Five record types · one query

Criminal record search, without the national-database myth

There is no public national criminal database in the United States. What exists is thousands of separate jurisdictions publishing five different kinds of record. This reaches more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions of them in one query and tells you which ones answered.

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Building it into your software? See the criminal background check API and background check API pricing.

The record model

Five record types, and what each proves

Each type is published by a different authority at a different stage, and each supports a different claim. This table is the whole model.

Record type	Leads with	In our roster
County jail roster	booking date, charges and custody status	1,375
Statewide prison (DOC)	custody status, facility and admission date	53
Court records	case number, court, filed date, charge and disposition	24
Warrants	offense, physical description and warrant status	28
Statewide registry	name, date of birth, classification and often an address	11

Counts are a snapshot of the search roster, not a completeness claim — the live list is always at /v1/criminal/sources.

Why coverage is uneven

Only 12 states publish all three statewide layers

A statewide prison system exists for 51 states, a warrant system for 26, and a court source for 22. That asymmetry is a fact about US public records, not about any one product — and it is the reason a search must tell you what it actually reached.

County jail roster

Who is in a county jail right now, or was recently booked. Leads with a booking date and the charges at booking — an arrest-stage record, not a conviction.

Statewide prison (DOC)

A state Department of Corrections inmate system: people serving a state sentence, with facility and custody status. This is the post-conviction layer.

Court records

Statewide court records — the layer that carries the disposition, which is the only part of a criminal history that says how a case actually ended.

By the numbers

What the criminal records on our index contain

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.

Charges on US records with charge detail

Theft, larceny and stolen property14%
Drug possession13%
Assault, battery and threats10%
Burglary and breaking & entering9%
Fraud, forgery and identity theft8%
Drug sale, distribution or manufacture8%
Traffic offenses (not DUI)7%
Other or unclear7%
DUI / DWI6%
Public order, trespass and property damage6%

Record types

State prison (department of corrections) records50%
Court cases49%
County jail bookings1%

How court cases ended (all court cases)

Convicted, pleaded guilty or adjudicated3%
Dismissed, not guilty or acquitted1%
Open or pending3%
No outcome stated (including cases marked closed without a disposition)93%

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.

FAQ

Criminal record search questions

Is there a single national criminal records database?

Not one the public can search. The FBI maintains a national index, and access to it is restricted to authorised agencies for authorised purposes — it is not open to employers, landlords or the public. Every commercial "national criminal database" is an aggregation of what individual jurisdictions publish, ours included. The honest framing is coverage, not completeness: how many jurisdictions can you reach in one call, and can you tell which ones answered.

So how complete is any criminal record search?

It cannot be complete, and a vendor claiming otherwise is telling you something untrue. We reach more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions, and several hundred more known jurisdictions are queued and not yet answering. The useful question is not "is it complete" but "which jurisdictions were actually searched" — which is why every result cites its source and why /v1/criminal/sources publishes the live list.

What is the difference between the five record types?

They are different stages and different authorities. A jail roster is arrest-stage custody. A prison record is post-conviction custody. A court record carries the disposition — how the case ended. A warrant means someone is sought. A registry is a standing statutory list. A person can appear in one and none of the others, which is why searching a single type produces confident wrong answers.

Can I use this for hiring or tenant screening?

Standard results are not a consumer report; FCRA-covered decisions run through FCRA Partner Access, a separately enabled regulated service with its own controls. Teams building screening flows should start with the screening-shaped documentation on the background check page.

Does a record mean someone is guilty?

No. Only a court disposition speaks to outcome, and even then it should be read as written. Arrest and booking records document that something happened at a moment in time; charges are regularly reduced, dismissed or never filed. Reading an arrest as a conviction is the most common misuse of this data.

Guides

Background check guides

What shows up on a background check How to read a background check Criminal charge types, by the numbers How long a background check takes The adverse action process How to dispute a background check Criminal background check API

Comparisons & research