How it works in Oklahoma

The steps

1. Request your record

   Request your own record from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation through CHIRP, its Criminal History Information Request Portal. You create a free account and pay per search. A name-based search needs your name and date of birth, searches three years either side of that date, and takes up to three other names you have used at no extra charge; add your Social Security number for a more thorough match. The portal adds one online transaction fee per order paid by card or electronic funds transfer. A fingerprint-based search costs more and goes by mail or in person on the original cards. Your court records are on oscn.net, the state courts' site, which the statutory petition form itself points you to.

   Record request fee: $15.00 — Per name-based search of the Bureau's records through CHIRP, up to three alias names at no extra charge, plus a $1.00 online transaction fee per order paid by card or electronic funds transfer; a fingerprint-based record is $19.00. Both rise on November 1, 2026 — to $20.00 and $25.00 (section 150.9 of Title 74 as amended by 2026 SB 1921).

2. Review your record

   Confirm there is no disqualifying information in your history. If there is something incorrect, follow the process to challenge the issue. If everything is accurate, make a copy for your file and keep the original somewhere safe.

3. Gather your case details

   Gather what the petition asks for: the name and address of the arresting agency, the date of your arrest, every other state or local agency that holds a record of the case, the case number and the charge. The statutory form points you to oscn.net for your case information, and you can read the docket there without a copy fee. Certified copies are not required to file. If you want a certified copy of the disposition for your own file, the court clerk charges a copy fee per page plus a certification fee; after the ruling you will need a certified copy of the order itself for the Bureau.

4. Verify the final documents

   Check each item against your record and the court's file: the names, the addresses, the dates, and every charge and request listed. Make copies of every original.

5. Prepare your petition

   Use the petition form in 22 OS § 18a as your model — the law provides it for a reclassified felony, and it shows what every petition says: who you are, the arresting agency, the date of your arrest, every state or local agency that holds a record of the case, the case number, the charge, and why the harm to your privacy or the danger of unwarranted adverse consequences outweighs the public interest in keeping the records. Under 22 OS § 18, you qualify if you fit one of sixteen cases: (1) you were acquitted; (2) your conviction was reversed with instructions to dismiss, or reversed and then dismissed by the prosecuting agency; (3) DNA evidence established your innocence after the conviction; (4) the Governor gave you a full pardon; (5) you were arrested, no charge of any type was filed, and the statute of limitations has run or the prosecuting agency declined to file; (6) you were under eighteen at the time and received a full pardon; (7) every charge was dismissed, you have never been convicted of a felony, no charge is pending, and the time to refile has run or the prosecuting agency confirms it will not refile — but not a dismissal that followed a deferred judgment or delayed sentence; (8) a misdemeanor charge was dismissed after you completed a deferred judgment or delayed sentence, you have never been convicted of a felony, no charge is pending, and one year has passed since the dismissal; (9) the same for a nonviolent felony charge not listed in section 571 of Title 57, five years after the dismissal; (10) a misdemeanor conviction with a fine under $501 and no term of imprisonment or suspended sentence, the fine paid or served out, no felony conviction and no charge pending — no wait; (11) a misdemeanor conviction with a term of imprisonment, a suspended sentence or a fine over $500, no felony conviction, no charge pending, and five years since the end of your last misdemeanor sentence; (12) one nonviolent felony conviction not listed in section 571 of Title 57, no other felony, no separate misdemeanor conviction in the last seven years, no charge pending, and five years since you completed the sentence; (13) up to two felony convictions, none listed in section 13.1 of Title 21 and none that requires sex offender registration, no charge pending, and ten years since you completed the sentence; (14) up to two felony charges dismissed after a deferred judgment or delayed sentence, with the same limits, ten years after the dismissal; (15) you were charged, arrested or named in a warrant for a crime someone else committed using your name or identification; or (16) a nonviolent felony conviction that Oklahoma later reclassified as a misdemeanor, with no sentence now being served in any state, thirty days since the sentence ended or was commuted, restitution paid in full and any court-ordered treatment completed. For cases 10 through 13, offenses from the same transaction or occurrence count as one. An expunged offense does not count as an earlier offense when you ask about another, and the Bureau says the age of a record never disqualifies you.

6. Finalize your petition

   Take the completed petition from Step 5, the documents collected in Step 3, and the background check from Step 1, and put them together in a complete package. Double-check every file in the package is the original and ensure you have a copy of the complete package for your personal file.

