Michigan Automatic Expungement Notification: How to Check If Your Record Was Sealed

Michigan's Clean Slate algorithm has automatically sealed more than five million convictions since April 2023. The state did not notify a single one of those individuals. No letter, no email, no portal alert. The system runs silently, and it is entirely on you to find out whether your record was cleared.

Why There Is No Notification

The automatic set-aside system is a computer program that runs daily against the Michigan State Police criminal history database. It matches conviction records against statutory eligibility criteria — offense type, waiting period, conviction count, and intervening conviction checks. When a record qualifies, it is reclassified from public to non-public in the MSP system.

The product research states that the program does not issue individual notices; it does not establish why. Because a conviction may be decades old, do not rely on a letter or email to confirm that it was sealed.

How to Check Your Status

ICHAT search ($10). The Internet Criminal History Access Tool at michigan.gov/ichat lets anyone run a name-based public criminal history search. If your conviction was automatically sealed, it should no longer appear in the ICHAT results. A clean ICHAT report is a strong indicator that sealing occurred.

The limitation: ICHAT is a name-based search. If your name is common, results may include records belonging to other people. And ICHAT only shows the public portion of your record — it cannot confirm whether a record was sealed versus never existing.

MSP fingerprint-based personal records check ($30). This is the most reliable verification. You submit fingerprints on an RI-008 card to the Michigan State Police, and they return a report showing both your public records and your non-public (sealed) records. If a conviction appears on this report as non-public, it was successfully set aside.

Fingerprint cards can be completed at a local sheriff's office, police department, or Michigan State Police post. Check the MSP's current instructions for processing and return timing.

The Synchronization Problem

Local court public dockets may not reflect an automatic set-aside at the same time as the MSP record. MCL 780.621g(13) makes the electronic record available to courts for updating local records, but a conviction may still appear as active on a county court website while ICHAT no longer shows it. Background check companies that use county court records may continue reporting the conviction.

If your ICHAT search comes back clean but a county court website still shows the conviction, contact the court clerk with your ICHAT results and ask whether the public record can be updated.

When Automatic Sealing Did Not Happen

If your conviction still appears on ICHAT and you expected it to be automatically sealed, the most common reasons are:

• A criminal charge is pending in the MSP database when automatic eligibility is determined, or a new conviction was recorded there during the wait, for an eligible felony or eligible misdemeanor punishable by 93 days or more. These conditions do not apply to misdemeanors punishable by 92 days or less.
• The offense falls in a statutory exclusion, including life felonies and attempts, specified CSC and child-abuse offenses, felony DV with a prior misdemeanor DV conviction, specified human-trafficking or terrorism violations, traffic offenses causing any injury or death, or qualifying commercial-motor-vehicle traffic offenses. Automatic set-asides also exclude assaultive crimes, serious misdemeanors, crimes of dishonesty, offenses punishable by 10 or more years, and other categories listed in MCL 780.621g(10).
• The waiting period has not elapsed: 7 years from sentence imposition for misdemeanors, or 10 years from the later of sentence imposition or completion of a prison term with MDOC for eligible felonies
• An automatic set-aside may be reinstated if a court finds that the person has not made a good-faith effort to pay ordered restitution; an unpaid balance alone does not require reinstatement.

If your conviction is eligible for a petition-based set-aside, that process may provide another route when automatic sealing does not apply. The Michigan Expungement & Record Sealing Guide walks through both verification methods and the petition pathway.

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