How To Find Out If Someone Got Arrested

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Whether you're worried about a family unit member who didn't come home and might be in trouble, or you're a small business owner concerned most an employee who hasn't come to work without warning, you can find out if someone has been arrested fairly easily. Y'all'll need to know basic information about the person, including their legal name, to check the local arrest records. After you lot've located the person, you can effigy out what you lot need to exercise to help them from there.^[1] ^[2]

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Talk to the person'south likely companions. If you know who last was with the person you're trying to discover, and take the power to contact them, try talking to them first. They may be able to give yous more than information about the person'south whereabouts and whether they were arrested.^[iii]
- If y'all don't know the person's close friends or don't know who was with them most recently, y'all may have to exercise a petty investigating.
- Try calling their phone number or any other number you lot know of a mutual friend. If they're an employee, try the emergency contact they provided, or ask other employees who accept a personal human relationship with them.
- You might not be able to detect someone who was with them when they were arrested – if they were, in fact, arrested. Only y'all can at to the lowest degree get an idea of where they were and what they were doing.
2
Narrow down possible locations. To find out if someone has been arrested, y'all commencement must know where they were last. Since each urban center and county has its own law enforcement department, you can save yourself a lot of fourth dimension if you have a good idea where the person terminal was.^[4]
- Unless yous've gotten different information from the people yous've called, yous typically want to outset with the city or canton where the person lives.
- You may demand to contact more than one police force enforcement section if you're near the border between counties or the jurisdiction boundary betwixt city and canton.
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Call the local police force section. In one case you take a good idea of the metropolis or county where the person was last seen, call the local police department using the non-emergency number and talk to the desk-bound officer who answers the phone.^[five] ^[6]
- Whether you lot tin can become information from the police department frequently depends on how large that department is and how busy it is. Larger, more active departments may not release information about arrests over the phone.
- Some police departments may accept a specific phone number you lot should call to find out if someone has been arrested. If y'all can't find that number, the person at the general non-emergency number can tell you what you should do.
- You lot too may be able to discover out if someone has been arrested by going to the police precinct in person. However, they may non have whatever information unless the person was processed through that specific precinct.
4
Ask the desk officer if the person has been arrested. Whether on the phone or in person, the officeholder on duty should be able to get y'all information about the person if they've been processed through that particular station or precinct.^[7] ^[8]
- When y'all speak to a desk-bound officeholder, y'all'll have to give them the person's legal name to find out if they've been arrested. Keep in listen the person may have a different legal name than the name you're accustomed to using.
- In smaller police stations in more rural areas, you may exist able to draw the person and notice out if they were arrested with that information.
- An arrest tape must exist created from the moment the constabulary take the person into custody, and so if they've been arrested the police force should accept that information, even if the person hasn't been taken to jail yet.
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Contact the nearest jail. Another way to find out if someone has been arrested is to telephone call the city or county jail nearest where they were last seen. Typically officers who arrest someone volition take them to the nearest jail, so if they've been arrested that's where they'll be.^[9] ^[x]
- As with law enforcement, you'll accept to have the person'southward total legal proper noun, because that would exist the proper noun under which they were arrested.
- Keep in mind that information technology can take 24-48 hours for data regarding the person to exist reflected in the jail's records. If they've only recently been brought to jail, they may not be in the system all the same.

