AB 704 establishes a statutory process for people who were arrested for or convicted of most offenses before age 26 to petition a court to have those arrests, convictions, and related records sealed and destroyed. The bill sets eligibility rules, a four‑year waiting period free of new convictions, a notice-and-response timeline for prosecutors, and a judicial standard that the sealing and destruction be "in the best interest of justice." It also requires government agencies to seal records within 90 days and destroy them within one year, and directs the state DOJ to notify the FBI to delete federal records.
This matters for employers, background-screening providers, prosecutors, courts, and agencies that retain criminal records: AB 704 creates new operational duties, timelines, and a large class of individuals who can seek to erase records that currently persist in state and federal systems. The statute preserves several categorical exclusions (including serious violent and sex offenses) and prevents sealing where unpaid restitution to victims remains outstanding, creating practical and legal tensions for implementation and enforcement.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill allows eligible individuals arrested for or convicted of most offenses before age 26 to petition the court after a four‑year period without new convictions. If the court grants relief, it orders agencies to seal and destroy state records and directs DOJ to ask the FBI to delete federal records.
Who It Affects
Impacted groups include people with pre‑26 arrests or convictions, state and local prosecutors, courts, law enforcement and corrections agencies, the Department of Justice, and background‑screening users and vendors who rely on public criminal records.
Why It Matters
AB 704 expands opportunities to clear records that can impede employment, housing, and education while imposing concrete deadlines and procedures for governments to remove records — a significant operational shift for records management and interagency coordination.
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What This Bill Actually Does
AB 704 creates a new postconviction remedy for people arrested for or convicted of most offenses when they were younger than 26. To qualify, a petitioner must meet a waiting requirement and satisfy the substantive exclusions in the bill (for example, many serious violent felonies and sex‑offense registration cases are ineligible).
Arrests that did not result in conviction can qualify where the statute of limitations has run and no charge was filed, where charges were dismissed or acquitted, where a conviction was vacated and cannot be refiled, or where the person successfully completed a diversion program listed in existing law.
The bill imposes a four‑year period after the later of arrest or completion of supervision/incarceration during which the petitioner must remain free of new convictions before filing. Once filed, the petition and supporting documents must be served on the relevant prosecutorial agency, which has 45 days to respond.
The court can consolidate petitions across jurisdictions if the petitioner and all involved prosecutors agree. If the petition is opposed or the court deems a hearing necessary, the judge may take testimony from the petitioner, accept documentary evidence, and hear opposition evidence from prosecutors.At hearing the court applies a ‘‘best interest of justice’’ standard and may grant sealing and destruction relief if persuaded.
If granted, the order sets aside the arrest or adjudication, dismisses the charge, and declares the arrest and conviction to have been deemed not to have occurred. The order requires all identified government agencies — local law enforcement, the Department of Justice, probation/rehab/corrections/parole departments, and others that maintain records — to seal records within 90 days and to destroy them within one year of the order.
The DOJ must also forward the court order to the FBI and request deletion of federal records. The court keeps a sealed copy of the order and sealed copies of the underlying records but those sealed materials are accessible only to the petitioner and their counsel.The statute preserves specific exceptions: it prohibits sealing or destruction where an initiative statute requires a penalty scheme that would conflict, excludes certain enumerated serious offenses, and denies relief if the petitioner still owes victim restitution.
While the bill orders state agencies to remove records, it stops short of creating an affirmative enforcement mechanism against private background vendors or specifying the consequences if federal deletion is denied, leaving open several implementation issues.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Eligibility is limited to people arrested for or convicted of an "eligible offense" before turning 26; a list of exclusions (serious violent felonies, registration‑required sex offenses, certain vehicle offenses, and offenses used to prove priors) is specified in the bill.
The petitioner must wait four years after the later of arrest or completion of incarceration, probation, mandatory supervision, postrelease community supervision, or parole, during which they have not been convicted of a new offense.
Prosecutors receive service of the petition and have 45 days to respond; the court may consolidate multi‑jurisdiction petitions if all prosecutors and the petitioner agree.
If the court grants relief it orders agencies to seal records within 90 days and to destroy them within one year; the DOJ must forward the order to the FBI and request deletion of any federal records.
Relief is barred where the petitioner has unpaid restitution to a victim; collection of fines (other than restitution) is stayed while the petition is pending.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Who qualifies — age threshold and exclusions
This provision defines the eligible class: people arrested for or convicted of an offense before age 26. It enumerates what is and is not an "eligible offense," carving out many serious felonies, any offenses requiring sex‑offender registration, certain vehicle offenses, and crimes that can be used as priors. It also explains when arrests that did not lead to conviction are eligible (e.g., statute of limitations has run, dismissal without refiling possible, acquittal, vacated convictions, or successful completion of listed diversion programs). Practically, this creates a large—but not universal—cohort of records that can be targeted for removal while keeping longstanding public‑safety exclusions.
