The Online Criminal Background Check System is provided by the Arkansas State Police under a state law that lets authorized entities see certain criminal history information, and the service is limited to persons and entities holding the signed written consent of the record subject. Access needs an account with Tyler Arkansas, the portal contractor, and the state price list reads $22 per Arkansas name based request, $11 for volunteers, $16 for a national FBI fingerprint check and $14 for volunteers, with no refunds for mistyped data or a wrong selection. Anyone without a Tyler account can mail a request for $25 instead. The system questions page quotes the FBI fee at $13 and $11, so the two official pages disagree on that line and the portal price shown at checkout governs.
What comes back is defined by the questions page. The check releases the person's Arkansas felony and misdemeanor conviction record, any pending Arkansas felony arrest from the last five years where the person has been arrested and has not gone to trial, and whether the person is a registered sex offender of levels one through four or is required to register. It does not release what law enforcement sees: pending misdemeanors, arrests that ended with the case dismissed, nol prossed or found not guilty, or traffic matters such as speeding or a seat belt ticket. The state police explain that their file is built from fingerprint arrest cards submitted by arresting agencies, linked through the ACIC database and the state police AFIS, so an arrest booked under a false name still attaches to the right person's history. The county jails and police departments that submit those cards are listed on the Arkansas county pages.
- $22, $11 and $25: the online state check, the volunteer rate, and the mailed ASP-122 request by check or money order, credit cards not accepted by mail.
- Five years: a pending felony arrest appears for five years; a dismissed, acquitted or nol prossed arrest never appears on the public response.
- Free challenge: the subject of a wrong arrest entry is fingerprinted by a law enforcement officer, the prints are compared to the arrest, and the entry is removed at no cost.
- One year, $50: an arrest with no charge filed within a year of the arrest can be sealed by uniform petition in the county of arrest, for a $50 clerk fee unless waived for indigence.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Arkansas's own systems: the Arkansas State Police Online Criminal Background Check System, the frequently asked questions of the Online Criminal Background Check System, the background check forms page of the Arkansas State Police, Act 1460 of 2013, the Comprehensive Criminal Record Sealing Act, on the Arkansas General Assembly site, the Arkansas Judiciary case search, the Arkansas Department of Corrections inmate search, the inmate search disclaimer of the Arkansas Department of Corrections, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The mailed request on form ASP-122
Anyone with the subject's signed consent can use the paper route. The forms page says an Arkansas check needs a properly completed ASP-122 Individual Record Check form, a check or money order for $25 payable to the Arkansas State Police, never cash, and no fingerprint card when only the Arkansas check is wanted; the result goes to the person or entity to whom the subject released it. The questions page adds that a stamped addressed envelope must go in with each request and that the Identification Bureau processes a request in two to five business days after it arrives, not counting mail time.
Requests go to the Arkansas State Police Identification Bureau, 1 State Police Plaza Drive, Little Rock, AR 72209, or in person to headquarters at Interstate 30 and Geyer Springs Road, exit 133, Monday to Friday from 8 am to 4:30 pm. A local troop headquarters or the Criminal Investigation Division will not take them.
There are separate versions of the form. The ASP-122 Non-Volunteer form is for paid employees screened under the Adam Walsh Act or the Serve America Act, the Volunteer form for unpaid workers under those acts or Arkansas Code 12-12-1607, and a Private Adoption form for checks under Arkansas Code 9-9-212, whose results the state police send only to the court where the adoption petition will be filed, never to the applicant. Anyone required by law to be checked is told to get the right form from the licensing agency rather than this page. Questions about any of them go to the Identification Bureau at 501-618-8500.
Online accounts, status codes and the misuse penalty
Online requesters confirm their data before submitting because the system gives no refund for an error. Each submission then shows one of three statuses: pending while results are awaited, complete when they are in, and rejected when results arrived but something went wrong in reporting. An uploaded document must be a single file of no more than 20 megabytes. The state police will not explain why an application reads not approved, citing privacy rules, and tell the requester to open the record under the history tab instead.
Tyler Arkansas charges its own annual fee to use the service, waived for state agencies and educational institutions.