ane
Search for the city or county'due south law enforcement website. Many cities and counties, particularly in more than populous areas, have their arrest records bachelor online as a searchable database. You'll demand bones identification information about the person for whom yous're searching.^[11] ^[12] ^[thirteen]
- If the urban center or county has its arrest records online, this can salvage you lot a lot of time because you tin can search several locations quickly without having to make a lot of phone calls or drive all over the metropolis.
- You typically tin can find out if an online database is available past doing a general internet search for "abort records" and the name of the city or canton.
- You may desire to include your state as well to narrow the results, since some cities or counties have relatively mutual names and may be in many parts of the land.
- Look for a website with a URL that has a .gov or a .us extension. While not every city or county website uses these extensions, that's the easiest manner to make sure y'all've got an official website.
- Keep in mind that arrest records are public information. You should never pay a fee to look upwards arrest records online.
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Provide the private's information. At a minimum, you'll demand to know the person'due south total legal proper noun to search the arrest records and find out anything useful. If the person has an extremely common proper noun, you lot may need boosted information to distinguish them.^[fourteen] ^[15] ^[16]
- Searching an online database can be less forgiving than talking to someone in person. If you don't take the person'southward exact legal proper noun, or know the correct spelling, you may not think whatever results.
- You also can't overlook the possibility that the person'southward name may have been entered incorrectly in the database, fifty-fifty as the effect of a unproblematic typo.
- For example, you may be looking for someone named "Sarah Lincoln," but if the person who entered her information in the database typed it as "Sara Lincoln" by mistake, you may not find her.
- Many online databases permit yous to provide additional information if you accept it, such as the person's gender and their age or birthdate.
- Equally with their name, y'all tin't guess – it needs to be the exact information as included on their driver's license or other land-issued ID, or the person you're looking for won't testify up in the results.
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Think your results. Once you've entered the data y'all know about the person you're looking up, click the push button to submit that information and the organization will return results of arrestees who match the information you provided.^[17] ^[18]
- Particularly if the person for whom you're searching has a adequately common name, and you don't have much additional information almost them, you may have to sift through a few results to find them.
- The information may incorporate abbreviations or codes that you don't sympathise. There should be a fundamental somewhere on the page that lets you know what those codes mean.
- If your results include locational information, it'southward typically a skilful idea to call that location starting time and make certain that person is however at that place. Information technology can sometimes take up to 24 hours for online systems to be updated.
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Consider also checking neighboring counties. If your search doesn't come up with any leads, you lot may want to check neighboring areas to make sure the person hasn't been arrested somewhere else.^[xix] ^[xx]
- You'll have to repeat many of the same steps to check arrest records in neighboring areas equally you did the first time.
- If you're coming up dry out, yous may want to go back and talk to people who know the person and encounter if you tin notice out more about where they might have gone or what they were doing.
- It also could exist that you don't accept accurate information for the person. Without their correct legal name, you're going to have a hard time finding out if they've been arrested.
- For case, yous may be looking for a adult female who recently was married and hasn't changed her name on her Social Security card or driver'due south license. If she was arrested, information technology would be under her maiden proper noun since that still is her legal name.

1
Search for nearby bond agents. Bail agents typically take offices near local jails or criminal courts, and they often have a lot of information about people who've been arrested or charges that have been filed.^[21] ^[22]
- Much of a bond agent's business comes from existence easily accessible and easy to notice, so it should be piece of cake to locate a number of bond agents nearby.
- Bond agent offices frequently are open late hours and weekends, so information technology may be easier to track down a bond amanuensis than it is to call the jail.
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Ask the bail agent for data. Particularly if the person has already been booked, a bond agent with an office near the jail may have data on whether the person has been arrested or is being held at the local jail.^[23] ^[24]
- Even if you end up non using the bail agent to bond the person out, they typically are willing to provide y'all any data they may have.
- A bond amanuensis also may be able to assist you if you lot aren't sure near the person's legal name. If they were present when the person was booked, they may exist able to recognize the person from a physical description.
- How much information a bond agent volition take often depends on how decorated the jail was on that item nighttime. If the bond agent is located in a minor town or relatively rural area, y'all probably tin get more than information than if you lot live in a densely populated urban area.
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Notice out how to purchase a bail bail. If the person has been arrested and booked in the local jail, and yous want to help get them out, the bond agent can help you find out whether the person's bond has been set and what you can practise to pay it.^[25] ^[26]
- Y'all also may be able to detect this information by calling the jail. If the person hasn't been booked yet, the jail will let y'all know when that person's bail hearing will be held.
- Typically, the booking and bail hearing will be held within 24 to 48 hours of the fourth dimension the person is arrested.
- If the person has special medical or other needs, talk to someone at the jail and find out what you tin practice to help or go needed medications to them.

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Article Summary 10

If y'all want to know if someone has been arrested, try contacting the local constabulary station. Make certain you accept the person's total legal name, then call the police force's non-emergency number. When someone answers, ask the desk officer if the person has been arrested. If they don't know, try contacting local jails, since it's likely an officer would have brought the person there following an arrest. Alternatively, try searching through online abort records. Visit your local metropolis or county's police force department website. Side by side, locate the arrest records section and enter the personal information of the person you're looking for. If yous discover the person'southward data, contact the location where it says they're being held to find out more about the abort. For tips from our Legal co-author on how to locate a bond agent, who oftentimes holds information about local arrests, proceed reading!

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