Answer: The latest: Florida legislature has recently carved out many more new exceptions into the applicable sealing statute today, disallowing a sealing of your record for any offense that involves sexual allegations or violence. There are fewer and fewer crimes that are now eligible for sealing.
You understand that even if you are eligible to have your arrest record sealed (meaning that your arrest did not involve a crime of violence or allegations of sexual misconduct), the sealing of your record only blocks access by a public party seeking information from public records. The Clerk of Court will place your sealed record, without destroying it, in a special secured area so that public access to your records is denied without a person obtaining a Court Order to unseal your record and file. Alternatively, if you are eligible to expunge your record, your record is destroyed by the Clerk's office and police agencies. However, your records are still held by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for future references by law enforcement or the Courts.
You need to know that the process of sealing and expunging your arrest records is a long, tiresome and tedious process, involving a half dozen law enforcement agencies including FDLE, the involved county and city police departments, the Clerk's office, the prosecutor's office and the Court, and this hemmoroidal process (too often an administrative nightmare) may take several months - at a minimum, to complete. You might want to save a bunch of money and not pay the lawyer, by doing this yourself. Check out: www.fdle.state.fl.us/expunge
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