Kansas Criminal Records

Kansas sells its state criminal history by name to anyone, $20 a search, online through the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and it has been moving all of its district courts onto one case management system with one public portal. The rest of the Kansas picture is timing: convictions expunged after three or five years on a $176 petition, judgments that go dormant after five years and die two years later if no one revives them, and a public records act that lets the police close an investigation file only while release would interfere with the case. This page gives the Kansas rule and the Kansas search for each record, with government sources only.

The Kansas Bureau of Investigation's criminal history record search describes itself in one sentence: "Online record checks is a fee based service that allows a person to perform a public record name search against the Kansas Criminal History database." The Bureau's record check brochure prices it: "Name-based record checks (whether your own or someone else's) is $20 per search," with "agencies dealing with children, disabled or elderly clientele" qualifying "for reduced fees as 'caregivers' for $12.50 per name search," and the mailed certified record check form asks that payment be "made payable to the KBI Record Check Fee Fund." What comes back is the public portion of the central repository under the Kansas Criminal History Record Information Act: adult convictions, diversions and the arrests the act allows the Bureau to release while they await disposition, by name and date of birth, expunged records left out, and nothing from any other state. It is a name search, and the criminal records page explains why a name match is a guess; the fingerprint check is for the person's own review and for the employers and licensing boards the statutes name, and the Bureau's fingerprint page issues the cards for those without charge.

Felonies and misdemeanors are both tried in the district courts, one for each of the 31 judicial districts covering the 105 counties, with the clerk of the district court in each county keeping the file, and the municipal courts handling city ordinance cases on their own records. The Judicial Branch's Kansas eCourt program "includes the applications and technologies that create a statewide, web-based courthouse," and its district court records page explains the transition: "As Kansas courts transition to a new centralized case management system, their public records will become available through an online portal. Until then, there are several ways to access case information." The courts on the system are the ones "which court's case information can be searched on the Kansas District Court Public Access Portal," and the branch's news release of January 2024 recorded the portal coming back online, for "record searches and online payments to courts," after the autumn 2023 security incident that took the judiciary's systems down for weeks, a reminder that a copy made during those weeks missed everything filed in them. A district court not on the portal is searched through its own clerk, and the county pages on this site link each. A background check company's "Kansas court record" is a copy of the portal or of a clerk's index on the date it was pulled, and the criminal records page explains what a copy misses.

Kansas expunges under K.S.A. 21-6614 for the district courts and K.S.A. 12-4516 for the municipal courts, the two statutes the Bureau's expungement fact sheet lists as covering "expungement of certain convictions, arrest records and diversion agreements." A person convicted of a misdemeanor or a lower-level felony may petition the court of conviction three years after the sentence, probation or parole is completed; the more serious felonies wait five years; a diversion may be expunged "if three or more years have elapsed since the terms of the diversion agreement were fulfilled"; a driving under the influence conviction waits five years for a first offense and longer for a second; and murder, rape and the other offenses the section names are never expunged. The petition carries the $176 docket fee the section sets, the court notifies the prosecutor and the arresting agency and holds a hearing, and an order reaches the Bureau, which removes the record from the public search. An arrest that ended without conviction is expunged under the same section without the waiting period. A copy sold before the order keeps the case, and the federal rule on complete and up to date public records, on the criminal records page, is what forces the copy to catch up.

The Kansas Open Records Act presumes every record open, and its police exemption, K.S.A. 45-221(a)(10), is discretionary and conditional: an agency may close "criminal investigation records," which the Attorney General's questions page defines from the statute as "records of an investigatory agency or criminal justice agency as defined by K.S.A. 22-4701, compiled in the process of preventing, detecting or investigating violations of criminal law," but only where release would interfere with a prospective law enforcement action, investigation or prosecution, reveal a confidential source or endanger someone, and the section requires the open and closed portions to be separated so the open part is released. The Attorney General's opinion on the Kansas Standard Offense Report and Standard Arrest Report, noted in the statute's annotations, treats the identifying front of those reports as open. So a Kansas arrest is public when it happens, and the investigation behind it can be held back only while the interference lasts. Who is in custody is posted by the county sheriffs, the Sedgwick County Sheriff's for Wichita among them, linked from the county pages, and by the Department of Corrections' KASPER offender search for state prisoners, parolees and absconders. The arrest records page covers what happens to a booking after it leaves the roster.

A Kansas judgment goes dormant and then dies. Under K.S.A. 60-2403, a judgment becomes dormant five years after it is entered, or after the last execution, garnishment or renewal affidavit, and the statute's annotations record the courts' gloss that a garnishment still pending "does not toll the time for dormancy and revivor time provisions." Under K.S.A. 60-2404 the creditor may revive a dormant judgment by motion within two years, and "a judgment may also be revived by the filing of a written stipulation of revivor signed by all of the parties affected thereby"; a judgment not revived in those two years is released of record. The judgment is a lien on the debtor's real estate in the county where it is entered from the time it is entered, and in other counties from the filing of a certified copy, for as long as the judgment is alive. The court records page covers where the judgment dockets are searched.

Kansas is a single federal judicial district, the District of Kansas, under 28 U.S.C. 96, and court is held at Kansas City, Lawrence, Leavenworth, Salina, Topeka, Hutchinson, Wichita, Dodge City and Fort Scott. A federal criminal case from any of Kansas's 105 counties is on that one docket and on PACER, whose prices and gaps are on the criminal records page.

Whether a person has a Kansas record: the Bureau's $20 name search answers it, online, from the public portion of the central repository.

Whether a person was charged in a county: the Public Access Portal answers it for the courts on the centralized system, and the clerk of the district court for the rest.

Whether a person was arrested: the arrest report is open under the Open Records Act, and the investigation file is closed only while release would interfere.

Whether a person is in custody now: the county sheriff's roster answers it, and KASPER for state prison and parole.

Whether an old case can still be found: an expunged case is off the Bureau's search and the court's public index, a judgment goes dormant at five years and is gone two years later unless revived, and a copy that predates the expungement is reached through the federal rule.