Can You Get a Criminal Record Expunged in Wisconsin? The Under-25 Rule, the At-Sentencing Deadline, and Why the Reform You Read About Never Passed

By Stephen E. Mays, Mays Law Office, LLC · Updated September 2026

Can you get a criminal record expunged in Wisconsin? For an adult conviction, only if the judge orders it at sentencing. Under Wis. Stat. § 973.015 a court may order expungement only when you were under 25 when the offense was committed and the maximum penalty is six years or less. Apart from a narrow trafficking-victim exception — and a separate juvenile process — there is generally no later adult petition. Mays Law Office defends criminal cases in Madison, Middleton and across Wisconsin.

Almost everything written online about clearing a criminal record describes a system Wisconsin does not have. In most states you serve your sentence, stay out of trouble for a few years, then file a petition asking a judge to seal or expunge the case. That is the national model, and it is what most national legal websites describe.

Wisconsin works the other way around. Here the decision is made before you have served a single day — at the sentencing hearing itself — and it is made only for a narrow group of people. On that ordinary adult route, if nobody raises it that morning, the door closes. The statute keeps open one narrow later motion, for a trafficking victim; juveniles have a separate petition.

That is a hard thing to read if you are already past sentencing. It is a very useful thing to know if you are not. The legal claims below were verified against the Wisconsin Statutes, the Wisconsin decisions cited, and the Legislature’s official bill records in September 2026.

Can You Get a Criminal Record Expunged in Wisconsin? The Three Gates in § 973.015

Wisconsin’s adult expungement statute has several subsections, but the ordinary eligibility rule sits in one sentence, and every word of it matters. Wis. Stat. § 973.015(1m)(a)1. reads:

“Subject to subd. 2. and except as provided in subd. 3., when a person is under the age of 25 at the time of the commission of an offense for which the person has been found guilty in a court for violation of a law for which the maximum period of imprisonment is 6 years or less, the court may order at the time of sentencing that the record be expunged upon successful completion of the sentence if the court determines the person will benefit and society will not be harmed by this disposition.”

Three gates are built into that sentence, and on this ordinary route you have to clear all three. (One narrow category, described at the end of this section, is handled differently.)

Gate one: under 25 at the time of the offense

The age that counts is your age on the day the offense was committed — not the day you were charged, and not the day you were sentenced.

That cuts both ways, and the distinction is worth understanding precisely:

• If you were 24 when it happened and the case drags on until you are 26, you are still within the statute.
• If you had already turned 25 on the day it happened, this route is closed to you no matter how minor the offense or how clean the rest of your life has been. (The trafficking-victim motion in § 973.015(2m), below, carries no age requirement.)

You will see this rule written as “25 or younger” or “under 25 at sentencing.” Both are wrong, and both can cost someone a chance they actually had.

Gate two: a maximum penalty of six years or less

The second gate looks at the offense, not at the sentence you receive. The question is what the law allows as a maximum, which in Wisconsin means:

• All misdemeanors. Class A carries up to 9 months; Class B up to 90 days; Class C up to 30 days (Wis. Stat. § 939.51(3)).
• Class H felonies, with a maximum of 6 years, and Class I felonies, with a maximum of 3 years and 6 months (Wis. Stat. § 939.50(3)).
• Nothing above that. A Class G felony carries a 10-year maximum, so it is outside the statute even if the judge places you on probation and you never see the inside of a prison.

A note on those numbers, because they frighten people unnecessarily: a class maximum is a ceiling set by the legislature, not a prediction of your sentence. Actual sentences turn on the facts, your record, your mitigation, and the judge’s discretion. Nobody can tell you what you will receive, and you should be skeptical of anyone who does.

One more consequence of the “period of imprisonment” language: the statute does not reach civil forfeitures. The Court of Appeals said so directly in Kenosha County v. Frett, 2014 WI App 127 — where a law carries no period of imprisonment, § 973.015 does not apply to it. A standard first-offense OWI in Wisconsin is a civil forfeiture, which is why it sits outside this statute entirely. We cover that separately on our OWI and drunk driving defense page.

Gate three: the judge has to make a finding

Clearing the first two gates makes you eligible. It does not make expungement yours. The court still has to determine that “the person will benefit and society will not be harmed by this disposition.”

That is a discretionary call, and the Court of Appeals has made clear it cannot be a rubber stamp in either direction. In State v. Helmbrecht, 2017 WI App 5, the court held that a sentencing judge deciding expungement should set out on the record the facts considered and the reasoning behind the decision — something more than reciting that a defendant will or will not benefit.

