Illinois Criminal Records

Illinois made its conviction records public by statute in 1991 and has spent the years since deciding, case by case, which of them to hide again. The State Police sell a name-based conviction search to anyone. The circuit clerks in 102 counties keep the case files, with Cook County's clerk holding more criminal cases than most states. The sheriffs post their jails, and the state's public records law opens arrest reports within days. And the sealing and expungement statute, one of the broadest in the country, takes cases back out of all of it. This page gives the Illinois rule and the Illinois search for each record, with government sources only.

The Illinois State Police's Bureau of Identification explains the rule on its criminal history page: "On January 1, 1991, the Uniform Conviction Information Act (UCIA) became law in Illinois. This act mandates that all criminal history record conviction information collected and maintained by the Illinois State Police, Bureau of Identification, be made available to the public pursuant to 20 ILCS 2635." The Bureau's guide puts the price at "a fee of $16.00" to "process Uniform Conviction Information name" requests, on the forms the state posts for conviction information requests, and a fingerprint-based version is available for a higher fee. Conviction information means what it says: arrests that ended without a conviction, and cases sealed or expunged, are not in the public product. A person's own complete record, including non-conviction data, comes through the Bureau's access and review process, which the State Police process without charge.

Illinois has one trial court, the circuit court, in 24 judicial circuits covering 102 counties, and each county's elected circuit clerk keeps the files. The Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, the largest, posts online case information for "general status of historic and active court cases," with criminal, county, probate and domestic relations cases through its portal, and warns that neither the court nor the clerk "warrants the accuracy, completeness, or the currency of this data." The other 101 clerks run their own searches, many through the vendor systems the counties share, and the state's e-filing portal offers a statewide search of e-filed cases for the counties that participate; the court records page links each clerk. Small claims cases up to $10,000 and the misdemeanor and traffic cases are in the same circuit court files, under different case prefixes.

A circuit clerk's index is the source the private databases copy, and the criminal records page explains what a hand-collected copy misses. The Illinois twist is the sealing statute below, which removes cases from the clerk's public index on a schedule that no copy follows.

Illinois puts expungement, sealing and immediate sealing in one section, 20 ILCS 2630/5.2, with separate rules for arrests that ended without charges, for supervision, for probation under the first-offender statutes, and for convictions. In general terms: an arrest or charge that did not end in a conviction may be expunged, which destroys the record, once the case is over and any supervision or qualified probation has run its waiting period; most misdemeanor and felony convictions may be sealed, which closes them to the public while leaving them open to law enforcement and the licensing bodies the statute lists, three years after the sentence is completed, with the violent, sex and DUI offenses the section names excluded; and an arrest that did not result in a charge, or a charge that was dismissed or acquitted, may be sealed immediately. The circuit clerk of the county where the case was filed takes the petition, and the State Police carry out the order in the state file.

A sealed Illinois case leaves the clerk's public index and the state's public conviction search. It does not leave a copy that was made before the order, and Illinois adds a rule for the copies: its consumer fraud act makes it an unlawful practice to charge a person to remove their criminal record information from a website, and the federal rule on complete and up to date public records, on the criminal records page, forces a background check company to report the sealed status.

Illinois' Freedom of Information Act makes arrest information public quickly. Section 2.15 of the Act requires a law enforcement agency to provide the arrestee's name, age, address, photograph if available, the charges, the time and location of the arrest, the arresting agency, the bond and the time and date of release, and treats the information as public "within 72 hours of the arrest" on request, while the Act's exemptions protect the investigative file. The county sheriffs post the jails: the Cook County Sheriff's individual in custody locator covers the Cook County Jail, and the Department of Corrections covers state prison, with the usual reminder that a person "may be incarcerated under a different name," "may be discharged," or "may be in a county jail awaiting trial or sentencing." The arrest records page covers the rest.

An Illinois judgment can be enforced for seven years from entry and revived, under 735 ILCS 5/12-108, for up to twenty years in all, and a memorandum of judgment recorded with the county recorder is a lien on the debtor's real property in that county for seven years. A judgment older than seven years with no revival on the docket is one the creditor can no longer enforce without going back to court.

Illinois is divided into three federal judicial districts under 28 U.S.C. 93. The Northern District's Eastern Division covers Cook, Du Page, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, La Salle and Will, with court at Chicago and Wheaton, and its Western Division covers Boone, Carroll, De Kalb, Jo Daviess, Lee, McHenry, Ogle, Stephenson, Whiteside and Winnebago, with court at Freeport and Rockford. The Central District covers Adams, Brown, Bureau, Cass, Champaign, Christian, Coles, De Witt, Douglas, Edgar, Ford, Fulton, Greene, Hancock, Henderson, Henry, Iroquois, Kankakee, Knox, Livingston, Logan, McDonough, McLean, Macoupin, Macon, Marshall, Mason, Menard, Mercer, Montgomery, Morgan, Moultrie, Peoria, Piatt, Pike, Putnam, Rock Island, Sangamon, Schuyler, Scott, Shelby, Stark, Tazewell, Vermilion, Warren and Woodford, with court at Champaign/Urbana, Danville, Peoria, Quincy, Rock Island and Springfield. The Southern District covers Alexander, Bond, Calhoun, Clark, Clay, Clinton, Crawford, Cumberland, Edwards, Effingham, Fayette, Franklin, Gallatin, Hamilton, Hardin, Jackson, Jasper, Jefferson, Jersey, Johnson, Lawrence, Madison, Marion, Massac, Monroe, Perry, Pope, Pulaski, Randolph, Richland, St. Clair, Saline, Union, Wabash, Washington, Wayne, White and Williamson, with court at Alton, Benton, Cairo and East St. Louis. A federal case from any Illinois county is on one of those dockets and on PACER, whose prices and gaps are on the criminal records page.

Whether a person has an Illinois conviction: the State Police's $16 name search answers it from the state file, convictions only, sealed cases left out.

Whether a person was charged in a county: the circuit clerk's search answers it, with the docket and disposition, and the case is gone from it once sealed.

Whether a person is in custody now: the county sheriff's locator answers it, and the Department of Corrections answers it for state prison.

Whether an old case can still be found: an expunged case is destroyed, a sealed case is closed to the public, a judgment is live for seven years unless revived, and a copy that predates a sealing order is reached through the federal rule.