Spent Convictions in the ACT: Waiting Periods, Extinguishment and the 6-Month Bar

In the Australian Capital Territory, most convictions become spent automatically once a crime-free period passes, without any application: 10 years for an adult conviction, or 5 years where the person was dealt with as a juvenile, but a conviction that drew a sentence of longer than 6 months' imprisonment can never become spent, a sharply stricter threshold than the Commonwealth's 30-month rule.

This article addresses when a criminal conviction becomes spent under ACT law, meaning it no longer needs to be disclosed and generally will not appear on an ordinary police check. It does not tell a reader whether their own specific conviction is, or will become, spent. For the Commonwealth scheme and how other jurisdictions differ, see spent convictions in Australia.

The Spent Convictions Act 2000: Automatic, With a Court Path for Youth Sexual Offences

The ACT's scheme runs under the Spent Convictions Act 2000 (ACT), citation A2000-48, currently in force. Under section 12(1), a conviction, other than a youth sexual offence conviction, is spent on completion of the relevant crime-free period, by operation of law: no application or court order is required. The one exception is a youth sexual offence conviction, which follows a distinct, narrower path under Division 2.2: the person must apply to a court, with the chief police officer and the Director of Public Prosecutions notified, and the conviction becomes spent only when the court makes an order to that effect. Ordinary juvenile convictions that are not sexual offences still spend automatically, against the shorter 5-year period below.

How Long Until a Conviction Is Spent in the ACT

The crime-free period itself is defined as a period during which the person was not subject to a control order, not convicted of an offence punishable by imprisonment, not in prison because of a conviction, and not unlawfully at large. Traffic offences are quarantined from non-traffic offences for this purpose, so a traffic conviction does not reset the clock on a non-traffic record and vice versa, with an exception list broader than driving-death or driving-injury offences alone: it also includes any offence under the Road Transport (Alcohol and Drugs) Act 1977 Part 3, covering prescribed-concentration alcohol or drug driving and refusing a breath or blood test regardless of whether anyone was injured, along with furious, reckless or dangerous driving and menacing driving generally, none of which require a death or injury outcome. A narrower group limited to driving-death and driving-injury offences, including culpable driving and drink or drug driving causing death or grievous bodily harm, also counts against both tracks.

The Permanent-Exclusion Threshold: Stricter Than the Commonwealth's

Section 11(2)(a) sets the ACT's entire permanent-imprisonment-bar rule: a conviction cannot become spent if it is for an offence committed by an offender who was at least 14 years old at the time, and for which a sentence of imprisonment of longer than 6 months was imposed. There is no separate lower or higher tier by offence type; it is a single, flat cutoff.

That figure is worth stating clearly because it runs against an intuitive assumption. The ACT has an unusually close relationship with Commonwealth law and policing, ACT Policing is delivered by the Australian Federal Police, and the Spent Convictions Act's own provisions extensively discuss how the Commonwealth's Crimes Act 1914 scheme interacts with ACT law. A reader might reasonably expect the ACT to mirror the Commonwealth's 30-month sentence ceiling. It does not. The AFP's own official guidance on spent convictions and police checks independently states the same figure, "a sentence of more than 6 months imprisonment", confirming the ACT Act's own text on a second, separate source.

Three further categories are permanently excluded under section 11(2): any conviction for a sexual offence, other than a youth sexual offence conviction, which instead follows the court-application path above; any conviction of a corporation, since the scheme applies to natural persons only; and any offence prescribed by regulation, a residual power under section 23. No specific offence class prescribed under this last category was located in the Act's own text; a reader should not assume this list is necessarily empty without checking the Spent Convictions Regulation directly.

What "Spent" Means, and the Disclosure Offences

Section 16 sets the legal effect once a conviction is spent: the person is not required to disclose it, a question about criminal history is taken to refer only to non-spent convictions, and a reference to "conviction" or to a person's "character" in any ACT Act excludes the spent conviction.

Two offences protect that status. Under section 17, a person with access to conviction records kept by or on behalf of a public authority who discloses spent-conviction information without lawful authority faces a maximum penalty of 50 penalty units, 6 months' imprisonment, or both, with carve-outs for ordinary archive and library access and for law-enforcement-to-law-enforcement or law-enforcement-to-court disclosures. Under section 18, fraudulently or dishonestly obtaining spent-conviction information carries the same maximum.

The current penalty-unit value, as stated in the Act's own republication effective 26 November 2025, is $160 for an individual and $810 for a corporation. At that value, the 50-penalty-unit maximum works out to $8,000 for an individual, a comparatively high figure among the states and territories, driven by the ACT's penalty unit itself being set higher than most.

Extinguished Convictions Are Not the Same as Spent

A 2023 reform inserted a related but distinct status into the same Act. The Justice (Age of Criminal Responsibility) Legislation Amendment Act 2023 added Part 3AA, "Extinguishing youth offence convictions", as part of the ACT's raising of the minimum age of criminal responsibility, with most of the relevant provisions commencing 1 July 2025. Under this Part, a "youth offence conviction", meaning an offence committed by a person under 14 at the time, is now extinguished outright, a stronger status than spending, and one available regardless of the section 11(2)(a) imprisonment bar. There are exceptions: extinguishment does not apply to murder, intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm, first-degree sexual assault, or a first-degree act of indecency, where the person was at least 12 when they committed the offence.

Extinguished convictions carry the same protection as spent convictions: unlawfully disclosing or improperly obtaining information about one attracts the identical maximum, 50 penalty units, 6 months' imprisonment, or both, under sections 19I and 19J. A reader should not treat "extinguished" as simply a synonym for "spent"; it is a separate, stronger status with its own eligibility rules.