That is why this is argued, not requested. Your record, your schooling or job, what a conviction would foreclose, and what the offense actually was all belong in front of the judge before the sentence is announced.

The one place the statute makes the order mandatory

There is a single mandatory corner. Under § 973.015(1m)(a)2., the court shall order expungement upon successful completion of the sentence where the offense was a violation of Wis. Stat. § 942.08 (invasion of privacy), subsections (2)(b), (c) or (d) or (3), and the person was under 18 when it was committed. It is the only provision in the adult statute that requires a court to order expungement; everywhere else the word is “may.”

Who Is Shut Out Even When the Age and Penalty Gates Are Met

Section 973.015(1m)(a)3. adds a list of convictions no court may expunge, and it applies to the felony end of the eligible range.

A Class H felony cannot be expunged if:

• you have, in your lifetime, been convicted of a prior felony offense;
• the felony is a “violent offense” as defined in Wis. Stat. § 301.048(2)(bm); or
• it is a violation of § 940.32 (stalking), § 948.03(2), (3) or (5)(a)1.–4. (physical abuse of a child), or § 948.095 (sexual assault of a child by a school staff person or a person who works or volunteers with children).

A Class I felony cannot be expunged if:

• you have, in your lifetime, been convicted of a prior felony offense;
• the felony is a “violent offense” under § 301.048(2)(bm); or
• it is a violation of § 948.23(1)(a).

Read the subsection closely and you will notice what it does not say. Those carve-outs are written for Class H and Class I felonies. That is a real distinction, and it is one more reason a general summary of “Wisconsin expungement rules” is a poor substitute for reading the statute against your own case with a lawyer.

The Deadline Almost Nobody Expects: Expungement Is Ordered at Sentencing

Here is the sentence that decides most cases: the court “may order at the time of sentencing that the record be expunged upon successful completion of the sentence.”

Wisconsin’s appellate courts have read that phrase as narrowly as it is possible to read it.

• In State v. Matasek, 2014 WI 27, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that “at the time of sentencing” means at the proceeding where the circuit court announces the sanction — the sentencing hearing itself.
• In State v. Arberry, 2018 WI 7, the Court held that the phrase means only at the time sentence is imposed, and does not extend to post-sentencing motions for sentence modification. The defendant there had not asked for expungement at her sentencing; she moved afterward to have the judgment amended so she could get it. The answer was no.

And a circuit court has no general power to fill the gap on its own. The Attorney General concluded decades ago that circuit courts do not possess inherent authority to expunge or destroy conviction records (70 Atty. Gen. 115) — the authority comes from the statute or it does not exist.

The practical consequence is simple and unforgiving. If expungement is not raised, argued and ordered on the record at your sentencing hearing, there is no general adult petition in Wisconsin that gets you back to it later — not after a year of perfect behavior, not after ten. The statute holds open exactly one later adult motion, § 973.015(2m), limited to one offense and one situation; juvenile records run on a different statute with a petition of its own. Both are set out next.

The one narrow retroactive route in the statute

There is a single exception, and it is deliberately narrow. Under § 973.015(2m), a person convicted of prostitution under Wis. Stat. § 944.30 may move at any time to have the conviction vacated or the record expunged, if they were a victim of trafficking for the purposes of a commercial sex act and committed the offense as a result of that trafficking. The subsection sets out what the motion must contain, requires that it be brought with due diligence subject to safety concerns, and requires notice to the district attorney’s office that prosecuted the case.

That is the whole of the retroactive relief available to adults under this statute. It exists because the legislature created it for one specific situation.

Juveniles are treated differently

Contrast the juvenile side. Under Wis. Stat. § 938.355(4m), a juvenile adjudged delinquent may, on attaining 17 years of age, petition the court to expunge the court’s record of the adjudication, and the court may grant it if the juvenile satisfactorily complied with the dispositional order and the court finds the juvenile will benefit and society will not be harmed. A petition, filed later, by the person seeking relief — exactly the mechanism the adult statute lacks.

This is not the same as sentence adjustment

Expungement is also frequently confused with early release. If you are already serving a Wisconsin prison sentence, the statute people are usually thinking of is Wis. Stat. § 973.195, the sentence adjustment petition — a different statute, a different remedy and a different deadline, which we explain in our post on Wisconsin sentence adjustment under § 973.195. It has nothing to do with clearing a record.

“Ordered” Is Not “Done”: What Successful Completion of the Sentence Requires

An expungement order at sentencing is conditional. It says the record will be expunged upon successful completion of the sentence — and the statute defines that term.