Four‑year clean period before filing
The bill requires a waiting period: four years must pass from the later of the arrest date or the date the person completed any terms of confinement or supervision tied to the record, and the petitioner must remain conviction‑free during that period. This is a bright‑line temporal eligibility gate intended to balance rehabilitation against recency of criminal activity; it also creates a predictable screening rule for counsel preparing petitions.
Petition, service, prosecutor response, and hearings
The petitioner must serve the petition and supporting documents on the state or local prosecutorial agency with jurisdiction; that agency has 45 days to respond. The court can consolidate petitions across jurisdictions with agreement. If opposed, the court schedules a hearing, can require petitioner testimony, admit documentary evidence, and hear opposition from prosecutors. These mechanics allocate a clear timeline to prosecutors but leave liberal judicial control over the adversarial process, which may result in contested, evidence‑intensive hearings in some cases.
Judicial standard, effect of order, and public access controls
The judge decides based on the 'totality of the evidence' and must find sealing and destruction is in the 'best interest of justice.' If granted, the order sets aside and dismisses the charge and declares the arrest/conviction to be deemed not to have occurred; it also notifies DOJ. The petitioner is released from penalties and disabilities and may lawfully deny the arrested/convicted event. The bill restricts public disclosure of proceedings by barring publication of the petitioner's full name in accessible records and allows the court to take further actions to effectuate the relief. These provisions give courts broad remedial powers but also raise uniformity concerns because 'best interest of justice' is an open standard.
Agency duties: seal within 90 days and destroy within one year; DOJ to notify FBI
This core operational section requires every named government agency that holds records relating to the arrest or conviction to seal its records within 90 days and destroy them within one year after the court order. The court must provide certified copies of the order and any forms submitted to agencies to the petitioner and counsel. After destruction, the DOJ must forward the order to the FBI and request deletion of federal records. Agencies therefore face concrete deadlines and coordination obligations; the DOJ‑to‑FBI step is phrased as a request, which may create follow‑through and enforceability issues at the federal level.
Restitution carve‑out and conflicts with initiatives
The bill blocks sealing and destruction if the petitioner has unpaid restitution that directly benefits a crime victim; it also stays collection of fines (except restitution) while a petition is pending. Additionally, the bill preserves the primacy of initiative statutes by declining to seal or destroy records when that would conflict with penalty schemes established by voter initiatives. These carve‑outs protect victim compensation and existing voter‑approved sentencing frameworks but create potential edge cases where relief is partially available or administratively complicated.
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Explore Justice in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Individuals arrested or convicted before age 26 who meet the waiting‑period and exclusion criteria — they can seek to have records set aside and destroyed, removing a major barrier to employment, licensing, and housing.
- Defense attorneys and public‑interest legal services — they gain a statutorily organized remedy to help clients clear older records and a defined petition process with timelines for prosecutors.
- Employers and licensing boards — over time they may see fewer outdated records on background checks, reducing uncertainty and potential legal risk from relying on stale convictions.
Who Bears the Cost
- State and local prosecutorial agencies — they must be served, respond within 45 days, and may need to litigate contested petitions, increasing caseload and administrative burden.
- Courts — judges and clerks must manage petitions, hearings, sealed records, certified copies, and coordination with multiple agencies, which will increase docket and records management workload.
- Law enforcement, probation, corrections, and the Department of Justice — these agencies must implement sealing and destruction workflows within fixed deadlines, update case management systems, and coordinate with the FBI; doing so will carry operational and IT costs.
- Background‑screening vendors and recipients of third‑party data — while the bill controls government records, it does not directly compel private data brokers to purge copies; private vendors may face compliance pressure or litigation claims if they do not align with sealed state records.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between facilitating rehabilitation and social reintegration by removing old records, and preserving accurate, accessible records for public safety, victim restitution, and institutional decision‑making; the bill leans toward erasure but relies on judicial discretion and agency processes that may leave gaps where public‑safety information still matters or where deletion is incomplete.
AB 704 sets firm timelines and a broad remedial result — destroy state records and seek deletion at the federal level — but leaves several implementation knots unresolved. First, the bill requires the Department of Justice to "forward the order to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and request the deletion" of federal records; it does not create a binding federal deletion mandate nor specify remedies if the FBI declines or delays removal.
That gap could produce incomplete outcomes where state records are removed but federal or private copies persist.
Second, the destruction requirement assumes agencies can identify and remove all manifestations of a record. Modern records exist in backups, legacy systems, interagency exchanges, and in copies held by private background companies.
The bill's deadlines (90 days to seal and one year to destroy) may be operationally tight for agencies with complex IT systems, and it does not address whether metadata, audit logs, or derivative records must be purged. Third, the judicial standard — "best interest of justice" — is deliberately capacious.
It allows flexibility but risks inconsistent application across courts and could produce uneven relief depending on local litigation practices and resource disparities. Finally, the restitution exception protects victims but raises practical enforcement questions: how to determine whether outstanding restitution "directly benefits the victim" across multi‑count judgments, and what happens when restitution is disputed or the victim is unreachable.
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