Arrest Record Search Questions — Ask The Inmate

There are some real elements of the show that ring true. Orange has a number of outlandish characters who represent stereotypical versions of inmates audiences may think of when imagining a federal corrections institution. At first glance, Orange Is the New Black supposedly chronicles the typical journey through a female prison for a not-so-typical convict. However, a closer look at the United States federal corrections system makes it clear that InmateAid Twitter-follower and author of Orange Piper Chapman's stay in federal prison is a TV fantasy...

Contact the Clerk of the Court in Cullman County. That office maintains all criminal court filings, including cases from that period, and archived records from a domestic violence arrest in 2009 or 2010 should still be on file. Court records are public in Alabama, so you do not need a special relationship to the case to request them. When you call, give the clerk's office your ex-husband's full legal name and an approximate date range for the arrest. They can look...

Finding out why someone is in jail is more straightforward than most families expect, and there are several ways to get that information depending on how recently the arrest occurred and where they are being held. Call the facility directly. The jail where your son is being held can confirm that he is in their system and in most cases can tell you the charges he is being held on. Have his full legal name and date of birth ready when...

The Supervision with Immediate Enforcement (SWIFT) Court is a specialty court to address the needs of offenders to divert them from the full criminal justice process.This court was designed to reduce recidivism rates of drug participants. This was later applied to probation violators, especially those testing positive for illicit drugs. If the failed drug test is their only violation, it's possible the judge will extend their probation, add some additional sanctions (community service) or counseling. However, they have probably given up...

Do not go. This is one of the most certain ways to get arrested outside of walking into a police station. Every visitor to a correctional facility goes through an identity check before they are admitted. That is not optional and it is not cursory. Staff run every visitor's identification through the NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, which is a comprehensive federal database containing criminal records, felonies, outstanding warrants, and records of confinement from jurisdictions across the entire country. There...

The timing is the issue. When someone is first booked, the information does not flow instantly to every database. VINELink, state DOC websites, and county jail rosters all update on different schedules, and fresh arrests can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days to propagate fully across all systems. Finding her on VINELink is a good sign that the booking is in process, but the facility's own public roster may simply not have caught up yet. The...

VineLink is useful for tracking an inmate's location and custody status, but it does not display charges. For that you need to go directly to the source. The Clerk of the Court in the jurisdiction where the charges were filed is where all case information lives. In Fayette County that means the Fayette County District Clerk's office in La Grange. They maintain the complete case file including charging documents, court filings, trial transcripts, and any other official records associated with the...

Maritime arrests involve overlapping jurisdictions, which is part of why this is confusing. When Fish and Wildlife, the Coast Guard, and the county sheriff are all present at the same incident, the agency that ultimately books the arrestee depends on who took custody, what the charge is, and where the arrest formally occurred on the water. In King County, the most likely holding facility for a standard DUI arrest is the King County Correctional Facility in Seattle. Start there. You can...

Yes, almost certainly. Fingerprints do not lie and they do not forget. When someone is booked into a jail or prison, their fingerprints are run through databases that law enforcement agencies have been building for decades. The two primary systems are the FBI's Next Generation Identification system and state-level AFIS databases, which stands for Automated Fingerprint Identification System. If that person has ever been fingerprinted before, for any reason, including a prior arrest, military service, a government job, or even certain...