Under § 973.015(1m)(b), a person has successfully completed the sentence if:

1. the person has not been convicted of a subsequent offense;
2. if on probation, the probation has not been revoked; and
3. the probationer has satisfied the conditions of probation.

When that happens, “the detaining or probationary authority shall issue a certificate of discharge which shall be forwarded to the court of record and which shall have the effect of expunging the record.”

You do not have to file anything — State v. Hemp

In State v. Hemp, 2014 WI 129, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the statute places no burden on you to petition the court within any particular period to make an ordered expungement take effect. The discharging authority forwards the certificate of discharge, and at that point the process is self-executing. The Court also held that nothing in the statute gives a circuit court authority to revisit an expungement decision it has already made. Once the order is in place and you satisfy the conditions, you have earned it.

But “satisfied the conditions” means all of them — State v. Lickes

The other side of that coin is State v. Lickes, 2021 WI 60. The Supreme Court held that “conditions of probation” in § 973.015(1m)(b) means conditions imposed by both the sentencing court and the Department of Corrections — and that a circuit court has no discretionary authority to declare the conditions satisfied when the record shows one or more were violated.

Read that together and the practical instruction is blunt. An ordered expungement is not a promise; it is a condition you have to meet completely. Note that § 973.015(1m)(b) lists “the probation has not been revoked” and “the probationer has satisfied the conditions of probation” as two separate requirements — so revocation is not the only question. Under Lickes, where the record demonstrates that an applicable condition was violated — whether the court imposed it or your agent did — the circuit court has no discretionary authority to declare the conditions satisfied.

That is narrower than the version you will read online. Lickes does not hold that a missed appointment or an unpaid bill, by itself, ends an expungement; it holds that a demonstrated violation can stop a court from finding you successfully completed the sentence. Which obligations are conditions of your probation, and whether the record shows a violation, are questions about your file. If expungement was ordered, treat every condition, including the ones your agent sets, as load-bearing.

What an Expungement Actually Reaches — and What It Leaves Untouched

This is where the most damaging misunderstandings live, because “expunged” sounds like “erased everywhere.” It is narrower than that.

What it does. Expungement under this section means, in the words of a long-standing Attorney General opinion, to strike or obliterate from the record all references to the defendant’s name and identity (67 Atty. Gen. 301). That is the court record, held by the clerk of circuit court — the file that feeds the public Wisconsin Circuit Court Access site most employers and landlords search.

What it does not do.

• It does not undo the conviction. In State v. Braunschweig, 2018 WI 113, the Supreme Court drew the line precisely: vacating a judgment invalidates the conviction, while expunction “merely deletes the evidence of the underlying conviction from court records.” Expunction does not invalidate a conviction.
• It does not order police or prosecutors to destroy their files. The official annotation to § 973.015 states that the statute does not require law enforcement agencies or prosecutors to destroy records relating to an expunged conviction (State v. Leitner, 2002 WI 77).
• It does not keep the underlying facts out of a future sentencing. Leitner permits a sentencing court in a later case to consider the facts underlying an expunged conviction, and State v. Allen, 2017 WI 7, confirmed that a court may do so where those facts come from sources other than the expunged court records — including a presentence investigation report.
• It does not touch your driving record. The statute says so on its face: expungement under § 973.015(1m)(a)1. “does not apply to information maintained by the department of transportation regarding a conviction that is required to be included in a record kept under s. 343.23(2)(a).”

There is one protection worth knowing on the other side of the ledger: an expunged conviction is not admissible to attack a witness’s credibility (State v. Anderson, 160 Wis. 2d 435 (Ct. App. 1991)).

An expunged OWI still counts as a prior

This one has real consequences, because Wisconsin’s OWI penalties escalate by offense number.

Wisconsin Stat. § 343.307(1) directs that the court shall count listed prior convictions to determine the length of a revocation and to determine the penalty under § 346.65(2). Nothing in that list carves out convictions that were later expunged — and in State v. Braunschweig, the Supreme Court confirmed that an expunged prior still counts, because expunction removes the evidence of the conviction from court records without invalidating the conviction itself.

So an expunged OWI-related conviction is not wiped out of the count. Whether a particular prior actually raises the offense number on a new case is a separate question answered by Wisconsin’s ordinary counting rules: a single prior generally counts toward a second offense only if it falls inside the applicable 10-year window, while from a third offense onward all prior convictions count for life. What expungement does not do is remove the prior from that calculation.

Answering the application question

Because the conviction is not vacated, the honest answer to “has this conviction legally disappeared?” is no — the public court file is what changed. How to answer a specific employment, licensing, housing or federal application question is a decision to make with a lawyer who has read the actual question and your actual record, not a rule you can take from an article. It is worth noting that the reform bills described below would have addressed employment discrimination based on expunged convictions — and they did not pass. We cover the disclosure question in more detail in our post on telling an employer about a criminal record.

