The Kansas Bureau of Investigation runs the Kansas Central Repository, and its record check page on the state portal sells a name based check to the public for $30 per individual. The Kansas courts' own district court records page repeats the bureau's terms: any individual, company or organization is entitled to a criminal history record for the $30 fee, a substantial portion of the database is fully automated and displays at once for printing, and a record that is not automated is normally released within one or two days. The repository holds summaries of arrests and dispositions reported by police departments, sheriffs, prosecutors and courts across Kansas, filed by person and tied to fingerprints, and printed as a rap sheet.
The bureau's questions page says what a general request yields: adult conviction information, meaning incidents in which the subject was found guilty, is on a current diversion or is awaiting a court disposition. Its sample letter for ordering your own record puts the same rule as a list, adult convictions, pending arrests under 12 months old and pending diversions. What is never released to a general requester is a successfully completed diversion, a dismissal, an acquittal, an expunged record or any juvenile offender data, and a No record found answer can mean the arrest ended without an adult conviction as easily as that there was no arrest. The sheriffs and police departments that report to Topeka are on the Kansas county pages.
- $30: a public name based check on anyone, showing adult convictions, arrests pending less than 12 months and diversions in progress.
- $45: your own complete record with a fingerprint card, including non convictions, expungements and juvenile entries, with $10 more for a notarized rap sheet.
- $176: the docket fee to petition for expungement of an arrest under K.S.A. 22-2410, waived for mistaken identity, no probable cause, a not guilty verdict or a dismissal.
- 1939: the year the oldest records in the Kansas database date from.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Kansas's own systems: the Kansas Bureau of Investigation page on conducting a record check, the Kansas criminal history record search frequently asked questions, the sample letter for requesting your own Kansas criminal history record, K.S.A. 22-2410 on the Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes site, the Kansas courts page on searching district court records, the Kansas Open Records Act request form for court records, the KASPER offender population search disclaimer of the Kansas Department of Corrections, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Searching online: automation, dashboards and seven days
A name based search needs the subject's first and last names and date of birth; Social Security number, middle name, aliases, height, weight, race, place of birth, residence and occupation help, and the search ignores case. The bureau suggests typing Rob to catch both Robert and Robbie, and Al to catch Alan, Allan and Allen. Where a possible match is only partially automated, meaning paper in the repository has not been keyed into the database, the rap sheet cannot be shown; the requester can ask staff to search manually and automate it, which takes one or two business days, and is emailed to return, with the warning that the completed record may no longer match the search and may even have been removed.
Results sit in the requester's dashboard for seven calendar days, after which the Criminal Records Unit at 785-296-2454 will mail them, and anything older than 60 days must be requested again. Every name a subject has been arrested under is linked in the search, so one hit lists all the aliases.
Fingerprints, your own complete record and the $10 notary
Fingerprint based checks cost $45 and are submitted on the FBI applicant card FD-258, which the bureau supplies on request when a local agency cannot, with prints rolled by a police department or sheriff for a reasonable fee or at the bureau's Topeka annex at 1631 SW Topeka Boulevard, by appointment at 785-296-4038, for $10 with no cash accepted. The general public gets the same content with fingerprints as by name; the difference is certainty of identity.
A person who wants their entire file mails a letter to the Criminal History Records Section at 1620 SW Tyler, Topeka, KS 66612-1837, with a personal identification card FD-353 or an applicant card and $45. The bureau's sample letter adds $10 for a notarized rap sheet, $55 in all, and asks the writer to choose between the public version and the complete one, which holds every arrest for a felony, class A or B misdemeanor or class C misdemeanor assault, including arrests with no disposition yet, prosecutor and court dispositions, municipal convictions, diversions whether ongoing, failed or completed, expunged arrests, prosecutions and convictions, Department of Corrections confinements and all juvenile offender information.
The letter warns the writer not to share the complete record with an agency, which may not be entitled to all of it.
Errors are corrected by letter with documents attached; the bureau's example is an arrest shown without a disposition that in fact ended in a completed diversion, fixed by sending the journal entry the county attorney filed. Certified checks for a visa, an adoption or immigration are mailed on the bureau's request form at $40 by name or $55 by fingerprint and come back as a signed, notarized letter with the repository's embossed seal.
