Even if you have successfully completed a www.sivanabali.com drug rehab program and are now completely clean, there may be aspects of your past, when you were a drug user, that may still feel as though they haunt you. One such scenario is if you were found guilty of a crime related to your drug use, and as a result, now have a criminal record. A criminal record can seem like a large chain holding you back from employment, going back into education or obtaining credit.
It is true that there are many enlightened employers, education establishments and credit organisations which look past someone’s criminal past and try to look at the attributes the person now has, rather than judge them for past indiscretions. It is to their credit than many of these organisations actually see someone going through a drug rehab program as a positive and proof that they can show commitment to achieving a goal.
It has to be said that achieving the goal of giving up drugs, as you may well know, is one which requires a lot more grit and determination than many goals we could mention. Ultimately, it proves that you can focus on something that is difficult to achieve and stay the course until you succeed. To many employers and others deciding upon your value as a person that shows admirable courage and puts your drug rehab in the plus column, rather than the minus column.
However, and as you may have experienced, not all potential employers or others who might have make decisions regarding your future take the same view. At the first sight of any kind of criminality, it sees your application sent directly to the ‘Declined’ pile. The question you may now have is, ‘Can I Fix This?’
First the bad news, and that is you simply cannot wipe clean your conviction from the record as soon as you pay a fine or are released from prison. The simple fact is this is a process for which you are going to have to be patient. However, given that it can have an impact on your life for many years to come, it is worth it.
What you need to request is that your conviction regarded as spent. What this does is remove from the publicly accessible records that you were convicted of a crime. More importantly it removes any obligation on you to disclose that you have been convicted of a crime in your past when applying for jobs, credit, and the like. However, you must understand that it will remain on your court and police files and may be considered if you are convicted of any crimes in the future.
The procedures and the specific authority you contact to have your conviction spent will depend on whether your crime is regarded as a serious conviction or a lesser conviction. Serious is a crime with more than one year imprisonment or a fine greater than $15,000. a lesser conviction is one where the term of imprisonment was less than one year, or the fine was less than $15,000.
Regardless of which authority you need apply to, the usual waiting time before you request that your conviction is spent will be between 5 and 10 years. It might seem a long wait, but it will be worth pursuing if means that the opportunities which are opened up to you increase and improve for you as time passes.