CA. DOJ Please define Purge

[VendorMan]

What is the name of your state?CA.

I read that in CA. misdomeaner convictions are purged after 10 yrs.
What does purging mean? I got a dui 14 yrs ago. I also just recently got an expungment, What will employment background investigators see and report?

[CdwJava]

Originally Posted by VendorMan

What is the name of your state?CA.

I read that in CA. misdomeaner convictions are purged after 10 yrs.
What does purging mean? I got a dui 14 yrs ago. I also just recently got an expungment, What will employment background investigators see and report?

You read wrong. A misdemeanor conviction is NOT purged from your Criminal Offender Record (aka CORI file or "Rap sheet") after 10 years.

And what a background investigator will find depends on where the investigator looks. If he goes to a site that collects old public records, they will probably find the prior conviction. If they just search current court records, they will likely not find a record of any conviction that has been expunged. And it is highly unlikely that they will EVER find a record of your CORI file as that information is not available to employers in CA.

- Carl

[VendorMan]

I appreciate your efforts to help people out. It's a nice jesture, I respect
your knowledge. Boy, this stuff his hard on the body and soul. I don't mean to make light of the offense, I think most of us recognize how serious this can be. Myself, I have rarely touched a beer since my DUI, Anyhow, please keep up the work you are doing to help people out.

Funny I got that info. that the CA DOJ purges records after 10 yrs from Capt. Bob, a Nor Cal Fireman who helps Fighfighters pass their tests. [url]www.eatstress.com[/url].

I know this would not be your area of expertise but I'm wondering if anyone can direct me to a knowledge base of how expungements work and how the background checks work or are typically conducted.

Specifically, I've done my own background checks via the internet and they typically come up with "no records" One of the recent ones I did responded with "Clear". This is what led me to believe that the CA DOJ may have purged the record, but the record would still be available if requested.
My expungement was recent, I understand that the record doesn't get erased, but I'm unclear on how it helps then, the reference/link provided
was not that clear either. I guess I need real, real laymens terms...

Does doing your own background check draw additional attention from the
CRA's-

I'm just trying to commuincate with people in the know. It's hard to find
people to discuss this with.....

[CdwJava]

There is no canned "background" that everyone does. The quality of the background depends on the person or organization doing it, the resources they are willing to expend, and if they are a government agency or not.

I have some access to CORI histories as part of a pre-employment background, Wal-Mart does not. What you find doing an internet search is whether there is a record of the arrest or conviction in public records that have been archived by the particular background company that is being queried. Most companies generally use one or more of a number of such internet background firms to help them search for public records. Some of these firms are better than others, and some will simply get lucky ... or miss entirely. If the county where your records are held does not hold the records electronically, chances are good that a search will not produce much about you. If the records WERE held electronically, or manually transferred or scanned, then they might be there.

None of the on-line search engines will be able to access DOJ's CORI files.

- Carl