7. File your expungement petition

   File the petition in the district court of the district where your arrest information is located — under 22 OS § 19 that is the court for the sealing. Several qualifying offenses in one county can go in one petition; records in another county need a separate petition filed there. The court clerk charges a civil filing fee to open the case; ask the clerk for the amount. The Bureau strongly suggests you get a lawyer: if you represent yourself, the court holds you to the same standards as an attorney.

   Cost: Set by the court clerk — the Bureau charges nothing to expunge a court record (its fee is for the arrest record); the district court's flat fee schedule, section 152 of Title 28, names no petition for expungement — ask the clerk of the district court what it charges to file one; the court refunds the filing fee and costs when the expungement rests on DNA evidence of innocence (section 19 of Title 22)

8. Work with the court

   Under 22 OS § 19, the court sets a hearing date and gives thirty days of notice to the prosecuting agency, the arresting agency, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and anyone else it thinks may have relevant information about the record. Any of them may object — the Bureau says the State can object even when you qualify. At the hearing the court decides whether the harm to your privacy or the danger of unwarranted adverse consequences outweighs the public interest in keeping the records. If you qualify through DNA evidence of innocence or a full pardon, you may ask for a hearing within thirty days of filing, and the court must grant it on at least ten days' notice. Answer anything the court or an agency asks for promptly, and come to the hearing ready to explain why the records should be sealed.

9. Receive the court's order

   Once the judge rules, the court enters a written order granting or denying the petition. Under 22 OS § 19, an order to seal names the agencies it applies to, and the court may instead enter an order limiting access to the records if it finds that neither sealing them nor leaving them open would serve the ends of justice. You, the prosecuting agency, the arresting agency or the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation may appeal the order to the Supreme Court. If your expungement rested on DNA evidence of innocence, the court orders your filing fees and court costs refunded. Get certified copies of the order from the court clerk: the Bureau needs one, and so may each agency the order names.

   Certified copy fee: $1.00 for the first page, $0.50 for each later page, plus $0.50 to certify — The court clerk's statewide fee schedule, section 31 of Title 28: a certified copy of a one-page document is $1.50. The McCurtain County page the row cited lists the county clerk's land-record fees, not the court clerk's.

10. Verify the record is cleared

    Under 22 OS § 19, once the order is entered the arrest or case is deemed never to have occurred: you and every criminal justice agency may say so when asked, and an employer, a school or a state or local government agency may not require you to disclose the sealed record — except on a handgun license application to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. The order names the agencies it binds. Send the Bureau a certified copy of the order with its processing fee, by cashier's check or money order (it does not take personal checks); the fee is waived when your expungement rested on DNA evidence of innocence, and the Bureau may ask for a police report naming your relationship to the victim on a domestic charge. The Bureau says court records take about a month after it gets the order, arrest records about a month after the order and the fee, that your FBI record is expunged too, and that it will not notify you — check by requesting your record. The records are sealed, not destroyed: your fingerprints and identifying information stay on file apart from the sealed arrest, the court's index reference is removed, and a sealed record may be destroyed after ten years. You, the Attorney General or the prosecuting agency may ask the court to permit inspection; the prosecuting agency, the arresting agency, the Bureau or another interested person may ask the court to unseal the records at a hearing on thirty days' notice; and a sealed record can still be used at a trial to impeach a witness or as character evidence. A record expunged after a pardon, a deferred judgment or a conviction (cases 4 and 8 through 16) stays open to law enforcement, and cases 8 through 14 can prove a prior conviction or deferred judgment in a later prosecution. Confirm with the court clerk and the arresting agency that their records reflect the order, and keep a certified copy as your reference if a background-check provider reports the old record.

    Service fee: $150.00 — The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation's fee to process an expungement order, paid to the Bureau with a certified copy of the order after the ruling — by cashier's check or money order, never a personal check; waived when the expungement was granted for innocence proved by DNA evidence (section 150.12 of Title 74). The Bureau says expunging the court record is free; the district court clerk's own filing fee for the petition is not on this page, and the flat fee schedule in section 152 of Title 28 names no petition for expungement — ask the clerk.

If you have to mail anything, remember to keep a copy of whatever you send and to use a method with a tracking number like the USPS Flat Rate Envelope.