Criminal records vs. court records
Criminal court cases are criminal records and are available now. Civil cases and judgments are court records and are planned.
Definitions the APIs use
- Criminal record: a record of a person's contact with the criminal justice system — a jail booking, custody in a state or federal prison, a criminal court case with its charges and dispositions, an active warrant, a registry entry or an exclusion-list entry. These are what the Criminal Records API returns, each labelled with its
recordType. - Court record: any record a court publishes about a proceeding. Criminal court cases are one kind; civil litigation, judgments, family and probate matters are others. The Nationwide Full Court Search API is planned to reach the non-criminal kinds.
What you can search today
The Criminal Records API already returns criminal court cases as court_case records from the court sources the platform holds, with cases[].caseNumber, court, filedDate, status and charges[] carrying statute, description, severity, disposition, dispositionDate and offenseDate. See Understanding charges and Understanding dispositions.
Which courts are held, and how far back, is published in the criminal coverage catalog and the data sources list.
What is planned
The Court Search API is intended to broaden the platform beyond strictly criminal information: civil litigation, judgments and other publicly available court proceedings. It is not available, has no published endpoints, and its coverage will be confirmed before anything is advertised as supported. Read the preview.