The home page carries the penalty in capitals: a non criminal justice organization or individual receiving criminal history information may not use it for any purpose other than the one stated in the request, or in a way that denies the subject a civil right, and using it for an unstated purpose is a Class A misdemeanor. The questions page also makes the state police's case against private data vendors, which link records by name only: a common name can pick up another person's convictions, while the state file is a name query of a system linked by fingerprints and built from arrest cards rather than court records.
Removing an arrest that is not yours
The challenge procedure costs nothing and depends on fingerprints. If a result shows an arrest or conviction that the subject says is not theirs, the subject is fingerprinted by a law enforcement officer and the prints are compared with the fingerprints or photograph from the challenged arrest. If the arrest turns out to belong to someone else, the entry is removed from the criminal history and a corrected result is sent to the entity that ordered the check, at no charge.
If the prints match, the arrest stays. The same page notes that sealed records are released only in limited cases, pointing to Attorney General Opinions 2003-057 and 2003-183.
Sealing under the 2013 act
Arkansas replaced its scattered expungement sections with Act 1460 of 2013, the Comprehensive Criminal Record Sealing Act, codified at Arkansas Code 16-90-1401 and following. Two of its sections cover arrests that never became convictions. Section 16-90-1409 lets a person petition the district or circuit court in the county of arrest to seal a prior arrest when the prosecuting attorney has not filed charges within one year of the arrest date.
Section 16-90-1410 covers cases that ended in an order nolle prosequi on the prosecutor's motion, once a year has passed since the order, an order of dismissal, an acquittal for any reason other than mental disease or defect, or a prosecutor's decision not to file; that petition goes to the court that entered the order.
Every request uses the uniform petition and uniform order the act prescribes, and no sealing takes effect until the uniform order is entered. The circuit or district clerk collects a $50 filing fee for the uniform petition unless the petitioner is indigent and the fee is waived under Rule 72 of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure. A copy of the petition is served on the prosecuting attorney, who has 30 days to object, and the act bars sealing a defendant's record until all court ordered restitution has been paid.
A denied petition on a misdemeanor or violation generally cannot be refiled for 90 days, and a denied petition on the listed more serious misdemeanors for a year.
Searching court cases and the prison population
The Arkansas Judiciary's Search ARCourts lets a visitor search by participant across the courts on the statewide case management system, with tips published for navigating the search and for the Safari pop up settings needed to open documents. It is a court index, not the state police repository, so it shows filed cases rather than arrests, and a county whose district court is not yet on the statewide system keeps its own docket. The Arkansas background check guide explains how the two sources differ for an employer.
The prison roster and its download
For custody, the Department of Corrections inmate search takes an ADC number, county, name, facility, gender, offense category, age or race, and the whole inmate database can be downloaded as one file. Its disclaimer states that the information is subject to disclosure under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act of 1967 and the Public Safety Transparency and Accountability Act of 2015, that unauthorized use is forbidden, and that anyone who republishes it is solely liable for any claim of improper or inaccurate disclosure; complaints about accuracy go in writing to the Public Information Officer at PO Box 8707, Pine Bluff, AR 71611.
Inmates whose offense was committed before age 18 may be released earlier than the site shows. The Arkansas inmate search guide covers the county jails as well.
What stays at the sheriff's office
The repository in Little Rock holds a summary built from fingerprint cards. The arrest report, the booking photograph and the jail log stay with the sheriff or police department that made the arrest, and those are requested under the Freedom of Information Act described in the Arkansas public records law guide. A dismissed arrest that the state police response will not show can therefore still sit in a county file until a sealing order under 16-90-1410 reaches that agency, which is the practical reason the act requires the clerk to certify copies of the uniform order to the agencies involved.
Registered offenders, who appear on the state police check by level, are also listed publicly through the Arkansas sex offender registry.
Questions about Arkansas arrest records
Related Arkansas records
Other Arkansas guides on this site follow the same records: the Arkansas background check guide for employers and volunteers, the Arkansas inmate search guide for prisons and county jails, the Arkansas sex offender registry guide, the Arkansas public records law guide for police reports under the Freedom of Information Act, and the Arkansas county pages.