Alabama Expungement Laws: Eligibility, Process, and the 2021 REDEEMER Act

Alabama allows eligible people to expunge criminal records under Ala. Code § 15-27-1 et seq. (originally enacted 2014, significantly expanded in 2021 by the REDEEMER Act, Act 2021-286).

Information last verified on May 29, 2026. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed attorney.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers Alabama state expungement law only. For a nationwide comparison, see Expungement Laws by State.

What Alabama's Expungement Law Covers

Alabama's expungement statute, codified at Ala. Code §§ 15-27-1 through 15-27-21, gives circuit courts authority to order records of criminal charges sealed and destroyed in certain circumstances. The law was first enacted in 2014 as a narrow remedy for people whose charges were never converted to convictions. Before 2021, only non-conviction outcomes qualified.

The Record Expungement Designed to Enhance Employment and Eliminate Recidivism (REDEEMER) Act, signed by Governor Kay Ivey on April 23, 2021, and effective July 1, 2021, fundamentally changed that framework. For the first time, Alabama permitted expungement of qualifying convictions. Ala. Code § 15-27-1 gained a new subsection (b) covering misdemeanor convictions that meet a 3-year waiting period, and § 15-27-2 gained a new subsection (c) allowing pardoned felony convictions to be expunged 180 days after the Board of Pardons and Paroles issues a certificate of pardon. The same act added § 15-27-2.1, which caps how many expungements one person may be granted, and § 15-27-21, which governs when a certified record of an expungement is admissible in a later criminal trial.

The benefit of a granted expungement is significant: under § 15-27-6(b), a petitioner whose record was expunged does not have to disclose the fact of the record on an application for employment, credit, or other type of application. The same subsection preserves a duty to disclose to any government regulatory or licensing agency, any utility and its agents and affiliates, and any bank or other financial institution.

Eligibility for Non-Conviction Records

A person whose charge did not result in a conviction may file a petition under § 15-27-1 (misdemeanors, violations, traffic violations, and municipal ordinances) or § 15-27-2 (felonies). The core non-conviction categories eligible for expungement include the following outcomes, each with its applicable waiting period after the disposition date:

• Dismissed with prejudice, nolle prossed without conditions, acquitted, or no-billed by a grand jury: 90 days (§ 15-27-1(a)(1)-(a)(4), § 15-27-2(a)(1)-(a)(4)).
• Dismissed after successful completion of a court-approved diversion program such as drug court, mental health court, or veterans court: 1 year (§ 15-27-1(a)(6), § 15-27-2(a)(6)).
• Dismissed without prejudice and not refiled: 1 year for misdemeanors; 5 years for felonies, with no intervening convictions (§ 15-27-1(a)(7), § 15-27-2(a)(7)).

During the applicable waiting period, the petitioner must not have been convicted of any other felony or disqualifying misdemeanor. Most non-conviction grounds carry no lifetime cap. Section 15-27-2.1(a)(1) allows unlimited expungements under § 15-27-1(a)(1) through (a)(5), (a)(7), and (a)(8), and under § 15-27-2(a)(1) through (a)(5), (a)(7), (a)(8), and (b). The diversion-program ground is the exception: even though the charge was dismissed, an expungement under § 15-27-1(a)(6) or § 15-27-2(a)(6) counts against the two-expungement limit in § 15-27-2.1(a)(3).

Eligibility for Conviction Records Under the 2021 REDEEMER Act

Act 2021-286 added conviction-based expungement pathways to both § 15-27-1 and § 15-27-2, making Alabama one of a growing number of states to allow post-conviction record clearing.

Misdemeanor and violation convictions (§ 15-27-1(b)): A person convicted of a misdemeanor offense, violation, traffic violation, or municipal ordinance violation may petition for expungement when all three of the following conditions are met: (1) all probation or parole requirements have been completed, including payment of all fines, costs, restitution, and other court-ordered amounts; (2) at least three years have passed since the date of conviction; and (3) the conviction is not for a violent offense, a sex offense, a crime of moral turpitude, or a serious traffic offense as defined in Article 9 of Chapter 5A of Title 32 (which includes DUI under § 32-5A-191, reckless driving, vehicular homicide, and boating under the influence). Act 2024-407, effective October 1, 2024, extended this same subsection to a person who has been adjudged a youthful offender and whose underlying charge was a misdemeanor offense, violation, traffic violation, or municipal ordinance violation. That was the act's only substantive change, and it opened a pathway for youthful offender adjudications that did not exist before.

The number of expungements available here is limited, and the limit is easy to misread. Section 15-27-2.1(a)(3) provides that a person may only be granted two expungements under § 15-27-1(a)(6), § 15-27-1(b), and § 15-27-2(a)(6). That is a single pool of two shared across three different grounds: misdemeanor diversion-program dismissals, misdemeanor convictions and youthful offender adjudications, and felony diversion-program dismissals. A petitioner who has already used two diversion-program dismissal expungements has none left for a misdemeanor conviction. Under § 15-27-2.1(b), all charges or convictions stemming from the same arrest or incident count as one expungement.

