Reviewed and updated September 27, 2026 by the SearchSystems.net editorial team. Fees and office hours are checked against the issuing agency at review time.
An arrest in Pennsylvania produces a record at the arresting department, a docket at the magisterial district court that becomes a county court case if the charges are held for court, and an entry in the state central repository kept by the Pennsylvania State Police. The docket is searchable free on the statewide court portal, the state police record is checked by name through PATCH, and the Criminal History Record Information Act, CHRIA, decides who gets what.
In this guide: What an arrest record is, What is public, The preliminary arraignment, Where to look, The PATCH check, Expungement and Clean Slate, Arrests by county and Questions.
Arrest Record, Court Docket, Criminal History: Three Different Things
People use the terms interchangeably. Pennsylvania's Criminal History Record Information Act does not, and neither do the databases.
An arrest record is the record the arresting department creates when an officer takes someone into custody or files a complaint: who was charged, when, by which department and with what. It exists whether or not the charges survive the preliminary hearing. An arrest is an allegation by an officer, and many arrests end with charges withdrawn, dismissed or reduced.
A court record begins as a docket at the magisterial district court, where the criminal complaint is filed and the preliminary arraignment and preliminary hearing take place. If the charges are held for court the case moves to the court of common pleas of that county and gets a second docket there. Both dockets are public and both are on the statewide portal described below.
A criminal history record is the state's compilation, kept in the central repository of the Pennsylvania State Police under the Criminal History Record Information Act, chapter 91 of Title 18 of the Consolidated Statutes. It is the record a background check pulls, it is the record that gets expunged or placed under limited access, and it is the one the PATCH check searches by name.
The three records are kept by three different bodies, the police department, the courts and the state police, and each answers only for its own. A docket does not show an arrest that never produced a complaint, and the state police file does not show a disposition until the court reports it.
What CHRIA and the Right-to-Know Law Let an Agency Release
Section 9121 governs who receives criminal history record information. Section 708 of the Right-to-Know Law lists the exceptions, and criminal investigation records are among them.
Pennsylvania does not treat a police record as an ordinary public record. Dissemination is governed by section 9121 of CHRIA. Subsection (a) covers criminal justice agencies: criminal history record information maintained by any criminal justice agency shall be disseminated without charge to any criminal justice agency or to any noncriminal justice agency that is providing a service for which a criminal justice agency is responsible. Subsection (b), Dissemination to noncriminal justice agencies and individuals, is the rule for everyone else, an employer, a landlord or a member of the public asking the state police or a local department for a record. The section text is at 18 Pa.C.S. 9121.
The Right-to-Know Law, Act 3 of 2008, is the general public records statute, and its section 708, Exceptions for public records, is the list of what an agency may withhold. Records relating to a criminal investigation are on that list, which is why a police department answers a Right-to-Know request for an investigative file with a denial that cites section 708. The Act is at the Legislature's site.
The two laws answer different questions. CHRIA governs the criminal history record itself, held by the state police and the departments; the Right-to-Know Law governs requests for agency records generally. A request for a person's record goes through CHRIA and the PATCH check, and a request for a department's documents goes through the Right-to-Know Law.
After the Arrest: The Preliminary Arraignment Without Unnecessary Delay
Rule 540 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure governs the first appearance after an arrest.
Rule 540 of the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure, Preliminary Arraignment, governs the first court event after an arrest. The rule's comment states the timing: after a warrantless arrest, the defendant must be afforded a preliminary arraignment by the proper issuing authority without unnecessary delay, citing Rule 519(A), and under paragraph (E) of the rule the issuing authority has a duty of its own when a defendant has been arrested without a warrant. The issuing authority is the magisterial district judge, and the preliminary arraignment is where the docket described above begins.
The rule is published at 234 Pa. Code Rule 540.
Where Pennsylvania Arrest Records Actually Live
One free statewide docket portal for every court case, the county pages for the departments, the DOC locator for state prison.
Pennsylvania is unusual in having one free source for court records statewide. The Unified Judicial System Web Portal at ujsportal.pacourts.us, in its own description, provides the public with access to various aspects of court information, including appellate courts, common pleas courts and magisterial district court docket sheets; common pleas courts and magisterial district court calendars; and PAePay. A criminal case is searchable there from the magisterial district court complaint onward, by name, by docket number or by date, and the docket sheet shows the charges, the hearings and the disposition. For an arrest more than a day or two old, this is the first place to look.
The arresting department's own record, the criminal complaint and the affidavit of probable cause, is held by the department and by the magisterial district court where the complaint was filed. The county pages on this site list the sheriff, the county prison, the clerk of courts and the records units of the larger police departments for each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.
For the whole state at once, the state police record check described below searches the central repository by name.
After conviction and a state prison sentence, the record is the Department of Corrections Inmate/Department Supervised Individual Locator at inmatelocator.cor.pa.gov, which lists people in state custody and under state supervision. County prisons are separate, and each is listed on its county page. Federal arrests go through federal court and federal custody, and never appear on the state portal unless a state charge was filed as well.
The State Police Record Check: PATCH
Pennsylvania Access To Criminal History is the online name check of the state police central repository.
