To check if you have a warrant, search your state or county’s online warrant database, call the court clerk’s office where you think a warrant might have been issued, or hire a criminal defense attorney to check on your behalf. Which method makes sense depends on how likely you think it is that a warrant exists, because walking into a police station or sheriff’s office to ask can lead to an on-the-spot arrest if one turns up. Before you start, gather your full legal name, date of birth, and any aliases or former names you’ve used. Warrant records are matched to specific identities, and a small spelling difference or a name change can cause a real warrant to slip past your search.
Search an Online Warrant Database
Many states and counties publish free, searchable warrant databases on official government websites. You enter your name and date of birth, and the system returns any matching active warrants. Some states run a single statewide system that pulls from courts across the state. Others leave it to each county, which means you may need to run the same search in every county where you’ve lived or had a legal matter.
Stick to sites ending in .gov or hosted on an official court or sheriff’s domain. These searches are anonymous, they cost nothing, and there is no risk of arrest from running one.
The limitation is coverage. No single public database covers the entire country. A warrant issued in one county may not appear in another county’s system, and plenty of smaller jurisdictions have no online database at all. A clean result in your current county says nothing about warrants elsewhere.
Have an Attorney Check for You
If you actually suspect a warrant exists, a criminal defense attorney is the safest place to start. Attorneys can contact courts and law enforcement agencies on your behalf, and in many jurisdictions they have access to legal databases and law enforcement portals that aren’t open to the public. The inquiry doesn’t reveal your location, and if a warrant does show up, the attorney can advise you on what it’s for and how to handle it before you have any contact with police. The cost of a consultation is small compared to the disruption of being arrested unexpectedly.
Call the Court Clerk
Most court clerk offices will confirm whether a warrant exists if you call and provide your full name and date of birth. Criminal and traffic court clerks keep records of warrants issued by their courts. You’re not physically present, so the immediate arrest risk is low, though some offices decline to share warrant information over the phone. Call during regular business hours and have your identifying details ready.
Why In-Person Checks Are Risky
You can also visit a court clerk’s office or sheriff’s department in person, and some agencies keep public terminals where you can search records yourself. The information is reliable. The catch is that if an active warrant appears in your name, officers in the building have the authority, and generally the obligation, to arrest you on the spot. This is not a rare outcome. It happens routinely.
A court clerk’s office is somewhat safer than a police station or sheriff’s department because clerks are administrative staff, not law enforcement. But deputies are usually nearby in a courthouse. If you have any reason to think a warrant might exist, exhaust the remote options first: online databases, phone calls, or an attorney search.
Know Which Warrant You’re Looking For
When you search for warrants in your own name, you’re looking for two kinds.
An arrest warrant is issued when a judge finds probable cause that a specific person committed a crime. Law enforcement then actively looks for that person to take them into custody.
A bench warrant comes directly from a judge, usually because of a failure to follow a court order rather than a new crime. The common triggers are missing a court date (a “failure to appear”), violating probation, skipping jury duty, or not paying court-ordered fines or child support. Bench warrants carry the same arrest authority as an arrest warrant.
Search warrants are a separate category. They authorize a search of a specific place for evidence and are executed against the location, not served on a person, so they aren’t something you’d typically check for in advance.
Avoid Paid “Warrant Check” Sites and Scam Calls
Legitimate government warrant databases are free. Third-party websites that charge $20 or $30 for a warrant check are, at best, pulling the same public records you can access yourself, and often they return nothing accurate at all.
Phone scams are a bigger problem. Scammers impersonate law enforcement, claim you have an outstanding warrant, and demand immediate payment to avoid arrest. The U.S. Marshals Service and FBI have issued joint warnings about these schemes. The signs are consistent: payment demanded by gift card, prepaid debit card, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency; urgency and threats of immediate arrest; spoofed caller ID that looks like a government number; and references to real judge names or badge numbers to sound credible.1U.S. Marshals Service. U.S. Marshals, FBI Urge Public: Report Phone Scams
No legitimate law enforcement agency asks for gift cards, cryptocurrency, or wire transfers to resolve a warrant. Hang up. Verify independently by calling the clerk of court’s office at a number you look up yourself, not one the caller gives you. Scams can be reported to your local FBI field office and the Federal Trade Commission.
Checking for Warrants in Another State
If you’ve lived in more than one state, this gets harder. There is no single public database that searches every jurisdiction. State and county systems only cover their own territory. You’ll need to run searches in each state and county where you had legal encounters, lived, or picked up a traffic citation. For jurisdictions that don’t offer online searches, call the court clerk in the county where the matter would have been handled.
An attorney licensed in the relevant state can also run searches through law enforcement databases. The FBI’s National Crime Information Center covers warrants nationwide, but access is limited to law enforcement and authorized criminal justice agencies. The public cannot search it directly.2Federation of American Scientists. National Crime Information Center (NCIC) – FBI Information Systems
If You Find a Warrant
Talk to a criminal defense attorney before you contact the court or law enforcement. An attorney can confirm the warrant, explain the underlying charge or missed obligation, and plan your next step. In many cases they can arrange the terms of a voluntary surrender in advance, setting a specific date, time, and location so the process is controlled.
Turning yourself in voluntarily is almost always better than waiting to be picked up. Courts treat self-surrender as a sign you’re taking the case seriously, which can influence bail. For non-violent offenses, voluntary surrender often produces more favorable bail terms and a faster release. For many misdemeanor bench warrants, it may result in release on your own recognizance with no cash bail. When law enforcement has to track you down, a judge is more likely to see you as a flight risk and set bail higher, or deny it.
Sometimes an attorney can file a motion to quash the warrant, asking the court to declare it invalid. This is an option when there’s a legal defect in how the warrant was issued, when the underlying charges don’t support one, or when a bench warrant was issued over a court date you never received notice of. If the motion is granted, the warrant is canceled. If it’s denied, you’ll still need to address the warrant through surrender or a court appearance.
Warrants Don’t Expire
One thing worth knowing before you decide whether to check: warrants don’t go away on their own. Neither arrest warrants nor bench warrants have an expiration date. A warrant issued ten years ago is still active until a judge recalls it, you resolve it through the court, or an officer executes it. Outstanding warrants sit in law enforcement databases, and when an officer runs your name during a traffic stop, a background check, or any other encounter, the warrant will surface.2Federation of American Scientists. National Crime Information Center (NCIC) – FBI Information Systems People are arrested on decades-old warrants during routine encounters they never expected to matter. If you have reason to think a warrant might exist, checking now, safely, is almost always the better move than waiting to find out the hard way.