Kentucky Criminal Records

Kentucky is the state where the court system itself is the background check company. The Administrative Office of the Courts sells a $25 criminal record report compiled from the statewide court database, by name, to anyone, and that report, not a police repository, is what most Kentucky background checks are built on. The trade-off is that the public gets no free statewide docket search: the courts' own online case lookup is a subscription for the professions, and the free route is the circuit clerk's terminal in each of the 120 counties. This page gives the Kentucky rule and the Kentucky search for each record, with government sources only.

The Kentucky Court of Justice's background checks page explains the product: "The AOC Records Unit provides state criminal record reports based on information maintained by the state court system," and "to request a report, click on Criminal Record Reports and choose the option that meets your needs," the options being the online AOC FastCheck, the mailed request, and the counter in Frankfort, each at $25 a report. The report is a name search of the court database, and it covers misdemeanor and traffic cases for at least the last five years and felony cases since 1978; it does not cover federal cases, as the page's own question and answer make clear, nor the cases of other states. The AOC's administrative records policy.aspx) draws the line between this product and an open records request: "AOC 'administrative records' do not include court case records or compiled information. Therefore, the Open Records Policy for the AOC does not apply to statistical information, background checks (criminal record reports), or records of the District Court, Circuit Court, Court of Appeals" and the Supreme Court, which are reached through the report or the clerk. So a Kentucky record bought by name from a database company is, at best, a copy of the same AOC data on the date it was licensed, and the criminal records page explains what a copy misses and why a name match is not a person. The Kentucky State Police keep the fingerprint repository and release it to the person and to the employers and licensing boards the statutes authorize; the State Police take records requests through their public records portal.

Felonies are tried in the circuit courts and misdemeanors, traffic and the preliminary stages of felonies in the district courts, one of each in every county, with a single elected circuit clerk in each county keeping both courts' files. The clerk's office has public terminals for the statewide case management system, so a search at the counter in any county reaches the whole state, but the online version of that system is a subscription for attorneys, agencies and the businesses the AOC licenses, and the public's online access is limited to the appellate courts' C-Track public access, which the AOC provides "to allow easy and expeditious access to appellate cases," and to the court's search page for calendars and locations. The county pages on this site link each circuit clerk. A Kentucky search that starts online therefore starts with the $25 report, and a search that has to be certified ends at the clerk.

Kentucky expunges under KRS 431.073 and following. KRS 431.073 covers Class D felony convictions, expanded in 2019 so that, in the AOC's words on its expungement certification page, "most Class D felony convictions (with limited exceptions) are eligible for expungement," on application five years after the sentence, probation or parole is completed; "if the court grants the application, the original judgment will be vacated and the charges dismissed." KRS 431.078 covers misdemeanor convictions after the same five years, and KRS 431.076 covers charges that were dismissed with prejudice, no-billed by the grand jury or ended in acquittal, which the 2019 amendment, as the legislature's own mandate statement records, let "a person against whom charges have been dismissed with prejudice" petition to expunge, and which the courts now expunge automatically in many cases. Every petition starts with the AOC's expungement certification, a $40 report from the Records Unit that lists the person's Kentucky cases and states which are eligible, filed with the petition in the court that heard the case. An expunged Kentucky record is removed from the court database and the AOC report, the State Police repository and the arresting agency's file, and the person may deny it, while a report sold before the order keeps it until the federal rule on complete and up to date public records, on the criminal records page, forces the correction.

Kentucky's Open Records Act, KRS 61.870 to 61.884, presumes every public record open, and its exemption for police files is KRS 61.878(1)(h), which lets a law enforcement agency withhold "records of law enforcement agencies or agencies involved in administrative adjudication that were compiled in the process of detecting and investigating statutory or regulatory violations if the disclosure of the information would harm the agency by revealing the identity of informants not otherwise known or by premature release of information to be used in a prospective law enforcement action," and adds that such records "shall be open after enforcement action is completed or a decision is made to take no action." The arrest itself, the uniform citation and the booking are not investigative files, and they are released. Who is in custody is in the Department of Corrections' Kentucky Online Offender Lookup, which the Department describes as "a service to the public," alongside VINE, whose data "includes data from county jails, prisons, mental health facilities and juvenile detention centers"; the county jailers, Louisville Metro Corrections among them, post their own rosters, linked from the county pages. The arrest records page covers what happens to a booking after it leaves the roster.

A Kentucky judgment can be enforced for fifteen years under KRS 413.090, and its lien on land is shorter since 2023. KRS 426.720, as amended, provides that a judgment lien filed in the county clerk's office on a judgment entered on or after June 29, 2023 "shall expire ten (10) years after the date the final judgment was entered by the court of record," and that a lien on an older judgment expires when the judgment does under KRS 413.090 or ten years after June 29, 2023, whichever comes first. The court records page covers where the civil dockets and the clerks' lien books are searched.

Kentucky is divided into two federal judicial districts under 28 U.S.C. 97. The Eastern District covers the counties of Anderson, Bath, Bell, Boone, Bourbon, Boyd, Boyle, Bracken, Breathitt, Campbell, Carroll, Carter, Clark, Clay, Elliott, Estill, Fayette, Fleming, Floyd, Franklin, Gallatin, Garrard, Grant, Greenup, Harlan, Harrison, Henry, Jackson, Jessamine, Johnson, Kenton, Knott, Knox, Laurel, Lawrence, Lee, Leslie, Letcher, Lewis, Lincoln, McCreary, Madison, Magoffin, Martin, Mason, Menifee, Mercer, Montgomery, Morgan, Nicholas, Owen, Owsley, Pendleton, Perry, Pike, Powell, Pulaski, Robertson, Rockcastle, Rowan, Scott, Shelby, Trimble, Wayne, Whitley, Wolfe and Woodford, with court held at Ashland, Catlettsburg, Covington, Frankfort, Jackson, Lexington, London, Pikeville and Richmond. The Western District covers Adair, Allen, Ballard, Barren, Breckenridge, Bullitt, Butler, Caldwell, Calloway, Carlisle, Casey, Christian, Clinton, Crittenden, Cumberland, Daviess, Edmonson, Fulton, Graves, Grayson, Green, Hancock, Hardin, Hart, Henderson, Hickman, Hopkins, Jefferson, Larue, Livingston, Logan, Lyon, McCracken, McLean, Marion, Marshall, Meade, Metcalfe, Monroe, Muhlenberg, Nelson, Ohio, Oldham, Russell, Simpson, Spencer, Taylor, Todd, Trigg, Union, Warren, Washington and Webster, with court held at Bowling Green, Louisville, Owensboro and Paducah. A federal case from any Kentucky county is on one of those two dockets and on PACER, whose prices and gaps are on the criminal records page.

Whether a person has a Kentucky court record: the AOC's $25 report answers it, by name, from the court database, felonies since 1978 and misdemeanors for at least five years.

Whether a person was charged in a county: the circuit clerk's terminal answers it, statewide, and certifies the answer.

Whether a person was arrested: the arrest and the citation are open under the Open Records Act, and the investigative file is held back only while the exemption's harm test is met.

Whether a person is in custody now: the county jailer's roster answers it, and KOOL answers it for state prisoners and the county jails under state contract.

Whether an old case can still be found: an expunged case is vacated and gone from the AOC report and the clerk, a judgment lien lapses at ten years and the judgment at fifteen, and a report that predates the expungement is reached through the federal rule.