How To Find Recent Arrest Records Online

I’m not going to speculate as to why you might want to find recent arrest records. I guess there are many reasons, some good, some not so good. Instead I will just concentrate on how to find recent arrests online.

Arrests are matters of public record so will be accessible through those public records. The only exceptions are if the records have been sealed, deleted or are part of a national security investigation. All other arrests will be accessible for free if you know where to look.

There are also commercial entities that provide background checks that can do the work for you. For a fee.

Find recent arrests online

There are a range of resources you can use to find recent arrests online.

State and county websites

Both your state and your county will have some kind of website. Depending on where you live, arrest records may be listed on the site. If you have the name, ethnicity and  date of birth, you should be able to search those resources online and find out any arrests.

If the state or the county doesn’t provide online searches you could go offline and visit the office. Some searches will incur a processing fee but this is usually nominal.

County courthouse website

The same as above, most larger or more progressive counties will have decent websites with arrest records included. You may have to search those records, but again, if you have the name, ethnicity and date of birth of the person you’re searching it should take less than a minute.

Not all county courthouses have such features online so you may have to venture offline and visit the courthouse to find out.

Federal Bureau of Prisons

If you suspect the person has more than just an arrest record, you could visit the Federal Bureau of Prisons website. This should tell you whether the person you are checking on has ever been to prison, is in prison or is on parole currently. You can search by prison number or with their name, ethnicity and age.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons website depends on accurate records being provided by each county so may not be completely up to date.

Mugshots.com

Mugshots.com may be a long shot but it does have a useful search function. If you ever wanted to see if you had a mugshot or wanted to check on someone, this is one place to try. Type the name of the person you are checking for in the search box on the home page and hit search. Any returns for that name will appear on the next page. You can then scroll through to see if you recognize any of the mugshots that appear.

Family Watchdog

Family Watchdog are for when things get serious. It is a free service that tracks sex offenders across the country. The free service allows you to check a given areas for sex offenders who live there. The paid service checks arrest records to see if an individual has any arrests or convictions. The paid search is not restricted to sex crimes but will check everything.

Instant Checkmate

Instant Checkmate is a commercial website that offers a free background check on any citizen. You will need to provide their name, state, city and potentially answer a couple of questions to help the company build up its records. Those questions are actually data collection questions framed as confirmations. Feel free to ignore them if you don’t want to provide any more information about the person you’re checking.

I don’t like Instant Checkmate much. It goes through the whole process of generating a background check, asks you lots of questions and makes you wait up to 15 minutes while it works. Only at the last possible step does it tell you it wants your information to provide the report it just generated. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was upfront about what it wanted. However, it does give you the information you’re looking for.

There are other background check websites out there and all charge some kind of fee for their services. You may or may not want to use them depending on why you want to find recent arrests.

A quick note on arrests. Having an arrest record is different than having a conviction. An arrest is just the physical apprehension of a person by law enforcement. It does not mean they have been found guilty of any crime. A person may have an arrest record but not a criminal record and does not mean they are a criminal. They could have been wrongfully arrested, mistakenly arrested and/or found innocent of all charges.

Do you know of any other ways to find recent arrests online? Preferably free? Tell us about them below if you do!