Six years ago, my underage son was arrested, along with several friends, after they went to a bar and bought themselves drinks with a fake id. The judge in their cases offered them the choice of a felony charge or they could complete a new drug/alcohol program that this judge had started and upon completion, their cases would be disposed. This was the first trouble he had ever been in and has had a clean record since and has been attending college and doing great! Now he has been accepted into a nursing program and has to complete a background check prior to actually being accepted into the program. Does anyone know what will show up on this background check? Will this crush his hard efforts and dreams and continue to punish him, or will he be able to put all this behind him and move on?

Was his arrest as a minor or a adult ?

All minor records are sealed anyway at 18 in GA.

If they were arrested and charged as a adult, did anyone go back to court to be sure that the judge actually did dismiss the charges.

Next "disposed" he can either dismiss the charges, ( as if he was never charged) or he can seal the records.

That is the big issue and most important.

Then I will even go further, there are 100's of private search companies that often find and contain lots of records not on the official government records, so if they found his arrest, it may show up on them.

Assuming the judge dismissed it, then it would not be a conviction.

And is that the question, have you ever been convicted, or does it ask, have you ever been arrested.

He was charged as an adult but their was never a conviction. According to the attorney and the agreement with the judge, the case would be disposed. He met the requirements without any problems. I figured his best bet is to be honest and if it states arrested answer yes, but convicted he should answer no... is that correct?

I also have another question regarding this... I went to the public site in our state and when I pull his name up it gives me the charges and dates of arrest and the date of dispo for the charges. It also gives the case number. When I try to pull it up by the case number, nothing shows??