Expungement, a Pardon, and Sealing Are Three Different Things

People use these words interchangeably. Wisconsin does not.

A pardon is an executive act, not a judicial one. It is applied for through the Governor’s Pardon Advisory Board, which reviews applications for eligibility, schedules most applicants for a hearing that is open to the public, and makes recommendations to the Governor. The Board’s own pardon information page states that being scheduled for a hearing “typically has taken at least 18 months from the date the application is received,” and it is also where the current eligibility rules are published — as described there, a pardon is generally available only for a Wisconsin felony conviction, at least five years after the sentence was completed, with no pending charges and no sex-offender registration requirement. Check those requirements against that page before relying on them; the Governor’s office sets them, and they can change.

The key structural point: a pardon is forgiveness, not deletion. It does not seal or remove the court file.

Sealing, in the sense used in states with “clean slate” laws that automatically hide older convictions from public view, has no general adult equivalent in Wisconsin. For adults, § 973.015 is the mechanism, and it runs on the schedule described above.

Why the Reform You Read About Never Passed

If you have searched this topic in the last few years, you have probably read that Wisconsin “recently reformed” its expungement law — removing the age cap, allowing petitions after the fact, or both. It did not.

The cleanest proof is the statute’s own history line. On the Wisconsin Legislature’s official page for § 973.015, the amendments are listed as: 1975 c. 39; 1975 c. 189 s. 105; 1975 c. 199; 1983 a. 519; 1991 a. 189; 2003 a. 33, 50, 320; 2009 a. 28; 2011 a. 268; 2013 a. 362; 2015 a. 80, 366. The list stops in 2015. No 2025 or 2026 act appears on it.

Reform was proposed, repeatedly, and it came close enough to generate a great deal of coverage:

• 2021 Assembly Bill 69 — “Relating to: expungement of records of certain crimes and discrimination based on expunged conviction.” The Assembly’s Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety recommended passage as amended on June 8, 2021 (Ayes 14, Noes 0). In the Senate, the bill failed to concur on March 15, 2022.
• 2023 Assembly Bill 37 — the same title, the same core changes, including renumbering and amending § 973.015(1m)(a)1. The Assembly committee recommended passage as amended on January 18, 2024 (Ayes 15, Noes 0). In the Senate, it failed to concur on April 15, 2024.

Expungement language was also floated during the 2025–27 state budget debate. It is not in the statute either — as the history line shows, no act from the 2025–26 session amended § 973.015.

Bills are introduced every session, and one may eventually pass. Until one does, the 2015 text is the law, and it is the text a Wisconsin judge will apply to your case. As of September 2026, the strict version of § 973.015 described in this article is current law, verified against the Wisconsin Statutes.

Charged With a Crime in Madison or Middleton? Raise Expungement Before Sentencing Day

If you are reading this because you or your son or daughter has been charged, the timeline is the thing to take away. Expungement is not a step you take after the case ends. It is an argument that has to be built into how the case is resolved — what the charge is reduced to, what class of offense you plead to, what the plea agreement recommends, and what the judge hears before the sentence is announced.

That is work that happens early, and it is one of the reasons the charge you start with is not always the charge you finish with.

At Mays Law Office we defend misdemeanor and felony cases in Dane County and throughout Wisconsin. We will look at whether the stop, the search or the evidence holds up, what the State can actually prove, and — where § 973.015 is in reach — how to put the expungement question in front of the court at the right moment. We cannot promise a result in any case, and you should be wary of any lawyer who does. What we can do is make sure the opportunity is not lost by silence.

Learn more about how we handle these cases on our criminal defense page, or contact us for a free, confidential consultation and tell us how to reach you.

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This article provides general legal information and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Laws change and every case turns on its specific facts. Consult a licensed Wisconsin attorney about your situation.

Primary sources: Wis. Stat. § 973.015, § 939.50, § 939.51, § 343.307, § 938.355(4m); State v. Matasek, 2014 WI 27; State v. Hemp, 2014 WI 129; State v. Allen, 2017 WI 7; State v. Helmbrecht, 2017 WI App 5; State v. Arberry, 2018 WI 7; State v. Braunschweig, 2018 WI 113; State v. Lickes, 2021 WI 60; Kenosha County v. Frett, 2014 WI App 127; State v. Anderson, 160 Wis. 2d 435 (Ct. App. 1991); 2021 Assembly Bill 69 and 2023 Assembly Bill 37 bill histories.