Arrest - Following Arrest

Following Arrest

While an arrest will not necessarily lead to a criminal conviction, it may nonetheless in some jurisdictions have serious ramifications such as absence from work, social stigma, and in some cases, the legal obligation to disclose an arrest when a person applies for a job, a loan or a professional license. In the United States, a person who was not found guilty after an arrest can remove his arrest record through an expungement or (in California) a finding of factual innocence. A legal action is sometimes filed against the government for wrongful arrest.

These collateral consequences are more severe in the United States than in the UK, where arrests without conviction do not appear in standard criminal record checks and need not be disclosed. However, 'Enhanced' CRB disclosures permit a Chief Constable to disclose this data if they believe it relevant to the post for which the CRB disclosure was applied for.