Felony convictions (§ 15-27-2(c)): A person convicted of a felony may petition for expungement only if all of the following conditions are satisfied: (1) the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles has issued a certificate of pardon with full restoration of civil and political rights; (2) all civil and political rights forfeited by the conviction have been restored; (3) at least 180 days have passed since the issuance of the pardon certificate; and (4) the conviction is not for a violent offense under § 12-25-32, a sex offense under § 15-20A-5, an offense involving moral turpitude under § 17-3-30.1, or a serious traffic offense. Under § 15-27-2.1(a)(2), a person may be granted only one expungement on this pardoned-conviction ground. That single expungement is counted separately from the pool of two described above.

Offenses Permanently Excluded from Expungement

Several categories of offenses cannot be expunged regardless of the passage of time or other circumstances:

• Violent offenses as defined by § 12-25-32 (including murder, manslaughter, robbery, kidnapping, and certain assaults).
• Sex offenses as defined by § 15-20A-5 (including rape, sodomy, sexual abuse, and child pornography offenses).
• Crimes of moral turpitude as defined by § 17-3-30.1 that constitute grounds for felony disenfranchisement.
• Serious traffic offenses under Article 9 of Chapter 5A of Title 32, including DUI (§ 32-5A-191), reckless driving (§ 32-5A-190), vehicular homicide (§ 32-5A-190.1), and boating under the influence (§ 32-5A-191.3). This exclusion applies to conviction expungements. Dismissed DUI charges that did not result in a conviction remain eligible for expungement under the non-conviction provisions of § 15-27-1(a).
• Offenses committed by a commercial vehicle operator at the time of the offense are also excluded under § 15-27-1.

Human trafficking victims who committed certain offenses during the period they were being trafficked may qualify for an exception to some of these exclusions under separate statutory provisions.

The Filing Process and Costs

Expungement petitions in Alabama are filed in the criminal division of the circuit court in the county where the original charges were brought. A petitioner must prepare and file the following documents:

1. A completed Petition for Expungement of Records (Unified Judicial System Form CR-65, revised October 2023).
2. A certified copy of the petitioner's criminal history record from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA).
3. Certified copies of court records documenting the disposition.
4. A sworn statement under penalty of perjury confirming the petitioner meets all statutory requirements and disclosing any prior expungement petitions.

The petitioner must serve copies of the petition on the district attorney's office and the arresting law enforcement agency. The district attorney has 45 days to file an objection and must notify any crime victim who has requested notification. If no objection is filed, the court rules on the merits of the petition without a hearing under § 15-27-5, though the court retains discretion to set a hearing in some circumstances.

Fees: Under § 15-27-4, the administrative filing fee is $500 per arrest event (a single fee covers all charges arising from the same arrest). Act 2021-286 raised the fee from $300 to $500 and replaced the prior bar on waiving it with a mandatory waiver: under § 15-27-4(c) a petitioner may apply for indigent status by submitting an Affidavit of Substantial Hardship with the petition, and if the court finds the petitioner indigent it must waive the fee. The fee is in addition to any other court costs. All financial obligations including restitution, fines, and court-ordered fees must be paid in full before an order of expungement may be granted under § 15-27-12, absent an indigency finding.

Effect of an Expungement Order

When a court grants a petition, § 15-27-6(a) directs it to order the expungement of all records in the custody of the court and any records held by any other agency or official, including law enforcement records. That order does not reach privileged presentence or postsentence investigation reports produced by the Board of Pardons and Paroles, or the files of the district attorney and the Office of Prosecution Services. Section 15-27-7 then governs what happens next: agencies holding the records forward them to ALEA for protected digital archiving, and under § 15-27-7(b) ALEA must request withdrawal of any record already transmitted to the FBI national criminal records repository.

Under § 15-27-6(b), the proceedings regarding the charge are deemed never to have occurred, the court and other agencies must reply to any inquiry that no record exists, and the petitioner does not have to disclose the record on an application for employment, credit, or other type of application. The duty to disclose does survive, and more broadly than many summaries suggest: it remains as to any government regulatory or licensing agency, any utility and its agents and affiliates, and any bank or other financial institution, each of which may then inspect the expunged records after filing notice with the court. An expunged record is also not the same as a record that never existed. Section 15-27-1(c) allows disclosure to criminal justice agencies and prosecutors for criminal investigation purposes, and under § 15-27-21 a certified record of an expungement is admissible in a criminal trial after an in-camera hearing on admissibility.

Disclaimer: This article summarizes Alabama expungement law as of May 29, 2026, and is provided for general informational purposes only. Alabama law, including Ala. Code §§ 15-27-1 through 15-27-21, is subject to legislative change. Individual eligibility depends on the specific facts of each case. Consult a licensed Alabama attorney before filing a petition for expungement.

Related Articles

• Expungement Laws by State
• DUI Expungement by State
• How to Check If Your Record Has Been Expunged

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