Can You Seal an Arrest That Never Became a Charge in Arizona?

The police arrested you, booked you, and let you go. No charge ever came. You told yourself it was over, and for years nothing said otherwise, until a background check pulled it back up and you had to explain an arrest for something you were never charged with.

We handle Arizona record sealing every day, and AZ Record Removal is owned and powered by Future First Criminal Law. An arrest with no charge is one of the cleanest filings the sealing law allows, and most people who qualify have never heard they do.

Can you seal an arrest in Arizona if no charges were ever filed?

Yes. A.R.S. § 13-911 names three groups of people who are allowed to ask a judge to seal their records: people with a conviction who finished their sentence, people who were charged and then acquitted or had the charge dismissed, and people who were arrested and never charged at all. You fall in the third group.

That third group is the one most people never hear about. The sealing law took effect on January 1, 2023, and SB 1639 rewrote it effective September 13, 2024. Read the text of A.R.S. § 13-911 and the language sits in the first subsection.

Sealing means the judge orders the arrest record taken out of public view. The judge weighs your interest against public safety, then grants or denies the application. No judge is required to grant one. A set aside under A.R.S. § 13-905 does nothing here, because it needs a judgment of guilt to set aside and you have none. Our record sealing service page covers what the filing includes.

Why does an arrest with no charge still show up on a background check?

Because the arrest created records in more than one place, and nobody had a duty to erase them. When the police book you, the arresting agency opens a file and takes fingerprints. Both go to the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which runs the central state repository of criminal history. If you went before a judge for an initial appearance, the court opened a file too, even with no complaint filed.

A decision not to charge changes none of that. The prosecutor closes a folder. The arresting agency, DPS and the court keep theirs. A screening company pulling a DPS record or a court index finds the arrest and reports it, and the person reading the report sees an arrest for a crime and stops there.

The DPS records request page explains how to review your own record for free, and our Arizona record search page walks you through what to look for.

Why did your lawyer tell you the arrest went away?

Because for most of Arizona history, no conviction was the best outcome the law offered, and people treated it as the same thing as no record. Lawyers, prosecutors and judges told people for years that a no-file or a dismissal meant they walked away clean. That advice was incomplete. The case was over. The record was not.

Before 2023, Arizona had no general sealing law, so a person with a never-charged arrest had no filing to make. Zachary Divelbiss, our founder, wrote about this in a bar newspaper column this year. The arrest and any court file stayed open to every employer and landlord running a check, and the people who said “you are clear” believed it when they said it.

As of 2026, the sealing law works this way. The person who was never charged files an application, the judge reviews it, and a granted order closes the file to the public. What a lawyer told you years ago was true then. It is not true now.

Is there a waiting period to seal a never-charged arrest?

No. The waiting periods in A.R.S. § 13-911 apply only to convictions. Ten years for a class 2 or class 3 felony. Five years for a class 4, 5 or 6 felony. Three years for a class 1 misdemeanor. Two years for a class 2 or class 3 misdemeanor. Each clock runs from the day the sentence is complete and every fine and fee is paid.

None of those clocks start on an arrest with no charge, because there was no sentence to complete. The same is true for a dismissal and a not-guilty verdict. You are eligible to file the day the prosecutor declines the case, or twenty years later.

Where do you file when there was never a court case?

It depends on whether you saw a judge after the arrest. A.R.S. § 13-911 sends a never-charged arrest to one of two places. If you were taken before a judge for an initial appearance, you file in that court. If you were booked and released without seeing a judge, you file in the superior court for the county where the arrest happened.

With no complaint, there is no case number to look up and often no court file at all. The application creates the first court record of the arrest so the judge has something to close, alongside the files the police and DPS already hold.

We identify the right court from the booking paperwork and the DPS record before filing. Filing in the wrong court costs months, and a denial bars a new application for three years under the same law.

What happens after you file the sealing application?

Four things, in order. The clerk sends a copy to the prosecutor, who is allowed to respond. The judge asks DPS for a report on your arrests, prosecutions and convictions, and A.R.S. § 13-911 waives the DPS fee when no charges were filed. The judge then holds the application for 60 days after filing unless the prosecutor and any victim who asked for notice state they have no objection, which frees the judge to rule sooner. Then the judge rules, with or without a hearing. A hearing happens only when someone asks for one.

If the judge grants the application, the order goes to the clerk, DPS and the prosecutor. Our page on how long record sealing takes in Arizona tracks real timelines court by court.

What does sealing an arrest change, and what does it leave alone?

Sealing takes the arrest out of public view. Under A.R.S. § 13-911, the clerk seals the court file and releases it only to the people the law names. DPS marks the record sealed and tells the police agencies that hold copies. The arresting agency and the prosecutor’s office flag their own files. A background check that pulls public court records or the public side of the DPS repository stops returning the arrest.

Sealing does not scrub the internet. A news story stays up. A mugshot site keeps its page until you deal with it separately. A Google result does not vanish because a judge signed an order. The record also stays available to the police, prosecutors, judges, probation departments and a short list of agencies named in the law.

Our post on whether record sealing removes cases from background checks covers what a screener sees after the seal.

