Originally Posted by
dajur
Here's my experience, which may give some hope to people without a pristine history with the law.
18 years ago, as a juvenile, 15 at the time, I was convicted of possession of stolen property, felony level due to the value of the item.
I was hesitant to apply based on that and considered just going with precheck, but decided to try it. I applied Saturday 9-13, got the conditional approval the following Monday at 8am. Got lucky and got an interview spot Tuesday morning and was approved without incident.
I was honest on the application. In the free form text of the "convicted of a crime" section I stated the charge, and described the sentence (probation) and noted it was completed without incident. I didn't mention misdemeanor or felony though. Based on the speed of conditional approval I'm confident no human read that part prior to conditional approval.
At the interview was asked if convicted of a crime, said yes and restated the charge, place and approximate date, and explained the general details of what I had done. She asked if it had been expunged, I explained it was sealed, but that the state it occurred in had no option for expungement for juveniles.
After that she took my finger prints and photo and told me I was approved.
I'm happy to hear this b/c so many of us have silly juvenile stuff in our histories. After hemming and hawing I decided to stick with precheck b/c I travel internationally so rarely (tops 1x averaging per year). I was approved in 3 days. Answered NO to conviction questions (my juvenile record does not have a "conviction") and that was that. I didn't want the hassle of GE overall, esp given the stories I've heard and the fact that no GE interviews in my city (but we do have pre check). But I'm glad to read about an instance where such a record was not an impediment to GE.