What Is a CORI Check? Records, Access, and Your Rights

A CORI check, short for Criminal Offender Record Information check, is a search of Massachusetts’s state criminal history database run through the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services (DCJIS). Employers, landlords, licensing boards, and housing authorities use it to see arrests, charges, convictions, and sentencing information tied to a person’s name in the Commonwealth. Access is governed by Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 6, Sections 168 through 178A, and how much shows up depends entirely on who is asking.¹

What Shows Up on a CORI Report

A CORI report pulls together your interactions with the Massachusetts criminal justice system: arrests, criminal charges, misdemeanor and felony convictions, sentencing details, and status updates like probation or parole. The Commissioner of Probation, the Commissioner of Corrections, and the Parole Board all feed DCJIS with information on sentences served, institutions, and any revocations of release.²

How far back the report reaches depends on the access level of the person requesting it. For the Standard Access level that covers most employers and landlords, a misdemeanor conviction appears only if the disposition or release from incarceration happened within the past five years. A felony conviction appears for ten years. Convictions for murder, manslaughter, and sex offenses never age off. Pending charges always appear, no matter how old.³

If a private background check company runs the check instead of the employer pulling directly from DCJIS, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act adds its own rule: non-conviction records like dismissed charges and acquittals generally can’t be reported after seven years from the date of the charge.⁴

Who Can See Your CORI

Massachusetts law sorts requesters into tiers, and the tier controls how much shows up.³

Criminal justice agencies — police, prosecutors, courts, and the Criminal Record Review Board — see everything, including sealed records, when doing their official work.¹

Required Access employers are organizations with specific statutory, regulatory, or accreditation duties around criminal records: hospitals, banks, schools, day care centers, nursing homes. They receive a broader view going back to your 17th birthday, covering convictions, non-convictions, pending charges, and sealed case indicators.³

Standard Access requesters cover most of the rest: typical employers, landlords, volunteer organizations, and licensing authorities. They see pending charges, recent convictions inside the five-year and ten-year windows, and any murder, manslaughter, or sex offense conviction regardless of age.⁵

Housing authorities can pull CORI when deciding eligibility for public housing. Firearms licensing authorities get full access, including sealed records, but only for that purpose.¹

How to Pull Your Own CORI

You have the right to see exactly what’s on your own CORI, and checking it before you start a job search or apartment hunt is one of the smartest things you can do. Massachusetts offers two routes.⁶

If you have a Massachusetts driver’s license or state ID, register for an iCORI account on the DCJIS website and request your report online. If you don’t have either, download the Personal Request Form from the DCJIS site and mail it in.

The fee is $25. If you can’t afford it, submit an affidavit of indigency and it’s waived. Most requests come back within about 10 business days.⁶

Your Rights When a CORI Is Used Against You

Ban the Box

Most Massachusetts employers can’t ask about your criminal history on a job application. The rule, codified at M.G.L. c. 151B, § 4(9½) and known as Ban the Box, pushes the question later in the hiring process, after the employer has considered your qualifications. Narrow exceptions exist in industries legally barred from hiring people with specific records, like day care and some financial institutions.⁷

Before and After an Adverse Decision

If an employer, landlord, or licensing authority has your criminal history from any source, they must share it with you before asking you questions about it. If they then decide to deny you the job, apartment, or license based on it, they have to give you a copy of the CORI report they relied on and a chance to dispute anything inaccurate.⁸

DCJIS publishes a model adverse action letter. It requires the organization to include a copy of your CORI, their written CORI policy, instructions on how to correct errors, and a deadline for your response before the decision becomes final.⁹

FCRA Protections

When an employer uses a third-party background check company rather than running CORI through DCJIS, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act layers on more rights. Before pulling the report, the employer has to tell you in writing, in a standalone document, that it may use the information to make employment decisions, and it must get your written permission. Before taking adverse action, it must give you a copy of the report and a written summary of your FCRA rights. After the adverse decision, it must notify you again with the reporting company’s contact information and a reminder that you can dispute errors or request a free copy of the report within 60 days.¹⁰

EEOC Individualized Assessment

The EEOC’s enforcement guidance tells employers who screen out applicants over criminal records to do an individualized assessment: the nature of the offense, the time that has passed, and the nature of the job. The employer should let you know you may be excluded, give you a chance to explain, and consider rehabilitation evidence before making a final call.¹¹

Fixing Errors on Your Report

Mistakes on CORI reports happen more often than people expect, especially when names or dates of birth overlap with someone else’s. You can file a complaint with DCJIS, but DCJIS distributes the data; it doesn’t own it. Courts and the Commissioner of Probation hold the original records, so the fix usually has to happen at the court where the charge was arraigned.¹²¹³

Waiting until an employer slides a report with mistakes across the table puts you in a defensive position at the worst possible moment. Pulling your own CORI first gives you time to clean it up.

Sealing and Expungement

Sealing a record doesn’t destroy it; it restricts who can see it. Standard Access requesters, including typical employers and landlords, won’t see sealed records. Criminal justice agencies and some Required Access entities still see sealed case indicators.

Under M.G.L. c. 276, § 100A, you can petition to seal a conviction after a waiting period of at least three years for a misdemeanor or seven years for a felony, measured from the date of conviction or release from incarceration, whichever is later.¹⁴

One trap worth knowing: the clock restarts on any new conviction or incarceration. If you were convicted of a misdemeanor in 2020 and then convicted of another offense in 2023, you can’t seal the 2020 case until at least three years after the 2023 conviction. The waiting period runs from the most recent event, not each case on its own.

If your record involves a dismissal, acquittal, or finding of no probable cause, sealing is often available immediately with no waiting period.

Expungement goes further. A sealed record still exists and can be reached by court order; an expunged record is destroyed and is not accessible to any state, municipal, or county agency. Massachusetts set up a formal expungement process under M.G.L. c. 276, §§ 100E through 100U, but it’s narrow, generally reserved for records resulting from fraud, identity errors, or conduct that is no longer a crime. A separate section, § 100K¼, covers certain marijuana offenses.¹⁵

Penalties If Someone Misuses Your CORI

The Criminal Record Review Board investigates complaints about violations of the CORI statutes and can impose civil fines of up to $50,000 for each knowing violation.¹⁶ Organizations found in violation can also lose CORI access entirely, which for regulated employers effectively ends their ability to hire. An employer that fails to show you your CORI before questioning you, or skips the adverse action notification process, is exposing itself to a Board investigation and sanctions.⁸

If the misuse of criminal history has a discriminatory impact based on race or another protected characteristic, you can also file with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination or the EEOC.

1
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 6 Section 172
2
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 6 Section 168A
3
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Levels of Name-Based Criminal Record Check Access
4
Federal Register. Fair Credit Reporting Background Screening
5
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Implementing CORI Reform
6
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Request CORI As An Individual
7
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Guide to Criminal Records in Employment and Housing
8
General Court of Massachusetts. Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 6 Section 171A
9
Massachusetts Department of Criminal Justice Information Services. MODEL Adverse Action Notification Letter
10
Federal Trade Commission. Employer Background Checks and Your Rights
11
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
12
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. CORI Frequently Asked Questions
13
Cornell Law School. 803 CMR 2.26 – Inaccurate CORI
14
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Find Out If You Can Seal Your Criminal Record
15
Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Law About Criminal Records CORI
16
Cornell Law School. 803 CMR 2.28 – The Criminal Record Review Board