To look up arrests, start with the sheriff’s office or police department in the county where the arrest happened, then widen out to state criminal history portals, online court records, PACER for federal cases, and — if the record is your own — the FBI’s Identity History Summary. Which route works depends on whether you know the jurisdiction, whether the case was state or federal, and whether you’re searching yourself or someone else. Each source has different fees, coverage, and access limits.
What to Gather Before You Search
You need the person’s full legal name and an approximate date of birth at a minimum. Aliases help, because records may be filed under a name you don’t know.
The detail that matters most after the name is the jurisdiction. Arrest records are kept locally, so a search in the wrong county or state returns nothing even when the person has an extensive record somewhere else. If you know the city or county, start there. If you only know the state, run a statewide criminal history search. If you have no idea where the arrest happened, you’re looking at federal databases or a commercial service, and the results get less reliable.
One thing to look for in whatever record you pull: disposition data. An arrest is not a conviction. Many arrests never lead to charges, and many charges end in dismissal or acquittal. A record without disposition information shows only that someone was detained, not what came of it.1Bureau of Justice Statistics. Use and Management of Criminal History Record Information: A Comprehensive Report
Local Sheriff and Police Booking Records
Most county sheriff’s offices and city police departments run online portals for recent arrest and booking records. You can usually search by name and date of birth, and many portals display booking photos, charges, and current custody status. Coverage varies. Some agencies post only people currently in custody; others keep searchable databases going back years. These are free and are the fastest way to confirm a recent arrest if you know the jurisdiction.
Not everything sits online. For older records, or in places without much digital infrastructure, you may need to contact the agency directly. Local police and sheriff’s offices accept records requests in person, by mail, and sometimes by phone. Expect a request form, identifying information about the person, and a fee that varies by agency.
State Criminal History and Court Records
Most states run a statewide criminal history search through the department of public safety, state police, or attorney general’s office. These pull from records across the state rather than one county, which helps when you’re not sure exactly where the arrest happened. Name-based state searches generally run between a few dollars and $25, and some states offer limited free searches. Fingerprint-based searches are more accurate because they avoid name-matching errors, but they cost more and are usually available only to the person requesting their own record.
Court clerk websites are the other half of the picture. Once an arrest leads to charges, the case goes into the court system, and most state courts have online case search tools. You won’t see arrests that never produced charges, but you will see the outcomes that matter: convictions, dismissals, sentencing.
Federal Arrests: Searching PACER
Federal cases don’t show up in local or state databases. Federal criminal matters go through the U.S. District Courts, and those records live in the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, or PACER.2United States Courts. Find a Case (PACER)
Registration is open to anyone. If you don’t know which federal court handled the case, the PACER Case Locator runs a nationwide search across federal courts to find whether a person appears in any federal case. If you already know the court, you can search its docket directly.
PACER charges $0.10 per page, capped at $3 per document. If your total charges stay at $30 or less in a calendar quarter, the fees are waived. Court opinions are always free.3PACER. PACER Pricing: How Fees Work
Your Own Record: The FBI Identity History Summary
The FBI keeps the most comprehensive national criminal history file, and you can request your own copy. The Identity History Summary shows any arrests where fingerprints were submitted to the FBI. It costs $18, whether you submit electronically or by mail, and you must provide a current set of fingerprints.4Federal Bureau of Investigation. Identity History Summary Checks Frequently Asked Questions
This is the closest thing to a single nationwide arrest lookup, but only for yourself. You cannot use it to check on someone else.
Looking Up Someone Else’s Federal Record
Requesting another living person’s FBI records requires their written consent or a qualifying legal basis. Requests for information about another person must include evidence of that person’s consent, using the Department of Justice Certification of Identity Form DOJ-361.5Federal Bureau of Investigation. Requesting FBI Records
The Freedom of Information Act won’t fill this gap in most cases. Law enforcement records are covered by FOIA’s Exemption 7, which shields information compiled for law enforcement purposes when disclosure could interfere with proceedings, compromise a fair trial, or invade personal privacy.6FOIA.gov. Freedom of Information Act A FOIA request for another person’s arrest record is usually denied or heavily redacted under the privacy exemption.
Commercial Background Check Sites
Dozens of paid services promise instant criminal record searches, from people-search aggregators to professional screening companies used by employers and landlords. The convenience is real. So are the accuracy problems.
Commercial services pull from various public databases, and that data can be outdated, incomplete, or wrong. A common failure is reporting an arrest without the disposition, so the record shows the arrest but doesn’t mention that charges were dropped. Another is reporting records that have been sealed or expunged. Under federal law, consumer reporting agencies must follow reasonable procedures to ensure maximum possible accuracy, must include existing disposition data when reporting an arrest, and cannot report records that have been sealed or expunged.7Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Fair Credit Reporting; Background Screening
Treat commercial results as a lead, not a conclusion. Verify anything meaningful against the actual government record before you rely on it.
What You Won’t Find
Not every arrest is available to the public, and a blank search doesn’t always mean a clean history.
Sealed records are removed from public view but still exist, and law enforcement, courts, and certain agencies may still see them under specific rules. Expungement goes further and, depending on the state, can treat the arrest as though it never happened, restricting access even from most government entities. Eligibility rules and the practical effect of sealing and expungement vary significantly by state. If you search and find nothing, it may mean the record never existed, or it may mean it was sealed or expunged.
Juvenile arrest records are confidential in the vast majority of states. Access is usually limited to parents or guardians, law enforcement, school authorities, and attorneys involved in the case, and even those people sometimes need a court order.8Justia. Confidentiality of Juvenile Records and Legal Exceptions
Records also age out. Law enforcement agencies follow retention schedules that vary by jurisdiction and severity of offense. Minor offenses may be purged within months; felony arrests can be kept for decades. An older arrest may no longer exist in the agency’s files at all.
Rules That Apply When You Use the Record
Finding a record is one thing. Acting on it, especially for hiring or housing, brings federal law into play.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, consumer reporting agencies generally cannot include arrest records in a background check if the arrest is more than seven years old and did not result in a conviction.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 15 – 1681c Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports Convictions have no reporting time limit. So an arrest from eight years ago that ended in dismissal should not show up on a commercial background report, even though the underlying government record may still exist.
The EEOC’s guidance is that an arrest alone does not establish that someone committed a crime, and rejecting an applicant based solely on an arrest record is not job-related or consistent with business necessity. An employer can consider the conduct underlying the arrest if it bears on fitness for the specific position, but the arrest itself is not enough.10U.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 More than 35 states and over 150 cities and counties have also adopted fair-chance hiring laws, often called “ban the box,” which generally prohibit criminal-history questions on job applications and push background checks later in the hiring process.
If you’re pulling records through a consumer reporting agency for employment, credit, insurance, or housing, you need a permissible purpose under the FCRA. For employment, the law requires the person’s written consent before the report is obtained.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 15 – 1681b Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports Running a background check without consent or another qualifying basis is a federal violation, not just a policy problem.