Under what circumstances could the criminal record be deleted?
Once a person has been convicted of a criminal offence, the criminal record cannot be deleted from the police or court files (unless the offender successfully appealed against the conviction).
However, under section 2 of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Ordinance (Cap. 297), if a person has not previously committed any offence before his conviction and is not sentenced to imprisonment exceeding 3 months or a fine exceeding HK$10,000, that person’s conviction record will be considered “spent” if he does not re-offended within a period of 3 years.
The effect of a spent conviction is that, in general, that person should be regarded as not having been convicted of the offence. For example, if that person is asked by his potential employer or other person whether he has committed any offence before, he can simply say “No”. He cannot be dismissed by his employer on the ground that he did not disclose his criminal record or on the ground that he has a conviction (see section 2 of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Ordinance). However, it is noteworthy that this spent conviction scheme is subject to a number of exceptions. For example, it does not apply if that person wants to apply for certain high ranking jobs in the Government, or to become a lawyer, accountant, insurance broker or director of a licensed bank (see sections 3 and 4 of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Ordinance for further details of the exceptions). Simply put, a person’s spent criminal record may still be adduced against him in certain scenarios.
Moreover, if that person applies for a Certificate of No Criminal Conviction from the police for emigration purposes, the police will still disclose such criminal record in the Certificate with a note that the relevant conviction is regarded as spent under Hong Kong Law.