Can you say you were never arrested after the record is sealed?

Yes, on most applications. A.R.S. § 13-911 lets a person whose record is sealed state, on an employment, housing, financial aid or loan application, that they were never arrested for, charged with or convicted of the sealed offense. For a never-charged arrest, the box for “have you ever been arrested” gets an honest no.

The law lists exceptions where the sealed offense still has to be disclosed, and most tie a type of offense to a type of job: a fingerprint clearance card application, work with children or vulnerable adults, police work, work that involves entering homes, handling money or driving for hire, child placement matters, and any disclosure another law requires. If your work sits in one of those lanes, tell us before we file.

A sealed arrest disclosed where the law requires it is fine. A sealed arrest hidden where the law says to disclose becomes its own problem.

How is a never-charged arrest different from a dismissed case?

A dismissed case had a charge. A never-charged arrest did not. That difference changes the paperwork, not the eligibility.

With a dismissal, the prosecutor filed a complaint and a judge later dismissed it, so the court file has a case number and a disposition. With a never-charged arrest, the prosecutor filed nothing, so the record lives mainly with the arresting agency and DPS.

Both sit in A.R.S. § 13-911 with no waiting period. If your situation involved a filed charge that was later dismissed, our post on how long a dismissed case stays on your record in Arizona is the one to read, and our dismissed case sealing page covers that filing.

What does a decades-old arrest with no charge look like today?

It looks like a single line on a background check that the person has been explaining ever since. A client of ours was arrested decades ago. The prosecutor never filed a charge. The client has not been arrested since. For all that time, the arrest sat in the state repository, and every fingerprint-based check surfaced it.

We filed a sealing application on that arrest. The judge has not ruled, and we do not tell anyone how a judge will rule. What we tell you is what the filing does: it puts the arrest in front of a judge with the full history alongside it, which is the only way a record like this gets closed. Sitting still for another decade does nothing.

That client is the reason we say this to every lawyer we know. Go back through your closed files. Every no-file and every dismissal you handled before 2023 belongs to a person who was likely told they were done. Most of them still have an open public record.

How much does it cost to seal a never-charged arrest?

One flat fee of $1,700 per case, all in. That covers the record pull, the application, any response to the prosecutor, and tracking the judge’s ruling. No court fees, no filing fees, no travel charge. Every case after the first is $500 off, which brings it to $1,200. Hire us within 24 hours of your consultation and take $200 off. Payment plans are available.

Before you pay anything, we tell you what the record shows. If the DPS repository and the court index are already clean, we say so. Full numbers live on our pricing page. A marijuana arrest with no charge has its own tool, expungement under A.R.S. § 36-2862, and it is a different filing with a different result.

Why should you choose AZ Record Removal?

Arizona record clearing is all we do. We are owned and powered by Future First Criminal Law, and our founder, Zachary Divelbiss, cleared his own record first. He used a set aside and sealing to take six youthful convictions out of court databases and off background checks.

Here is what you get from us. We pull your DPS record and the court index and tell you what they show before you pay. We file in the right court, respond to the prosecutor, and track the judge’s ruling so you never check a docket. We work statewide and handle everything virtually. We have 250+ five-star Google reviews, and our case victories page shows granted sealing orders. Our phones are answered 24 hours a day at 602-900-6240, and consultations are scheduled during business hours.

What should you do next?

Find out what your record says. Start with our free eligibility quiz, which takes a few minutes and tells you which filings fit what happened in your case. Then call 602-900-6240 and we will pull the DPS record, find the right court, and tell you exactly what we would file.

If you are a lawyer who handled no-file arrests before 2023, go back through those closed files and call your old clients. The filing that closes their record did not exist when you represented them. No judge is required to grant a sealing application. Getting the right application in front of the right judge is the job, and it is ours.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does an arrest with no charges show up on an Arizona background check?

Yes, often. The arrest sits in the DPS central repository and in any court file opened for an initial appearance. Fingerprint-based checks and many name-based checks pull it. The report shows the arrest and the offense the police listed, and it rarely explains that the prosecutor never filed a charge. Sealing under A.R.S. § 13-911 is the filing that closes those records to the public.

Can the prosecutor still file charges after the arrest is sealed?

Sealing does not erase the prosecutor’s ability to file within the time the law allows for that offense. The record stays available to the police and prosecutors after the seal. An arrest the prosecutor declined years ago is rarely revisited. If a new charge is filed after you apply, the judge holds the ruling until that charge resolves.

Do you need a lawyer to seal a never-charged arrest in Arizona?

No. Any person the law covers is allowed to file on their own. The hard parts are finding which court has jurisdiction when no case was ever filed, pulling the DPS record, and answering a prosecutor’s objection. A denial bars a new application for three years, so a filing that goes in wrong costs you three years.

Is a never-charged arrest sealed automatically after enough time passes?

No. Arizona has no automatic sealing for adult arrests. The record stays in the DPS repository and any court file until a judge signs an order under A.R.S. § 13-911. Time does nothing on its own, no matter how many years pass. The only path is an application filed with the right court and granted by a judge.