How to Find Out if Someone is a Felon for Free

Co-authored by Clinton M. Sandvick, JD, PhD

Last Updated: January 31, 2023

A felon is someone who has been convicted of a “high crime” punishable by death or a year or more in state or federal prison.^{[1]
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Research source} Such felonies include drug use, driving while intoxicated, theft, sexual assault, violent crimes, fraud, vandalism, weapons violations, and forgery. Employers can search for criminal records in an official capacity, but if you are not an employer and you do not want to use a paid service, you can still usually determine if someone is a felon. To do so, you will need to gather information about the individual, search state and local court records, and use other resources such as the National Sex Offender Public Website.

Method 1

Method 1 of 3:

Gathering Information

1
Type in the name of the person whose criminal record you want to find and do a news search. Although a Google search is not going to lead you to the official record, it can find newspaper articles about felony convictions. Sometimes, a Google search is all you need to establish that someone is a felon.
- Try the search with the name in quotation marks – i.e. “John Doe” to narrow your search.
- If possible, include the person's full name to target the search. A first, middle and last name in quotation marks will help you to know you are finding information on the right person.
2
Use more than 1 search engine. Different engines have different processes for bringing up results. You may have better luck on Yahoo, Bing or Wolfram Alpha.

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3
Try to determine all the places the individual has lived. Most court records are held at the state or local level, so it is best if you can find out all the places where the individual you are investigating lived.
- Try searching on Google to see if you can find previous residences. Do both a standard Google search and a Google news search.
- Look on Facebook for past residences as well.
- Use the person’s phone number. People keep old phone numbers more and more frequently now, so if you have the number of the person you are investigating, you might be able to use the area code to discover one place he or she lived.
- Try a paid background search site. Many of these sites, like instantcheckmate.com, will return preliminary results for free, and these results usually include all known addresses for the person in question.
4
Determine when the individual was born. A date of birth will help to assure that you are looking up information on the right person. If you don’t know the specific day, at least estimate the year. This will help you to eliminate false-hits during your investigation.
- If that fails, Google and Facebook are often helpful when searching for date of birth.

Method 2

Method 2 of 3:

Searching Court Records

1
Go to your local library to use online court case research services. Taken together, Lexis or Westlaw, CourtLink or CourtExpress, Legal Dockets Online, or the U.S. Party/Case index on PACER cover almost all the federal, state, and local courts in the United States. Contact you local library to see which, if any, of these resources they provide access to. If your library does not offer access, try the nearest university library.^{[2]
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- Ask the librarian for help using these research databases if necessary.
- Enter as much information on your subject as possible. If he or she is a felon, a search will often return case information detailing his or her crime.
- Be aware that these databases do not include all criminal records. For instance, Lexis’s FINDER/CRIMNL database only has records from 37 states, rarely reaching beyond the year 2000. Westlaw’s CRIM-ALL database has records for 41 states, but not all jurisdictions in those states are represented.
2
Search for statewide records. The National Center for State Courts website has information that will lead you to the webpages for all of the state and many of the local courts in the United States. Surf to the appropriate state and enter as much information as possible on the individual.
- The states that provide statewide records are Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Montana, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Washington.
- Keep in mind that state wide reports can be incomplete. Failure of a county to submit criminal reports results in missed information on the report.
3
Try local jurisdictions. Some states do not have statewide searches, and even those that do may not report all records, so it is best to always check the lower courts.
- A variety of sites provide links offering free access to public records resources. Some useful sites include VirtualChase.com, SearchSystems.net, Public Record Sources, and Public Records Online Searches.^{[3]
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- Do a web search for the county or city where the person lived, as well as the terms “criminal court records” or “criminal records”. If that does not work, try searching for the county along with “county clerk”.
- Enter as much information as you can regarding the person you are investigating.
- Case information is often coded and difficult to understand. Codes for felonies usually begin with a “F”, those for misdemeanors with a “M”.
4
Submit a paper request if necessary. Not all county and local courts have records that are searchable online. If the jurisdiction does not, try contacting the county clerk to ask how to request a criminal record search.
- Be aware that there may be a fee associated with non-web searches at the county level.

Method 3

Method 3 of 3:

Using Other Web Resources

1
Search the National Sex Offender Public Website. This site gathers sex offender information from states, territories, and tribes into one database. Simply enter a name to search.
2
Consult the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ inmate locator. A search by name will determine if the individual in question has been an inmate of a federal prison at any time since 1982. You will know the person is a felon, though the site will not report the nature of the person’s crime.
3
Look up the person’s name with the Office of Foreign Assets Control Sanction List Search. The people on this list are not all felons, since some have not yet been captured and convicted. They are, however, blocked from entering or doing business in the United States because of suspected involvement in terrorism, drug trafficking, or providing weapons of mass destruction.