Lincoln Arrest Records: Who Makes Arrests, Where People Are Booked and How to Get the Report

Who Makes Arrests in Lincoln

The FBI lists Lincoln with an arrest reporting agency of its own, filed as Lincoln Police Department. It reported 669 arrests for 2025. A city is listed separately whether the officers are the city's own or the sheriff's under contract; the FBI's list does not say which.

Outside the city, the Placer County Sheriff's Office is the county agency. It reported 3,583 arrests for 2025.

The FBI's agency list also places these agencies in Placer County: Union Pacific Railroad in Placer County (other); California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection at Nevada-Yuba-Placer and California State Parks at Sierra (state agency); the Highway Patrol's Auburn and Gold Run Area Offices (state police).

How Many Arrests Lincoln Reports

Each agency reports its arrests to the FBI by month, and the FBI publishes them on the Crime Data Explorer. These are the full-year totals, all offenses, as the FBI held them on October 8, 2026; a year with months missing or not reported is left out.

• Lincoln: 669 for 2025, 667 for 2024, 553 for 2023, 538 for 2022, 1,283 for 2020 and 792 for 2019; 2021 is missing months.

Lincoln's 669 arrests in 2025 were up 0.3 percent from 667 in 2024.

Through August 2026, Lincoln reported 430 arrests, against 465 in the same months of 2025.

Across Placer County, the five agencies with all twelve months of 2025 on file reported 8,282 arrests between them.

Booking: Where People Arrested in Lincoln Are Held

The county jail is where a person arrested in Lincoln and kept in custody ends up, whichever agency made the arrest, though a city department may hold someone in its own cells first and a person cited and released at the scene is never booked. The jail's record of each person held, with the charges, is a public record of the arrest, and once the person is released or sentenced the record continues in the court file.

On an average day in 2025 the jail held about 800 people, up from about 700 in 2019. Its rated capacity in 2017, the last year with a capacity figure, was 803 beds, and it ran at 91 percent of it that year. The figures are from the Vera Institute of Justice's Incarceration Trends data.

SearchSystems opened and checked the jail page of the Placer County Sheriff's Office at placer.ca.gov/7994/Press-Log---Arrests (page title: Press Log | Arrests | Placer County, CA), a site that blocks automated checks (HTTP 429), so open it in a browser.

A person sentenced to prison serves the sentence in a facility of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, whose inmate locator is at cdcr.ca.gov/search.

How to Find Out About an Arrest in Lincoln

For Lincoln the place to look is the District Attorney, which decides whether an arrest becomes a charge (its page is at placer.ca.gov/2923/District-Attorney).

California does not let the public search another person's statewide criminal history. The record kept by the California Department of Justice goes to the person it belongs to and to employers and agencies the law authorizes; for everyone else the court's own case index is the public record of an arrest that led to a charge.

Getting a Copy of an Arrest Record in Lincoln

The report of an arrest is released by the agency that made it; the jail and the court hold their own records of the same event, but not the report. Under the California Public Records Act the agency must answer within 10 days, with up to 14 more days in unusual circumstances, and it may charge the direct cost of copying only, not staff time.

• An arrest by the Lincoln police: the police records page SearchSystems verified at lincolnca.gov/living-here/police-and-fire/police-department/service... (page title: Report Requests | City of Lincoln), phone 916-645-4040, which answered when SearchSystems opened it on September 25, 2026.
• An arrest by the Placer County Sheriff's Office: ask its records unit.
• A defendant who has been charged gets the report through the case: the District Attorney handles discovery for pending cases.
• Any county record that is not posted: the county records request page SearchSystems verified is at placer.ca.gov/2817/Public-Records-Request (page title: Public Records Request | Placer County, CA).
• Your own statewide record: a Record Review through Live Scan fingerprinting, form BCIA 8016RR, $25.

The Placer County guide covers every agency in the county: Placer County arrest records.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many arrests are made in Lincoln each year?

Lincoln reported 669 arrests to the FBI for 2025, its latest full year.

Where are people arrested in Lincoln booked?

Those kept in custody go to the county jail, run by the Placer County Sheriff's Office; a person cited and released at the scene is not booked.

Are arrest records public in Lincoln?

The court files of criminal cases in the Superior Court of California, County of Placer are public and can be looked up through the court. The statewide criminal history kept by the California Department of Justice is not public; you can get your own for $25. The arrest report itself is released by the agency that made the arrest, under the California Public Records Act.

How do I get a copy of an arrest report in Lincoln?

From the agency that made the arrest: the Lincoln police for its own arrests, the Placer County Sheriff's Office for the sheriff's. Under the California Public Records Act the answer is due within 10 days, with up to 14 more days in unusual circumstances; the county records request page SearchSystems verified is at placer.ca.gov/2817/Public-Records-Request.

Is this the official Lincoln website?

No. SearchSystems.net is an independent public records guide, online since 1997. It links to the official city, county, court and state offices described above and does not hold records, charge for them or take requests.