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Crime Information Bureau

Removal of Arrest Information вЂ" Return of Fingerprint Card

Section 165.84(1) of the Wisconsin Statutes states:

"Any person arrested or taken into custody and subsequently released without charge, or cleared of the offense through court proceedings, shall have any fingerprint record taken in connection therewith returned upon request."

If you were arrested and fingerprinted by a Wisconsin criminal justice agency and subsequently released without charges being filed, of the charges were dismissed or you were acquitted by a court, you may have the arrest removed from your record.

However, to qualify, all of the charges listed on the arrest fingerprint card must have been dismissed or not charged. Charges amended to a lesser offense do not qualify for removal.

If an arrest on your record qualifies for removal, you must complete the Fingerprint Record Return Request form and send to:

Crime Information Bureau
Attn: Criminal History Records Section
P.O. Box 2718
Madison, WI 53701-2718

You must include a fingerprint as indicated on the form. If you have documentation substantiating the arrest disposition qualifies for removal, a copy should be included with your request. Do not fax the Fingerprint Record Removal Request form as a faxed fingerprint is not of sufficient quality to be used in this process.

When processed, the arrest fingerprint card and all information related to it will be deleted. If the arrest information was forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), they will be notified and they will destroy their record.

Expungement of a case in court does not satisfy the statutory requirements for removal of arrest information from your criminal record. Expungement by the court only removes the information from the court record, not from the Wisconsin criminal history database. If a case expunged by the court resulted in any type of conviction, it does not qualify for removal of arrest information from the criminal history database. This includes any dispositions under a youthful or first offender provision. If the offense resulted in a conviction with a stipulation that the record be expunged upon successful completion of the terms of the agreement, the court record will be expunged while statute prohibits the removal of the arrest and conviction information from our database. Dispositions under first offender or youthful offender provisions also do not qualify for removal unless the charge was dismissed by the court.

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