Employers may not make you buy your own record
Two statutes shape the employer side. K.S.A. 22-4710, which the bureau cites in answer to whether an employer will accept a printout, prohibits an employer from requiring an employee or applicant to obtain their own Kansas criminal history record, so employment checks must be initiated by the employer. And K.S.A. 75-712j requires an authorized entity to get the applicant's written consent before taking fingerprints for a check tied to the rap back program.
The bureau tells requesters that a record check expires in usefulness as soon as a new decision must be made, that results go only to people with a need to know, and that a copy may be given to the subject so an error can be contested without a second fee. The Kansas background check guide covers the authorized entity program in detail.
Expunging an arrest under K.S.A. 22-2410
K.S.A. 22-2410 lets any person arrested in Kansas petition the district court to expunge the arrest record. The petition states the person's current name and the name at arrest, sex, race and date of birth, the crime, the date and the arresting agency, and carries a docket fee of $176, which the legislature alone may set and to which the Supreme Court could add up to $19 through June 30, 2025. No fee is charged when the petitioner was arrested as a victim of identity theft, when a court found no probable cause for the arrest, when the petitioner was found not guilty, or when the charges were dismissed.
The court sets a hearing, notifies the prosecutor and the arresting agency, and must order the expungement on finding mistaken identity, no probable cause or a not guilty verdict, or that expungement is in the best interests of justice where charges were dismissed or none are likely to be filed.
Mistaken identity has its own mandatory path: when a person is arrested because of misidentification or because someone else used their identifying information, and the charge is dismissed or not prosecuted, the prosecutor or judicial officer who dismissed it must notify the court and petition for expungement, and the court orders the record purged from state and federal systems. The clerk sends a certified copy of any order to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which notifies the FBI, the Secretary of Corrections and any other agency holding the record, and a municipal case appealed to district court is expunged at the municipal court too.
After expungement the person may say they have never been arrested, though the court may keep the record open for private detective and security licensing, bar admission, lottery, racing and gaming employment and commercial driver license applications. Diversion agreements and convictions are expunged under a different section, 21-6614.
CaseSearch and the courthouse terminal
Kansas district court case information moved to a statewide portal called CaseSearch as courts joined the eCourt case management system. The court records page separates case information, meaning the case number, type, parties, attorneys, judge and hearing dates, from court records, the documents themselves, which are online only from the date each court began operating on eCourt. Sealed cases, certain criminal investigation records and many child in need of care and juvenile files are not available at all, and some public cases are reachable only at the computer terminal reserved for the public in every courthouse.
Copies of court records are requested in writing, on the Kansas Open Records Act form dated February 6, 2026, whose second page sets out K.S.A. 45-230, the ban on using names and addresses from public records to sell goods or services, with a civil penalty of up to $500 a violation. The Kansas court records guide lists each district court's contact.
KASPER is not a criminal history
The Department of Corrections' KASPER search opens with a disclaimer that must be accepted before any page loads: the site reflects only people and cases tied to programs the department funds or operates, the offense history on it is not a complete criminal history, and anyone needing a complete check is sent to the bureau's record search. Offenders are not to be arrested solely on what the site shows, information on community corrections probation supervision has not been displayed for events after April 21, 2021 during a data modernization project, the site is updated each working day, and an absconder list is included with a tip line at 785-414-7755.
County jails hold arrestees before and during trial, and the Kansas inmate search guide covers those rosters alongside KASPER.
The local file and the registry
The repository holds a summary tied to the fingerprint card the arresting agency sent; the arrest report, booking photograph and jail record stay with the sheriff or police department and are requested under the Kansas Open Records Act explained in the Kansas public records law guide. A dismissal that the $30 check will never show can still be in that local file until a 22-2410 order reaches the agency, which the statute arranges through the certified copies the clerk sends.
Registered offenders are a separate public list, and the bureau says a registry check is not the same as a record check, since the registry shows only people required to register; the Kansas sex offender registry guide covers it.
Questions about Kansas arrest records
Related Kansas records
Kansas readers can go on to the Kansas court records guide for CaseSearch and the clerks, the Kansas background check guide for authorized entities and rap back, the Kansas inmate search guide for KASPER and the county jails, the Kansas sex offender registry guide, the Kansas public records law guide for police reports, and the Kansas county pages.