Federal inmate search
Federal custody is a separate system from every state — different offences, different courts, different records. One call reaches it alongside 1,375 county jail rosters and 53 statewide prison systems, so you do not have to know which system someone is in before you look.
Three records a state search cannot reach
The federal system publishes custody, court and warrant records independently of the states. Each answers a different question.
Federal custody
People serving a federal sentence, held in the federal system rather than any state prison. A person can be in federal custody with nothing at all in the state system that would ordinarily be searched.
Federal court records
Cases filed in the federal district courts — the layer that carries the disposition, and the one that says how a federal matter actually ended rather than merely that it existed.
Federal warrants
Federal warrant and most-wanted records, which are issued and published separately from any state warrant system.
A clean state search is not a clean record
This is the single most common way a criminal search misleads the person running it. Someone can have an entirely clean county and state history and a federal conviction — and a search that reaches only state sources returns nothing, with no indication that a whole system went unexamined.
- Every response reports how many jurisdictions were searched, so “no result” is never confused with “not looked”
- Records are typed — custody, court, warrant — so a sought person is never read as a convicted one
- Each record cites the jurisdiction holding it and can be verified at the source
Federal search questions
Why is a federal search separate from a state one?
Because they are separate systems with separate records. Federal offences — fraud, interstate crimes, tax, immigration, certain drug and firearms cases — are prosecuted in federal district courts and served in federal custody. None of that appears in a state prison system or a county jail roster, so a search that only reaches state sources will report nothing and be technically correct while being completely wrong.
Does one call cover federal and state together?
Yes. An unscoped criminal search reaches the federal layer alongside 1,375 county jail rosters and 53 statewide prison systems, and every record reports which jurisdiction it came from. You do not have to know in advance which system a person is in — that is the entire point.
Does a federal record mean a conviction?
Read the record kind. A custody record implies a sentence and therefore a conviction. A court record carries the disposition, which is the authoritative statement of how a case ended. A warrant means someone is sought and nothing has been tested. These are different claims and our results label which one you are looking at.
What do I get that a single federal lookup does not give me?
One call instead of one system at a time. A federal record arrives in the same schema as county and state records, scored against the person you asked about, with a citation attached and a report of how many jurisdictions were searched — which is what makes it usable inside software, and defensible in a file, rather than a page you read and retype.
Can I use it for screening?
Offendersearch is not a consumer reporting agency and results are not a consumer report. FCRA-covered decisions — employment, tenancy, credit — need appropriate process on your side regardless of the data source.