Kansas: Adult Conviction Expungement and Record-Sealing Eligibility
The short answer
Kansas uses petition-based expungement rather than general automatic relief. The usual wait is three years for misdemeanors and lower-level felonies and five years for higher-level felonies, measured from sentence satisfaction or discharge from listed supervision; a first DUI generally has a five-year wait and a second or later DUI a ten-year wait. Relief makes the record nonpublic and ordinarily lets the person say the event did not occur, but later sentencing, specified licensing and employment inquiries, criminal-justice uses, and other statutory access exceptions remain.
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This is the general rule in Kansas. Ezel applies current Kansas law to your specific facts and answers with citations to the statutes.
| Relief name and legal effect | Expungement. The person is ordinarily treated as not having been arrested, convicted, or diverted, and the custodian generally may not disclose the record; later-case use and listed disclosure/access exceptions remain (§ 21-6614(i), (k)–(m)). |
|---|---|
| Automatic or clean-slate relief | No general automatic adult-conviction relief. The person petitions the convicting court; specialty-court graduates also petition rather than receiving automatic expungement (§ 21-6614(a)). |
| Convictions eligible by petition | Generally: traffic, tobacco, and cigarette infractions; misdemeanors; former class D/E felonies; current nongrid and nondrug levels 6–10; and specified lower drug-grid levels after 3 years. Higher felony classes and grid levels may qualify after 5 years, subject to absolute exclusions (§ 21-6614(a), (c)). |
| Excluded offenses and statuses | No relief for the listed homicide, sex, child-endangerment/abuse, aggravated-incest, commercial-DUI, and comparable pre-2011 convictions or attempts. No part of the record may be expunged while Kansas offender registration is required (§ 21-6614(e)–(f)). |
| Waiting period and when it starts | Usually 3 years; higher-level felonies and listed driving offenses 5 years; first DUI 5 years; second/subsequent DUI 10 years; coerced-prostitution route 1 year. The clock runs from sentence satisfaction or discharge from listed supervision (§ 21-6614(a)–(d)). |
| Sentence, restitution, and new-record conditions | The applicable sentence must be satisfied or listed supervision discharged before the clock runs. For ordinary petitions, no felony conviction in the prior 2 years and no felony proceeding presently pending or being instituted; the statute states no separate restitution-payment condition (§ 21-6614(a), (c)–(d), (h)). |
| Petition process and decision standard | File in the convicting court in the original criminal action; the court sets a hearing and notifies the prosecutor and arresting agency. Base docket fee: $176, with a specialty-court waiver power. The court shall grant relief if the statutory record, conduct, public-welfare, and felony-firearm-safety findings are met (§ 21-6614(g)–(h)). |
| Who can still see or use the record | The record becomes nonpublic, but it may be used for later sentencing and element-based prosecutions and disclosed for enumerated court, prosecutor, law-enforcement, licensing, care-institution, gaming, securities, attorney, and repository purposes. Fraudulent-insurance records must be disclosed on insurance-producer/public-adjuster applications. Kansas deems firearm rights restored and directs KBI to seek NICS withdrawal (§ 21-6614(i)–(m)). |
| Boundaries and alternative relief | This row covers adult Kansas-law convictions under § 21-6614. City-ordinance convictions have a parallel petition route under § 12-4516. Juvenile, nonconviction, diversion-only, pardon, innocence, federal, military, tribal, and out-of-state remedies are outside this survey. |
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Requirements one by one
Relief name and legal effect
Kansas calls the remedy expungement. Under K.S.A. § 21-6614(i), the person
is ordinarily treated as though the arrest, conviction, or diversion did not
occur. Section 21-6614(k) ordinarily permits the person to say the same on an
employment, license, civil-right, privilege, or witness inquiry.
That is not destruction. The conviction may still count in later sentencing,
may be disclosed when a later offense has the prior conviction as an element,
and remains available to the people and agencies listed in the statute.
Automatic or clean-slate relief
Kansas has no general automatic route for adult convictions. K.S.A.
§ 21-6614(a) repeatedly says the person may petition the convicting court.
Even a person who completes a qualifying specialty-court program must file a
petition, although the court may waive all or part of that petition's docket
fee.
Convictions eligible by petition
The three-year route covers misdemeanors, traffic and tobacco infractions,
former class D and E felonies, current nongrid felonies and nondrug severity
levels 6 through 10, plus the lower drug-grid levels identified in
§ 21-6614(a)(1).
Section 21-6614(c) does not make every higher felony permanently ineligible.
Former class A through C felonies, off-grid felonies, nondrug levels 1 through
5, and the specified higher drug-grid levels use the five-year route unless an
absolute exclusion in subsection (e) or the registration bar in subsection
(f) applies.
Excluded offenses and statuses
K.S.A. § 21-6614(e) permanently excludes convictions and attempts for its
listed rape and sexual offenses, child endangerment and abuse, aggravated
incest, capital murder, first- and second-degree murder, voluntary and
involuntary manslaughter, commercial DUI under § 8-2,144, and comparable
pre-July 2011 offenses.