Where a Spent Conviction Can Still Be Disclosed

Section 19 lists an exhaustive set of roles and applications where the non-disclosure right does not apply. It covers judicial, magistrate, JP and police officer roles; prison officers; teachers, teacher's aides and childcare, aged-care and disability-care providers or workers; casino employees; interactive gambling licences; Working with Vulnerable People registration under the 2011 Act; race and sports bookmaking licences; sex work registration notices; security industry licensing; and ACT Teacher Quality Institute registration. Arson and attempted-arson convictions are separately carved out for fire-fighting and fire-prevention roles. In court proceedings, a spent conviction can still be given in evidence, though the court must take reasonably available steps to minimise publication of that evidence, and firearms-suitability decisions under the Firearms Act 1996 (ACT) are also excluded from the non-disclosure right.

The Working with Vulnerable People carve-out is worth explaining precisely rather than assuming it means everything is disclosed. The WWVP Act's own section 24 excludes spent and extinguished convictions from the formal definition of "criminal history", consistent with the ordinary effect of section 16. But a separate provision, section 25(f), defines a spent conviction for a "relevant offence" as "non-conviction information", and that category is considered as part of a WWVP risk assessment under Part 5. In practice, a spent conviction is kept out of "criminal history" proper, but it is not simply invisible to the WWVP process; it is folded into a different assessment bucket the scheme still weighs. See Working with Vulnerable People registration in the ACT for how that registration works.

How a Spent Conviction Shows on a National Police Check

This article does not re-derive how the national police check process works generally; see national police checks in Australia for that. For ACT purposes, the AFP releases police check information under either ACT or Commonwealth legislation, depending on the purpose of the check and the nature of the offence, not simply on where the applicant lives. Because ACT Policing is delivered by the AFP, ACT residents apply for a national police check directly through the AFP rather than through a separate territory police office, though this is an administrative channel point only; the content rules governing what a spent conviction disclosure looks like are still keyed to the purpose and offence type under either Act, not to which agency delivers the check.

Anti-Discrimination Protection in the ACT

The Discrimination Act 1991 (ACT) has protected against criminal-record discrimination since 3 April 2017, the commencement date of the second of two tranches under the Discrimination Amendment Act 2016. Section 7(1)(k) lists "irrelevant criminal record" as a protected attribute, alongside disability, age, gender identity and immigration status among others. The definition is broader than "spent conviction" alone: it also covers unfinalised charges, lapsed or withdrawn charges, acquittals, quashed convictions, infringement notices, and extinguished convictions under the Spent Convictions Act.

The protection is not absolute, though. A spent conviction is "irrelevant" for discrimination purposes unless the circumstances of the offence are directly relevant to the situation, or the Spent Convictions Act's own section 19 already excludes the non-disclosure right for that situation. In other words, wherever section 19 already permits a spent conviction to be disclosed or used, such as for a police, WWVP, or firearms decision, the anti-discrimination protection for that same conviction falls away at the same point. This is a genuine cross-reference between two Acts rather than a blanket, unconditional protection.

Recent Reforms

The most substantive recent change is the extinguishment reform described above, mostly in force since 1 July 2025. The Statute Law Amendment Act 2025, the Act's most recent amendment overall, is a technical, editorial change to numbering and cross-references only, and does not alter any substantive rule.

This article provides general legal information about spent convictions in the Australian Capital Territory, verified against the Spent Convictions Act 2000 (ACT) as accessed 18 August 2026. It does not assess whether any individual reader's own conviction is, or will become, spent. For advice on your situation, consult a legal practitioner admitted in the Australian Capital Territory.

Related reading: spent convictions in Australia, the background checks hub, national police checks in Australia, Working with Vulnerable People registration in the ACT, and criminal record and employment rights in Australia.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long until a conviction becomes spent in the ACT?

Automatically, with no application: 5 years where the person was not dealt with as an adult in relation to the conviction, and 10 years in any other case, both measured against the crime-free period the Act defines. A youth sexual offence conviction instead requires a court application before it can be spent.

Does the ACT use the Commonwealth's 30-month sentence rule?

No. The ACT's own permanent-exclusion threshold, under section 11(2)(a) of the Spent Convictions Act 2000, is a sentence of longer than 6 months' imprisonment, a materially stricter cutoff than the Commonwealth's 30-month ceiling. This has been independently confirmed against both the ACT Act itself and the Australian Federal Police's own guidance.

What is the difference between a spent and an extinguished conviction in the ACT?

Extinguishment is a stronger status, introduced for youth offence convictions where the offence was committed before the person turned 14. Unlike spending, extinguishment is available even where a conviction could never become spent under the 6-month imprisonment bar, subject to exceptions for the most serious offences.

Will a spent conviction show up on a Working with Vulnerable People check?

It is kept out of a person's formal "criminal history" for WWVP purposes, but a spent conviction for a relevant offence is separately defined as "non-conviction information", which the WWVP risk-assessment process does consider. It is not simply invisible to that process.

What is the penalty for unlawfully disclosing a spent conviction in the ACT?

Up to 50 penalty units, 6 months' imprisonment, or both. At the ACT's current penalty-unit value of $160, that is a maximum of $8,000 for an individual. The same maximum applies to improperly obtaining spent-conviction information, and to unlawfully disclosing or obtaining information about an extinguished conviction.

Does the ACT protect against criminal-record discrimination?

Yes, since 3 April 2017. The Discrimination Act 1991 (ACT) lists "irrelevant criminal record", a category that includes spent and extinguished convictions, as a protected attribute. That protection is not absolute; it does not apply where the Spent Convictions Act's own exclusions, such as for police or Working with Vulnerable People decisions, already permit disclosure.