The Criminal Records API
Search US criminal records — county, state and federal — the way you already search the offender registry. One call reaches more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions, with coverage in every US state.
Coverage is expanding continuously, and the reference lists which jurisdictions are answering right now rather than asking you to trust a page. Our sex offender registry search — 58 US registries, continuously updated — remains the original product and runs on the same key: search it.
Three record layers, one search
County
The courthouse layer. Most criminal cases in the US are filed and resolved in county courts, spread across thousands of separate court systems — which is exactly why nobody wants to search them one at a time.
State
The state layer. Many states operate a statewide repository or court portal, each with its own search, its own fields and its own rules. One statewide answer per state, or every covered state at once, in a single call.
Federal
The federal district courts. Fraud, interstate offenses and other federal cases live in a system entirely separate from the states — a record that never appears in any county or state search.
Why this exists
A criminal history is scattered by design: a county conviction lives in one court system, a state repository may or may not reflect it, and a federal case lives somewhere else entirely. Anyone screening seriously today is stitching those answers together by hand, portal by portal, with nothing saved and nothing consistent between them.
- One search across the layers, instead of a tab per courthouse
- Results in one consistent schema, each record citing where it came from
- A full API for your own system, and a dashboard for teams without code
- Built by the team behind the live registry search — 58 US registries
Start with the quickstart, or ask the API which jurisdictions are live with one call to /v1/criminal/sources. Weighing vendors first? Read the top-5 criminal record API comparison.
What a criminal search costs you today
| Per person | Portal by portal | Offendersearch criminal API |
|---|---|---|
| Where you look | A tab per county court, state repository and the federal system | ✓ One call across county, state and federal |
| What comes back | Each site’s own format, reconciled by hand | ✓ One scored, source-cited schema |
| Which sources answered | You track it yourself | ✓ Per-source status on every response |
| Coverage | Whatever you have time to open | ✓ coverage in every US state, expanding continuously |
| For non-developers | — | ✓ A dashboard on the same account, no code |
Call the criminal records API
One POST /v1/criminal/search, bounded by a last name. Add a first name and a date of birth whenever you have them — a bare common surname matches thousands of people, and the score cannot tell you which one is yours. Every parameter is documented on the criminal search API page and in the reference.
curl https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/criminal/search \
-H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"firstName": "John",
"lastName": "Doe",
"dob": "1980-04-12",
"state": "TX"
}'What each criminal record returns
recordType
jail_booking, doc_inmate, court_case, warrant or registry — read it before characterising anyone. A booking is not a conviction; a court record carries the disposition.
name, aliases, dob / birthYear
The identity the record publishes, with dobPrecision saying whether the date is exact or only a year.
cases[]
Charges, case detail and, where the court publishes it, the disposition.
custody, sentence, parole
Facility and custody status for jail and prison records; sentence and parole detail where it exists.
matchConfidence, matchBasis
How strongly the record matched your query, and which fields matched and how.
sources[]
The jurisdiction code that holds the record, its own record link, and when it was last checked — a citation you can store beside the decision.
Every field, with types: the criminal record object.
Who uses a criminal records API
Employment and staffing
Add criminal history to onboarding. FCRA-covered hiring decisions run through FCRA Partner Access.
Tenant screening
Check applicants across county, state and federal records in one call.
Care and caregiving
Screen caregivers and home-care staff alongside the sex offender registry.
Investigations and research
Search jail bookings, prison custody, court cases and warrants without opening a portal per county.
Building a screening flow end to end? See the criminal background check API. Need the sex offender registry in the same check? The background check API covers both, and a list of names runs through bulk criminal record search.
Criminal records API FAQ
Is the criminal records API available today?
Yes. It is live and callable on the same account and key as the registry search. It covers more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions — county jail rosters, statewide prison systems, court records and dispositions, warrant systems and statewide registries — with coverage in every US state. Coverage is still expanding: several hundred known jurisdictions are queued and not yet answering, and the reference lists exactly which are live right now.
What does it search?
Five record shapes — county jail rosters, statewide prison systems, court records and dispositions, warrant systems and statewide registries — across the three layers where criminal records actually live: county courts, state repositories and the federal district courts. Results come back in the same scored, source-cited shape the registry API returns.
How do I know which jurisdictions are covered?
Ask the API rather than trusting a page. GET /v1/criminal/sources returns every jurisdiction we know about, each marked live or pending, with the age of its most recent update. That endpoint is the source of truth and it is documented in full in the reference.
Does it work like the sex offender registry API?
Yes — deliberately. One search instead of many portals, results in a consistent schema, each record carrying where it came from, and both a full API and a dashboard for teams who never want to write code. The registry search remains our primary product; this runs alongside it on the same key.
Is this a consumer report?
Not on the standard API: standard results are not a consumer report. FCRA-regulated use runs through FCRA Partner Access, a separately enabled service for approved consumer reporting agencies and screening platforms under a written FCRA agreement. — the same terms that govern every other endpoint.
The Offendersearch APIs
One account, one key, one bill — the sex offender registry and criminal records, side by side.
Sex offender registry
- Sex offender API — One call across 58 US sex offender registries, with scored matches and a citation on every record.
- Sex offender search API — Endpoints, request shapes, record fields, matching and batch, in detail.
- Sex offender database — The national registry data in one schema — photos, aliases, offenses, addresses.
- Registered offender database — What a registered offender record holds, and how its accuracy is measured.
- Bulk sex offender search — Screen a whole list of names in one upload or one API call.
Criminal records
- Criminal background check API — One cited answer per person for onboarding and screening flows.
- Criminal search API — The search endpoint itself: parameters, record types and coverage, call by call.
- Background check API — The registry and criminal layers together, on one key and one bill.
- Employment background check API — The registry and criminal data layer for HR, ATS and screening platforms.
- Bulk criminal record search — Run a list of names against criminal records in one call.
Build with it
- API documentation — Quickstart, every endpoint, the record object and the OpenAPI spec.
- Background check API pricing — $0.15 a call, $0.11 past 2,000 a month, 25 free calls to start — worked out by volume.
- Background check API integration — Keys, the first call, async and webhooks, batch, monitoring and errors, step by step.
- MCP server for offender search — Give Claude and other AI agents the same search as a tool.
- Offendersearch vs offenders.io — A side-by-side comparison of the two registry APIs.
Further reading
Independent comparisons of the tools in this category — including where other vendors are the better answer.
The best sex offender APIs in 2026, compared
Five ways to search US registries programmatically, measured on coverage you can enumerate, provenance, match quality and price.
The best criminal record search APIs in 2026
Jail bookings, prison custody, court cases and warrants are four different systems. Which API you want depends on which one your question needs.
The best background check APIs in 2026
Five brands, three companies: the consolidation nobody mentions, each vendor’s real published price, and the only per-call API on the list.
More in our comparisons and research.
The record types
Criminal Background Check API
Screening-shaped: run a criminal check inside your hiring, tenancy or marketplace flow, on the same key.
County Criminal Records
The courthouse layer — where most criminal cases actually live, spread across more than a thousand county jurisdictions.
Federal Criminal Records
The federal district courts: fraud, interstate and other federal offenses that never appear in a county search.
Statewide Criminal Search
One search per state instead of a patchwork of portals — or every covered state at once in a single call.