Arrest records, and what they actually prove
An arrest record says one thing: a person was taken into custody on a date, on the charges written down at that moment. It does not say a charge was filed, and it does not say anyone was convicted. More people misread this record type than any other in US public records, so it is worth being exact about before you search anything.
Three records, three different claims
An arrest, a charge and a disposition are separate records created by separate people at separate points in a case. They are routinely collapsed into the phrase “criminal record”, and collapsing them is how a person who was never convicted of anything ends up treated as though they were.
The arrest
An officer, at the scene
Proves: That a person was taken into custody on a date, on the charges recorded at that moment.
Does not prove: Nothing about whether a prosecutor agreed, whether a charge was ever filed, or how any of it ended.
The charge
A prosecutor, days or weeks later
Proves: That the state formally accused the person of a specific offence and opened a case.
Does not prove: Guilt. Charges are routinely amended downward, consolidated or dropped after filing — and arrest charges are frequently never filed at all.
The disposition
A court, at the end
Proves: How the case actually ended — dismissed, acquitted, deferred, pleaded down, or convicted.
Does not prove: It is the only one of the three that speaks to the outcome, which is why its absence is so damaging.
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.
In 30 of 52 jurisdictions, the outcome is not reachable statewide
This is the fact that explains almost everything else on this page. Court publishing in the US is fragmented: a statewide court source exists for 21 of the 52 jurisdictions we cover. In the remaining 30, 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?”
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 responses name which jurisdictions answered, so an incomplete search is never handed back to you as an empty one.
| Jurisdiction with no statewide court source | County custody jurisdictions | Answering | Statewide prison | Warrant system |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 12 | 5 | Yes | Yes |
| Alaska | 1 | 1 | Yes | — |
| California | 59 | 26 | Yes | — |
| Delaware | 1 | 1 | Yes | — |
| Florida | 30 | 17 | Yes | — |
| Hawaii | 4 | 4 | Yes | — |
| Idaho | 46 | 31 | Yes | Yes |
| Kansas | 16 | 12 | Yes | Yes |
| Kentucky | 71 | 65 | Yes | — |
| Louisiana | 15 | 12 | — | Yes |
| Maine | 19 | 19 | Yes | — |
| Massachusetts | 15 | 14 | Yes | — |
| Michigan | 35 | 31 | Yes | — |
| Mississippi | 21 | 17 | Yes | Yes |
| Missouri | 36 | 34 | Yes | — |
| Montana | 68 | 54 | Yes | — |
| Nebraska | 12 | 9 | Yes | — |
| New Hampshire | 11 | 11 | Yes | — |
| New Mexico | 40 | 21 | Yes | Yes |
| New York | 59 | 55 | Yes | — |
| North Carolina | 20 | 17 | Yes | Yes |
| North Dakota | 10 | 6 | Yes | Yes |
| Rhode Island | 1 | 0 | Yes | Yes |
| South Carolina | 23 | 17 | Yes | Yes |
| South Dakota | 21 | 20 | Yes | Yes |
| Texas | 65 | 38 | Yes | Yes |
| Utah | 29 | 17 | Yes | Yes |
| Vermont | 1 | 1 | Yes | — |
| Wisconsin | 22 | 18 | Yes | — |
| Wyoming | 24 | 7 | Yes | — |
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 →
The county custody layer
Arrest-stage information is published by county custody jurisdictions, one at a time, on their own terms. Our roster holds 1,375 of them, of which 992 are answering today — one call reaches the answering ones instead of asking you to visit counties in sequence.
County booking rosters
Booking date, the charges recorded at booking, and custody status. The arrest-stage record in its most common form, across 1,375 county jurisdictions.
Court records
Case number, court, filed date, charge and disposition — the layer that answers how a case ended, live for 21 jurisdictions.
Warrants
People sought rather than held, in 26 jurisdictions. Outstanding by definition, and a different claim again from an arrest that already happened.
Searching more than one of these at once is what criminal record search is for, and the API returns each layer labelled with the jurisdiction that holds it, so a booking is never handed to you looking like a conviction.
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. Four things are worth holding in mind before acting on one.
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. Confirm identifiers before you attach a record to a person, and treat a single-field match as a lead rather than a finding.
Most arrests are not convictions
People who were 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. Assuming the worst reading of an ambiguous record is a choice with a cost, and someone else pays it.
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, and a record being public is not a licence to act on it. This applies whether the underlying case ended in a conviction or in nothing at all.
Not a consumer report
Offendersearch is not a consumer reporting agency and results are not a consumer report. FCRA-covered decisions — employment, tenancy, credit, insurance — require appropriate process on your side regardless of the data source, and several jurisdictions separately restrict the use of non-conviction arrest information in hiring and tenancy.
Arrest record questions
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 — 1,375 of them are in our roster. Statewide court sources exist for 22 of the 52 jurisdictions we cover, so for 30 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. Offendersearch is not a consumer reporting agency and results are not a consumer report; FCRA-covered decisions require appropriate process on your side regardless of the data source. 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.
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.
Criminal Records API
The same layers as a single endpoint, with per-jurisdiction status on every response so you can tell a clean result from an unanswered one.