Texas Criminal Records

Texas is the most open state in the country for criminal records, and also one of the most fragmented. The Department of Public Safety sells its conviction database to anyone, one search at a time or the whole file at once. The courts keep the case files in 254 counties, split between district clerks for felonies and county clerks for misdemeanors, with the Class C tickets in the justice and municipal courts kept apart from both. The sheriffs post their jails. And the private databases copy all of it, in pieces, and sell the pile. This page gives the Texas rule and the Texas search for each of those records, with government sources only.

The Texas Department of Public Safety runs the Computerized Criminal History system, and its Criminal History Conviction Name Search says what is in the public part of it: "The Conviction Database is public record information extracted from the DPS Computerized Criminal History System (CCH). The information contained in CCH is only public if a conviction or deferred adjudication has been reported to the Department on an offense." The search returns "name-based results of all individuals that have been reported to TX DPS with a conviction or deferred adjudication," covering "arrests, prosecutions, and disposition of cases for individuals arrested for class B misdemeanor or greater," with Class C convictions included only if an agency reported them. An arrest that ended without a conviction is not in the public database at all.

The price is per search. The Department's instructions say "search credits for the Department of Public Safety CRD Public Site are $3 plus a fee added to the total order depending on the payment method," bought in advance. And the same site offers the whole thing: a "Conviction Database Download" and a public list, "CCH Database Purchases," of "customers that have purchased the Public Criminal History Database." That list is worth a look, because it is the roster of the companies whose "Texas criminal records" you will meet on every background check, and it tells you where their Texas data came from.

What the state file cannot do is match a person for certain. It is a name and date of birth search, the Department calls it name-based, and the only fingerprint version is the one a person requests about themselves or an employer requests through a fingerprint program the statute authorizes. The criminal records page on this site explains why a name match is a guess and how a careful researcher turns it into an identification.

A Texas criminal case is filed in a court that depends on the charge. The Texas Judicial Branch lists the trial courts: district courts, which hear felonies; constitutional county courts and statutory county courts at law, which hear Class A and B misdemeanors; and justice of the peace courts and municipal courts, which hear Class C misdemeanors, the fine-only offenses, and small civil claims up to $20,000. In every county the district clerk keeps the felony files and the county clerk keeps the misdemeanor files, and the justice and municipal courts keep their own.

That split is the first thing to know about a Texas search, because the big county portals search one clerk at a time. Harris County's district clerk search is the largest criminal index in the state and says exactly what it covers: "Only public criminal cases (causes) will be shown via this search," "searches return Harris County data, only," and "no federal or other County's records, or Justice of the Peace or other Municipalities Class C Misdemeanors will be searched." It searches by name and date of birth, and if a name and date of birth return nothing, "a Certified Letter of Disposition may be requested." Dallas County runs a criminal background search across its felony and misdemeanor courts, with the felony files under the district clerk, which sends misdemeanor requests to the county clerk on the second floor of the same building. Bexar County's district clerk "is the official custodian of record for civil district court records and criminal felony court records" and posts an online criminal records search, with the county clerk holding the misdemeanors. The state's own portal, re:SearchTX, run by the Office of Court Administration, "offers a free subscription plan that lets you search records from multiple counties and courts," per the Texas State Law Library, and it is the closest thing Texas has to a statewide court search, covering the counties that file through the state's e-filing system.

The Class C cases, which are most traffic offenses and many first arrests, are in none of those. They are in the justice court or municipal court that handled them, and a "clean" district clerk search says nothing about them.

Texas has two ways to close a record, and they do different things. An expunction under chapter 55 of the Code of Criminal Procedure destroys the record of an arrest that did not end in a conviction, an acquittal, a dismissal, or a case never filed, and after it the person may deny the arrest ever happened. An order of nondisclosure under chapter 411 of the Government Code seals a record that did end in a plea, typically a deferred adjudication, from the public while leaving it open to law enforcement and the licensing agencies the statute lists. A nondisclosed case leaves the public court index and the public DPS database; an expunged case is destroyed by every agency named in the order.

Neither order reaches a private copy made before it. Texas addressed that directly in chapter 109 of the Business and Commerce Code, which requires a business that publishes criminal record information on the internet to remove, on request and without charge, a record that is not complete and accurate or that relates to an arrest that did not lead to a conviction, within the time the chapter sets, and forbids publishing the confidential juvenile records the chapter names. That statute, plus the federal rule on complete and up to date public records explained on the criminal records page, is what a Texan uses to make the copies match the court.

Texas law draws the line in one sentence. Under the Public Information Act, section 552.108 lets a law enforcement agency withhold records of a pending investigation, but the same section does not except "basic information" about an arrest, an arrested person or a crime, so the name of the person arrested, the offense charged, the time and place, and the booking details are public from the day of the arrest, while the narrative report can be held back until the case is over. The Attorney General's office adds that an officer for public information "may not ask why you want them."

Who is in custody is posted by the sheriffs: the Harris County jail search, the Dallas County jail lookup, and Bexar County's daily jail activity for the last seven days. Those rosters are what the arrest record databases scrape, and a roster shows today's bookings, not last year's, which is why an arrest can be on the web forever and still absent from a database, as the arrest records page explains.

A Texas civil judgment is a court record too, and it has a clock. Under chapter 34 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code a judgment goes dormant ten years after it is rendered unless a writ of execution is issued within that time, a dormant judgment can be revived within two years after it goes dormant, and an abstract of judgment recorded in the county under chapter 52 of the Property Code is a lien on the debtor's real property in that county for ten years from recording. A Texas judgment older than ten years with no execution on the docket is a judgment the creditor let die.

Texas is divided into four federal judicial districts under 28 U.S.C. 124, the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Districts, and each is made up of divisions that sit in different cities: the Northern District at Dallas, Fort Worth, Abilene, San Angelo, Amarillo, Wichita Falls and Lubbock; the Southern District at Galveston, Houston, Laredo, Brownsville, Victoria, Corpus Christi and McAllen; the Eastern District at Tyler, Beaumont, Sherman, Marshall, Texarkana and Lufkin; and the Western District at Austin, Waco, El Paso, San Antonio, Del Rio, Pecos and Midland-Odessa. The statute assigns every one of the 254 counties to one division, so a federal case from any Texas county is on the docket of one of those courts and on PACER, whose prices and gaps are explained on the criminal records page. A person from Harris County was charged, if at all, in the Southern District at Houston; a person from Tarrant County in the Northern District at Fort Worth; a person from Bexar County in the Western District at San Antonio.

Whether a person has a Texas conviction: the Department of Public Safety's name search answers it for $3 from the state's own database, convictions and deferred adjudications only, Class B and up.

Whether a person was charged in a county: the district clerk's search answers it for felonies and the county clerk's for misdemeanors, with the Class C cases in the justice and municipal courts, and re:SearchTX answers it across the counties that file through the state system.

Whether a person is in custody now: the sheriff's jail search answers it, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's offender search answers it for state prison.

Whether an old case can still be found: an expunged arrest is destroyed, a nondisclosed case is closed to the public, and a copy that predates either order is reached through chapter 109 and the federal rule.