Arrest records, and what they actually prove. Search 1,408 arrest-stage jurisdictions.
An arrest record says one thing: a person was taken into custody on a date, on the charges written down at that moment.
Looking for who is in custody now? Try the inmate search, or search criminal records across every layer.
Search arrest records by name. Free, in every county that publishes them.
Use the search at the top of this page. It runs your name across 1,408 county booking rosters at once, plus court records where a court publishes them, so you are not visiting county websites one by one.
Type the full name
First and last name. A middle initial helps when the name is common.
Add a date of birth or an age
Rosters often publish an age rather than a birthday, so an approximate age still narrows the list.
Read the stage on each result
Every result says whether it is an arrest, a charge or an outcome. Only the outcome says how the case ended.
Open the official record
Each result links to the county or court that holds it, so you can check it before you act. A Background Check is $9.99, paid once.
Arrest, charge, disposition: three records, three different claims. They are separate records, made by separate people at separate points in a case.
Lumping them together as a “criminal record” is how a person who was never convicted of anything ends up treated as though they were.
The arrest
The charge
The disposition
The shorthand worth remembering: an arrest is an accusation made at speed, a charge is an accusation made formally, and only a disposition is an answer. A search that returns the first two and not the third has told you that something began, not how it ended. See court records and dispositions for the layer that carries the outcome.
Arrest record outcomes: in 16 of 52 jurisdictions, the outcome is not reachable statewide
Court publishing in the US is fragmented: a statewide court source exists for 35 of the 52 jurisdictions we cover. In the remaining 16, dispositions are held court by court rather than in any single statewide system, so there is no statewide answer to the question “how did this case end?”
jurisdictions with no statewide court source
jurisdictions where a disposition is reachable statewide
What that means in practice
Across much of the country, arrest-stage information is not merely the easiest record to find; it is often the only one available at the state level. That is why arrest records dominate what people see, and why they get read as verdicts. The absence of the disposition is not neutral: it leaves the accusation standing alone.
What to do about it
Treat an arrest-stage hit as an open question. Where a statewide court source exists, check the disposition before you conclude anything. Where it does not, the answer lives with the individual court that heard the case, and an unresolved arrest record is not a substitute for it. Our results name which jurisdictions answered, so an incomplete search is never handed back to you as an empty one.
Arrest records by state: where you can see how a case ended, and where only the arrest shows.
A dash is not a gap in our roster; it is a statement about what that jurisdiction publishes at the state level. See each state and what it publishes ›
Arrest records live in the county custody layer. Arrest-stage information is published by 1,408 county custody jurisdictions, one at a time, on their own terms. One search reaches the 1,027 that answer today, instead of you visiting counties one by one.
Searching more than one of these at once is what criminal record search is for. Each result is labelled with the county or court that holds it, so a booking never looks like a conviction.
Arrests, charges and convictions on our index
In a random sample of 66,154 US criminal records on our index, 50% are state prison (department of corrections) records and 49% are court cases.
41% of those records include charge detail. Among them, the most common charges are theft, larceny and stolen property (14%), drug possession (13%) and assault, battery and threats (10%).
Where a record states the level of the charge (9% of records), 60% are felonies and 34% misdemeanors.
93% of court cases on our index do not state an outcome. Among those that do, 43% ended in a conviction, guilty plea or adjudication, 14% were dismissed or found not guilty, and 43% are still open.
A jail booking records an arrest and the charges at booking. It is not a conviction.
Based on a random sample of 66,154 records on our index (2026-10-08). Categories are our grouping of the charge text each court, jail or agency publishes; a record can include charges in several categories. Percentages are rounded. See criminal charge types and what shows up on a background check.
Arrest record use: this record follows real people. An arrest record attaches to a person at the moment of accusation and often never detaches, including when the accusation went nowhere.
Names repeat, and they repeat a lot
A name plus a rough age is not an identity. Common names collide constantly, and the wrong-person match is the most frequent error in public-record searching. Treat a name-only match as a lead rather than a finding.
Most arrests are not convictions
People arrested and never charged, charged and never convicted, or convicted of something far smaller than the booking charge all carry an arrest record that looks identical from the outside.
Harassment is a crime
Using a public record to harass, intimidate or threaten anyone is a crime; every US state has a stalking or harassment statute that reaches it. A record being public is not a licence to act on it.
Not a consumer report
Standard results are not a consumer report. Employment, tenancy, credit and insurance decisions run through FCRA Partner Access, where the federal seven-year rule for non-conviction records is applied before anything is furnished.
Arrest record questions
Check a name now
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Run a Background Check ›What is an arrest record?
A record that a person was taken into custody on a date, on the charges written down at that moment. That is the entire claim it makes. It is created at the beginning of a case, before a prosecutor has decided whether to file anything and long before a judge has decided anything at all, so it describes a decision by one officer, on one day, on the information available then.
Does an arrest record mean someone was convicted?
No, and this is the single most consequential misreading in US public records. A large share of arrests never become charges, and a large share of charges are reduced, dismissed or resolved without a conviction. The record that says how a case ended is the disposition, which lives in the court layer: a different record, in a different system, that frequently does not exist at the state level at all.
Why can I find the arrest but not the outcome?
Because those are two different records published by two different kinds of jurisdiction, and they are not published equally. County custody jurisdictions publish arrest-stage information widely; 1,408 of them are in our roster. Statewide court sources exist for 36 of the 52 jurisdictions we cover, so for 16 of them there is no statewide disposition answer to find. The asymmetry is structural, not an oversight on your part.
How long does an arrest record stay visible?
Often indefinitely, and often past the point where it describes anything true about the person. Expungement and sealing exist in most states but are opt-in, procedural and frequently unused, so a dismissed case from years ago can remain the loudest thing attached to a name. Treat the age of a record as a reason to verify it, not as evidence that nothing changed.
Can I use an arrest record to make a hiring or housing decision?
Not on this data. Standard results are not a consumer report; FCRA-covered decisions run through FCRA Partner Access, a separately enabled regulated service with its own controls. Several states and cities separately restrict the use of non-conviction arrest information in hiring and tenancy outright. Build screening on adjudicated outcomes, and treat an arrest-stage hit as a pointer to verify rather than a finding.
Arrest records and the rest of the picture
Criminal record search
One search across the custody, court, warrant and registry layers, with each result labelled by the jurisdiction that holds it.
Inmate search
Jail is pre-trial custody; prison is post-conviction. Two different systems answering two different questions about the same person.
Court records search
The disposition layer: case number, charge and how the case ended, where a court publishes it.
Warrant search
People sought rather than held. A warrant is a different claim again from an arrest that already happened.
Arrest records API. The same layers as a single endpoint, with per-jurisdiction status on every response.
$0.15 per call with volume tiers, sex offender search on the same key.