The Pennsylvania State Police run the state's name based record check online through Pennsylvania Access To Criminal History, PATCH, at epatch.pa.gov. It is the route for an employer, a volunteer organization, a landlord or a person checking their own record, and it returns what CHRIA allows the state police to release to a noncriminal justice requester under section 9121(b).
A name based search returns records that match the name and identifiers you enter, which means a common name can return records that belong to someone else, and a record that has been expunged or placed under limited access is not what the check is built to return. For the court side of the same case, the UJS portal docket is the companion source.
Expungement and Clean Slate Limited Access: How a Pennsylvania Record Comes Off
Section 9122 sets when a record shall be expunged. Section 9122.2 sets which records shall be subject to limited access.
Pennsylvania has two routes and they do different things. Expungement, under section 9122 of CHRIA, removes the record. Subsection (a), Specific proceedings, opens with a mandatory rule: criminal history record information in a specific criminal proceeding shall be expunged when, first, no disposition has been received or, upon request for criminal history record information, no disposition has been recorded within the period the subsection sets. The subsections that follow set the other cases in which expungement is required or allowed. The section text is at 18 Pa.C.S. 9122.
Limited access does not remove the record. It keeps it from public view while leaving it available to the agencies the statute names. Section 9122.2, Clean slate limited access, opens with a general rule that the records it lists shall be subject to limited access, subject to the exceptions under section 9122.3 or to a court having vacated an order for limited access. The list that follows is what Clean Slate covers, and because the section says shall, the records it lists go under limited access by the statute's own terms rather than by a petition the person has to file. The section text is at 18 Pa.C.S. 9122.2.
Expungement and limited access act on the state police record and the court docket. A news story, a mugshot site or a background screener's old copy is not reached by either on its own.
Arrest and Jail Records by Pennsylvania County
Every county page carries that county's prison roster, clerk of courts and records offices.
County prisons, sheriffs and clerks of courts are county specific, and the police departments are municipal. The county pages on this site list the county prison, the sheriff, the clerk of courts and the records units of the larger police departments for each of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. The most populous counties are Philadelphia, Allegheny, Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, Lancaster, Chester, York, Berks and Lehigh.
- Adams County
- Allegheny County
- Armstrong County
- Beaver County
- Bedford County
- Berks County
- Blair County
- Bradford County
- Bucks County
- Butler County
- Cambria County
- Cameron County
- Carbon County
- Centre County
- Chester County
- Clarion County
- Clearfield County
- Clinton County
- Columbia County
- Crawford County
- Cumberland County
- Dauphin County
- Delaware County
- Elk County
- Erie County
- Fayette County
- Forest County
- Franklin County
- Fulton County
- Greene County
- Huntingdon County
- Indiana County
- Jefferson County
- Juniata County
- Lackawanna County
- Lancaster County
- Lawrence County
- Lebanon County
- Lehigh County
- Luzerne County
- Lycoming County
- McKean County
- Mercer County
- Mifflin County
- Monroe County
- Montgomery County
- Montour County
- Northampton County
- Northumberland County
- Perry County
- Philadelphia County
- Pike County
- Potter County
- Schuylkill County
- Snyder County
- Somerset County
- Sullivan County
- Susquehanna County
- Tioga County
- Union County
- Venango County
- Warren County
- Washington County
- Wayne County
- Westmoreland County
- Wyoming County
- York County
Frequently Asked Questions
Are arrest records public in Pennsylvania?
Court dockets are. Every criminal docket, from the magisterial district court complaint to the common pleas case, is searchable free on the UJS Web Portal. The criminal history record held by the state police is released under section 9121 of CHRIA, without charge to criminal justice agencies under subsection (a) and to noncriminal justice agencies and individuals under subsection (b), and a department's investigative file is among the exceptions in section 708 of the Right-to-Know Law.
How do I find out if someone was arrested in Pennsylvania?
Search the UJS Web Portal at ujsportal.pacourts.us by name, which shows magisterial district court and common pleas docket sheets statewide, including the charges, the hearings and the disposition. For a person's state police record, run a PATCH check at epatch.pa.gov. For someone held in a county prison, use that county's roster, listed on the county page on this site.
What happens right after an arrest in Pennsylvania?
A preliminary arraignment under Rule 540 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure. After a warrantless arrest the defendant must be afforded a preliminary arraignment by the proper issuing authority without unnecessary delay, and the issuing authority is the magisterial district judge, where the docket for the case begins.
How do I get a Pennsylvania arrest expunged?
Under section 9122 of CHRIA. Subsection (a) requires expungement of criminal history record information in a specific criminal proceeding when no disposition has been received or recorded within the period the subsection sets, and the subsections that follow set the other cases in which a record shall or may be expunged.
What is Clean Slate limited access?
Section 9122.2 of CHRIA. Its general rule is that the records the section lists shall be subject to limited access, subject to the exceptions in section 9122.3 or to a court having vacated an order for limited access. Limited access keeps the record from public view without removing it.
Where do I find someone serving a Pennsylvania prison sentence?
In the Department of Corrections Inmate/Department Supervised Individual Locator at inmatelocator.cor.pa.gov, which lists people in state custody and under state supervision. County prison rosters, listed on the county pages, cover people held locally.