Records, Fingerprints and Destruction

When you are charged, you are ordinarily fingerprinted and photographed, and an entry is created in police information systems. If the charge is later withdrawn, or you are acquitted, that entry does not delete itself. It can appear on a vulnerable sector check, be seen by a border officer, or be disclosed in a police records check for employment.

Police services in Ontario have processes for applying to destroy fingerprints and photographs and to purge non conviction entries. Those applications are discretionary, they have their own requirements and timelines, and they are considerably more likely to succeed when they are made properly and with the disposition documented.

Discharges

Absolute discharges are removed from the automated criminal conviction records retrieval system after one year, and conditional discharges after three. Understanding those timelines matters when you are deciding whether to accept a disposition.

Record suspensions

Where there is a conviction, a record suspension through the Parole Board of Canada is the mechanism, and it becomes available only after the waiting period following completion of the sentence. Advice on eligibility and timing is available here, and where the application itself is better handled elsewhere you will be told so.

Why it is worth doing

Employment screening, professional licensing, volunteering with children or vulnerable adults, adoption, immigration and cross border travel all involve records checks. The five year old withdrawn charge nobody cleared is the one that causes the problem.