Separate from that list, § 21-6614(f) blocks expungement of any conviction or
any part of the criminal record while the person must register under the
Kansas Offender Registration Act.
Waiting period and when it starts
The usual clock is three years after the sentence is satisfied or the person
is discharged from probation, community corrections, parole, postrelease
supervision, conditional release, or a suspended sentence. The higher-level
felony and listed driving-offense route uses five years from the same events.
A first DUI under § 8-1567 uses five years. A second or subsequent DUI uses ten
years. The separate coerced-prostitution route uses one year and requires proof
that the person acted under another person's coercion.
Sentence, restitution, and new-record conditions
Sentence satisfaction or discharge from the applicable supervision is both
the threshold event and the clock's starting event. Section 21-6614 does not
state a separate rule making unpaid restitution an independent categorical
bar.
For an ordinary subsection (a)(1) petition, the court must find that the person
has had no felony conviction in the past two years and that no felony
proceeding is pending or being instituted. The text does not expand that test
to every misdemeanor charge. A specialty-court graduate must have no pending
or newly instituted felony proceeding, but subsection (h) does not add the
ordinary route's two-year no-felony-conviction clause to that branch.
Petition process and decision standard
Under K.S.A. § 21-6614(g), the petition is filed in the convicting court and docketed in the original
criminal action. The court sets a hearing and gives notice to the prosecutor
and arresting law-enforcement agency. The petition must identify the person,
offense, relevant dates, court, and arresting or diverting authority. The base
docket fee is $176.
Section 21-6614(h) uses mandatory language: the court shall order
expungement if it makes the applicable no-new-felony and no-pending-felony
finding, finds that the person's circumstances and behavior warrant relief,
finds relief consistent with public welfare, and—on a felony petition—finds
that firearm possession is not likely to threaten public safety.
Who can still see or use the record
The custodian ordinarily may not disclose an expunged record, but
§ 21-6614(l) lists exceptions. They include the person, specified courts and
prosecutors, the Kansas Sentencing Commission, attorney-admission and
discipline bodies, law-enforcement and peace-officer-certification agencies,
care-institution and private-security inquiries, gaming and securities
regulators, the Attorney General for authorized purposes, and KBI repository
work.
Effective July 1, 2026, a person must also disclose an expunged fraudulent-
insurance arrest, conviction, or diversion when applying for licensure as an
insurance producer or public adjuster.
Kansas also gives expungement an unusually explicit firearm consequence.
Section 21-6614(k)(2) deems the person's right to keep and bear arms fully
restored when the expunged matter caused the prohibition, and subsection
(m)(2) directs KBI to report that the record should be withdrawn from the
federal instant-check system. Those state-law commands do not replace advice
about a particular federal disability or database result.
What trips people up
The felony level determines the clock, but the absolute exclusion list still
controls. A five-year felony category is not eligible if the conviction is
also one of subsection (e)'s excluded offenses or the person remains subject
to offender registration under subsection (f).
The two-year clean-record test is felony-specific. The ordinary route asks
about a felony conviction in the prior two years and a pending or newly
instituted felony proceeding. It does not say that any pending misdemeanor
automatically defeats the petition.
A city-ordinance conviction uses a different statute. K.S.A. § 12-4516(a)
provides the parallel municipal-court route, generally with the same three-
year clock and similar hearing findings. A district-court conviction petition
uses § 21-6614.
Common questions
Does Kansas automatically clear a qualifying conviction when the waiting
period ends? No. The person must petition, and the court must make the
findings in § 21-6614(h).
Can an expunged conviction count later? Yes. It may be considered in
sentencing for a later crime and disclosed in a prosecution when the earlier
conviction is an element of the new offense.
Can the person usually deny the conviction after expungement? Yes, subject
to the statute's listed disclosure exceptions and any additional disclosure
circumstance stated in the expungement order.
Statutes and sources
- K.S.A. § 21-6614, as amended by 2026 Kan. Sess. Laws ch. 157 (SB 430) —
conviction categories, one-, three-, five-, and ten-year clocks, exclusions,
petition procedure, findings, legal effect, access, disclosure, and firearm
provisions.
https://www.kslegislature.gov/b2025_26/bills/download/?apn=b2025_26/year2/ready_for_publication/sb_430/sb430_enrolled.pdf
(accessed 2026-07-20) - K.S.A. § 12-4516 — separate city-ordinance conviction expungement route.
https://www.kslegislature.gov/li/b2025_26/statute/012_000_0000_chapter/012_045_0000_article/012_045_0016_section/012_045_0016_k/
(accessed 2026-07-20) - Kansas Secretary of State, 2026 Session Laws table — July 1 statute-book
publication and effective dates for chapters 35, 61, and 157.
https://sos.ks.gov/publications/session-laws.html (accessed 2026-07-20)
Source links
Every statute quoted above, linked, with the date we checked it.
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