How long does a DUI stay on your record?

The question has no answer as asked, because a single arrest creates three separate records and they expire on three separate schedules. One of them ends in months. One of them ends after a number of years that is different in every state. And one of them, in four of the six states we have read, does not end at all.

Three records, and why people conflate them

When somebody asks how long a DUI stays on their record, they are usually asking one of three questions without realising the answers differ:

1. Will a background check show it? That is the criminal record — the court's own file, which private screeners reproduce.
2. Will this make my next one a second offense? That is the prior-offense window, written into the sentencing statute.
3. When do I get my license back and when does the device come off? That is the driving record, held by the licensing agency.

Nothing links the three. A conviction can drop out of the sentencing window while remaining permanently on the criminal record, and the license can be fully restored years before either. California says as much on the face of its statute: the dismissal available under Penal Code section 1203.4 is granted “except as provided in Section 13555 of the Vehicle Code”, which is the section preserving the license action. One remedy, expressly not touching the other file.

The prior-offense window, state by state

This is the clock that actually expires, and it is the one worth knowing the exact rule for, because the difference between a first and a second offense is usually larger than anything else in the case. The windows below were read from each state's own sentencing provisions.

Three of those rows carry a rule about how the window is measured, and each one moves real dates:

• Georgia counts arrest to arrest. Section 40-6-391(c) measures the ten years “from the dates of previous arrests for which convictions were obtained” to the date of the current arrest. A case arrested in 2017 and resolved in 2019 stops counting in 2027, not 2029.
• Arizona counts by date of commission and stops the clock. Section 28-1383(B) says the dates the offenses were committed decide it regardless of the order they were committed in, and excludes time spent incarcerated or on absconder status. An 84-month window is longer than 84 calendar months for anyone who served a sentence inside it.
• Florida stops counting entirely at the fourth. Section 316.193(2)(b)3. makes a fourth conviction a third-degree felony regardless of when the earlier ones happened, and the permanent revocation reaches back to conduct after 1 July 1982.

The criminal record, and the word “expungement”

Four of the six states on this site have a sealing or restriction statute that would reach an ordinary misdemeanor, and then excludes impaired driving from it explicitly. It is worth reading the exclusions rather than the headlines, because they are unusually direct:

• Colorado — the sealing provisions “do not apply to” a conviction for a violation of section 42-4-1301(1) or (2). DUI, DUI per se and DWAI, named in the exclusion list at section 24-72-706(2)(a)(III).
• Georgia — record restriction does not reach “any serious traffic offense in violation of Article 15 of Chapter 6 of Title 40”, and the DUI statute lives in that article.
• Florida — the exclusion is indirect and more complete. Sealing depends on adjudication having been withheld, and section 316.656(1) forbids any court from withholding adjudication for a DUI. The door is closed without the sealing statute ever mentioning DUI.
• Texas — expunction exists for cases that ended without a conviction. A DWI conviction is not one of those.

The two states that offer something offer less than the word suggests. California's Penal Code section 1203.4 permits the plea to be withdrawn and the case dismissed after probation, then says in the same section that the conviction “may be pleaded and proved” in a later prosecution with the same effect as if probation had never been granted. Arizona's section 13-905 sets aside the judgment and releases the person from the resulting penalties, while leaving the conviction itself on the record.

Neither is an erasure, and the distinction is not academic. It decides what you must disclose, whether the case counts as a prior, and what a screener sees. The expungement guide takes each of the four remedies apart.

The driving record, which does close

This is the file that behaves the way people expect records to behave. It has end dates, they are in the statute, and they arrive.

The administrative suspension that follows the arrest runs for four months in California on a first excess-BAC finding, six months in Florida, nine months in Colorado, at least ninety days in Arizona, ninety days in Texas. The conviction then produces a second, longer license consequence under a different section. The interlock restriction runs on a third clock that in Colorado starts at reinstatement rather than at conviction, so it can still be running long after the revocation ends.

What the driving record does not do is forget the event for the purposes of the next case. The prior is in the court file, and the license file closing does not remove it from there.

Where the seven-year answer comes from, and why it is wrong here

Seven years is a real number from a real rule, and it belongs to consumer reporting rather than to criminal law. The Fair Credit Reporting Act limits how long a consumer reporting agency may report certain adverse items, and it treats arrest records and conviction records differently. Employers running background checks through a screening company are inside that system.

Prosecutors are not. A prosecutor deciding whether today's charge is a second offense looks at the court's own record and at the interstate driver record exchange, and neither has a seven-year rule in it. So the answer “it falls off after seven years” can be true of one report and false of the thing that decides whether you are facing ten days or ninety.

What actually changes the answer

Only one thing reliably shortens every clock at once, and it happens at the beginning rather than at the end: the case resolving as something other than an impaired-driving offense. A charge that ends in a dismissal, an acquittal, or a conviction under a different section is not a prior for the window, is not excluded from the sealing statute by section number, and does not carry the license consequence keyed to the DUI statute.

That is why the disposition matters more than the sentence in every state on this list, and it is most extreme in the states where the record is permanent. In a state with sealing available after five years, accepting a conviction to end a case is a defensible trade. In Georgia, Florida and Colorado it is not a trade; it is the permanent version.

Common questions