all criminal offenses, except the ones that are statutorily non-expungable, will be automatically removed from a person’s criminal history after 10 years. This means that even if convicted of multiple Indictable Offenses, which would normally be a complete bar to expungement, an individual simply has to live a law-abiding life for 10 years after their most recent conviction.

NJ Expungement Lawyers

The attorneys at Rosenberg | Perry & Associates are well experienced with the expungement process in New Jersey. If you have questions about your record, the clean slate law or how to expunge your record, please feel free to contact our office for a consultation. We charge a $250.00 expungement consultation fee. If you elect to hire our office your consultation fee will be applied toward the expungement representation.