The Bureau of Criminal Identification, part of the Department of Public Safety at 4315 South 2700 West in Taylorsville, holds Utah's fingerprint based criminal history and limits who may see it. Its own record page describes one customer, the individual, who comes in with a valid government photo identification or mails the criminal history record application, and the forms page adds that the Right of Access agencies listed by the bureau can give members of the public copies of their own Utah histories and not the histories of anyone else.
The fee is $20, raised from $15 by the 2025 legislature with effect from July 1, 2025, payable in cash, personal check, Visa, MasterCard, money order or cashier's check, and the same $20 applies to a record challenge. A Utah driving privilege card is refused as identification. A person who needs the record to reach an employer or a court signs a third party release so the bureau can send it there. For the sheriffs and justice courts that hold the arrest and the case, see the Utah county pages.
- $20: the Right of Access fee for a copy of your own Utah criminal history, in person or by mail, and the fee for a record challenge, both raised from $15 on July 1, 2025.
- Free warrants: the statewide warrants file search on the bureau site costs nothing and covers people wanted anywhere in Utah.
- $65: the expungement application fee, and $65 again for each certificate of eligibility for a conviction or plea in abeyance, with no certificate fee for a dismissal, acquittal or declination.
- 60 and 180 days: the waits before the courts automatically expunge an acquittal and a dismissal with prejudice, run by the court itself since January 1, 2026 with no request form.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Utah's own systems: the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification home page, the bureau page on obtaining a copy of your own criminal history record, the bureau criminal records page with the July 1, 2025 fee increases, the Utah criminal records forms page, the bureau statewide warrant search page, the bureau expungements questions, the bureau page on automatic and clean slate expungement, the Utah courts page on expunging adult criminal records, the Utah courts Xchange page, the Xchange subscription and fees page, the Utah Department of Corrections offender search, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Your own record, in person or by mail
The bureau is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, closed on state holidays, on the first floor of the Taylorsville State Office Building past the information desk and to the left. Applications for a criminal history and for expungement need no appointment, while fingerprinting for non criminal purposes is by appointment only, with masks recommended, hand washing required and only the person being printed allowed in the room.
By mail the forms page supplies the application, the third party release used only when the record is to go to someone else, and the record challenge form. A person who wants an FBI record writes to the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg, since the bureau does not supply other states' records. The Utah background check guide covers the employment and volunteer checks the bureau runs for agencies.
The free statewide warrant search
The bureau publishes a statewide warrants search that is free and draws on the Statewide Warrants file of people wanted in Utah. It is the one place a member of the public can check a name against the state system without paying or proving identity. The home page pairs it with a fraud warning: callers pretending to be bureau officers tell people they have warrants and offer to take payment, and the bureau says it never advises anyone of a warrant by phone and never collects warrant fines. Utah wants and warrants covers the file and the county sources behind it.
Xchange, the court index with a price list
The courts' Xchange is a repository of district and justice court case information, with felonies and class A misdemeanors in the district courts and most class B and C misdemeanors, infractions and traffic in the justice courts. It shows parties, addresses when available, judges, attorneys, documents filed, hearings, judgments and outcomes, and sells images of public district court documents filed since July 1, 2010. Most district courts have been on the CORIS system since the end of 1998, each justice court joined on its own schedule, and converted older cases carry less.
Expunged cases are not displayed, sealed cases are not displayed, and juvenile matters are not there at all.
The fee page gives three ways in: a one time use account for $10 with searches at 35 cents and documents at $1 drawn from the deposit, a guest account on the same terms with any leftover credit forfeited, and a monthly subscription at $25 to set up and $40 a month for 500 searches, then 35 cents each. Public terminals are available at most district courts. The Utah court records guide covers each court and its clerk.
Expungement by petition, $65 at a time
The bureau's questions set out the petition route. The application costs $65, filed in person with valid identification and ink fingerprints or by mail or email with high quality scanned prints, and fingerprints are required even though the bureau already has them. The bureau takes up to one to two months to say whether the person qualifies, with no expediting, and status can be checked online. If eligible, each certificate for a conviction, plea in abeyance or special certificate costs another $65, while certificates for dismissals, acquittals and declinations are free; the court charges its own filing fee, and only the court can waive fees for indigence.
The certificate then goes to the court of judgment, where a judge may still deny the order, a prosecutor may object and force a hearing, and victims are notified. Once the signed order reaches the bureau the record is deleted and sealed at the state and the FBI, though some agencies may still see it under section 77-40a-403, and the person may answer any inquiry as though the arrest or conviction never happened. Nothing falls off a Utah record on its own except through this process or the automatic one below, and an unfingerprinted arrest that is absent from the bureau may still sit in court or corrections records.
Automatic expungement since January 1, 2026
The courts' expungement page records the change: on January 1, 2026 the law on how the court identifies cases for automatic expungement changed, the request form that was required between October 1, 2024 and December 31, 2025 is no longer used, and the court now finds and clears qualifying cases on its own, checking each case and any other cases the person has. The computers run the process once a month, the prosecutor gets time to respond, and the whole cycle can take up to 120 days; a person can see an expunged case marked as such in My Court Case.
The bureau page adds the eligibility rules: an acquittal on all charges 60 days after the verdict, a dismissal with prejudice 180 days after it with no appeal, but not a dismissal that came from a completed plea in abeyance or an acquittal by reason of insanity. Clean slate expungement of convictions waits five years for a class C misdemeanor or infraction, six for a class B, and seven for a class A possession of a controlled substance, with the prosecutor not objecting, no pending case, no state debt on the case, and a long exclusion list from DUI and domestic violence to weapons and registrable offenses.
The bureau will not predict when a given charge disappears, and for $15 it sends a letter listing everything automatically and petition expunged from a person's record.
Custody and what the county jail keeps
The Department of Corrections offender search lists only people under its supervision; those awaiting trial or sentencing in a county jail are not in it, so a fresh arrest shows on the sheriff's roster and nowhere at the state. The sheriff holds the booking record and the jail photograph, the arresting agency holds the incident report, and the district or justice court holds the case that Xchange indexes. The bureau holds the fingerprint based history that only the subject may buy. The Utah inmate search guide covers the state search and the county jails, and the Utah criminal records guide maps every office.
Questions about Utah arrest records
Related Utah records
Utah readers can continue with the Utah background check guide for employment and volunteer checks, Utah court records for Xchange and the courts, Utah inmate search for the state search and county jails, the Utah sex offender registry guide, the Utah public records law guide for GRAMA, and the Utah county pages for every sheriff and clerk.