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

Who Makes Arrests in Melrose

The FBI lists Melrose with an arrest reporting agency of its own, filed as Melrose Police Department. It reported 248 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.

The FBI's agency list also places these agencies in Middlesex County: Regis College, Brandeis University, Bentley University, Framingham State University and eight more (campus police); the Middlesex County Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (state agency); the Middlesex County State Police (state police).

How Many Arrests Melrose Reports

The FBI publishes every agency's monthly arrest counts 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.

• Melrose: 248 for 2025, 174 for 2024, 165 for 2023, 138 for 2022, 145 for 2021 and 152 for 2020.

Melrose's 248 arrests in 2025 were up 43 percent from 174 in 2024.

Through June 2026, Melrose reported 113 arrests, against 115 in the same months of 2025.

Across Middlesex County, the 51 agencies with all twelve months of 2025 on file reported 15,399 arrests between them.

Booking: Where People Arrested in Melrose Are Held

The county jail is where a person arrested in Melrose 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 710 people, down from about 790 in 2019. Its rated capacity in 2023, the last year with a capacity figure, was 1,464 beds, and it ran at 44 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 Middlesex Sheriff's Office, MA | Official Website at middlesexsheriff.org (page title: Middlesex Sheriff's Office, MA), which answered when SearchSystems opened it on September 30, 2026.

A sentence of more than a year is served in state prison; the Massachusetts Department of Correction lists its inmates at mass.gov/how-to/find-someone-housed-in-a-massachusetts-prison.

How to Find Out About an Arrest in Melrose

For Melrose the place to look is the case index of the Middlesex County Superior Court, which shows whether charges were filed and the next court date (the court records page SearchSystems verified is at mass.gov/search-court-dockets-calendars-and-case-information).

Statewide, masscourts.org is the Massachusetts Trial Court's free online case search.

Massachusetts is one of the states that lets anyone look up another person's statewide criminal history: open access iCORI lets anyone request limited conviction information by name, for $25 a search, through the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services. That record shows what agencies reported to the state, which is wider than one county's court index but can lag it.

Getting a Copy of an Arrest Record in Melrose

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 Massachusetts Public Records Law the agency must answer within 10 business days, and it may charge staff time after the first four hours for towns and two for the state, plus copying.

• An arrest by the Melrose police: the police department's page SearchSystems verified at melrosepolice.net/policies-and-procedures (page title: Policies and Procedures | Melrose Police Department), which answered when SearchSystems opened it on September 25, 2026.
• An arrest by the Middlesex Sheriff's Office, MA | Official Website: ask its records unit.
• The court file of a case that was filed: the Middlesex County Superior Court, through the court records page at mass.gov.
• Your own statewide record: a personal CORI request, free once a year online.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

How many arrests are made in Melrose each year?

Melrose reported 248 arrests to the FBI for 2025, its latest full year.

How do I find out if someone is in jail in Melrose?

Ask the Middlesex Sheriff's Office, MA | Official Website; its jail page SearchSystems verified is at middlesexsheriff.org.

Where are people arrested in Melrose booked?

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

Are arrest records public in Melrose?

The court files of criminal cases are public, and so is the statewide criminal history kept by the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services: open access iCORI lets anyone request limited conviction information by name, for $25. The arrest report itself is released by the agency that made the arrest, under the Massachusetts Public Records Law.

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

From the agency that made the arrest: the Melrose police for its own arrests, the Middlesex Sheriff's Office, MA | Official Website for the sheriff's. Under the Massachusetts Public Records Law the answer is due within 10 business days.

Is this the official Melrose 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.