To find out what a federal inmate has been charged with, you’ll use two free tools in sequence: the Bureau of Prisons inmate locator to confirm the person is in federal custody and identify their case jurisdiction, and PACER to open the court docket and read the actual charging document. The BOP locator shows where someone is held; it does not list charges. PACER is where the indictment, information, or criminal complaint lives, along with the judgment if the case has concluded.
What to Gather First
Start with the person’s full legal name, including middle name or initial. Common names return long result lists, so any extra detail helps. For a BOP name search you’ll also need approximate age, race, and sex to filter results.
The single most useful identifier is the BOP Register Number, an eight-digit code in the format #####-### assigned to everyone who enters federal custody. It appears on correspondence from a federal prison and on legal paperwork. If you have it, you can skip name searching entirely and pull the record in seconds.
Step One: Confirm Custody With the BOP Inmate Locator
The Bureau of Prisons runs a free tool at bop.gov covering anyone incarcerated in a federal facility from 1982 to the present. Search by register number, or by first and last name with race, age, and sex as filters.1Federal Bureau of Prisons. Find an Inmate
Results show the current facility, the register number, and a projected release date calculated from the sentence length and any good-conduct credit earned. If the release date shows “UNKNOWN,” the person usually hasn’t been sentenced yet, is in pretrial status, or is being held on a civil commitment.2Federal Bureau of Prisons. About Federal Inmate Records
The locator will not tell you the charges. Treat it as a location tool. Once you’ve confirmed the person is in the federal system and you know which district they’re likely tied to, move to PACER.
Step Two: Pull the Charges From PACER
The Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, PACER, is the official database for federal court filings. Every document filed in a federal criminal case ends up there, from the initial charging document through sentencing.3United States Courts. Find a Case – PACER
You need a free PACER account. Registration asks for basic contact information, date of birth, and a tax ID for billing. Once logged in, use the PACER Case Locator at pcl.uscourts.gov to search across all federal district courts at once by party name.4PACER: Federal Court Records. PACER Case Locator If you already know the district, you can go directly to that court’s CM/ECF system.
Open the docket, which is the chronological log of everything filed in the case. The charging document will be one of three things:
- A criminal complaint, the earliest charging document, typically filed at arrest. It includes an affidavit from a law enforcement agent describing the alleged crime. It’s preliminary and doesn’t always reflect the final charges.
- An indictment, issued after a grand jury finds probable cause. This is the most common charging document in federal felony cases and lists every count along with the specific statute the person allegedly violated.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC App Fed R Crim P Rule 7 – The Indictment and the Information
- An information, used for misdemeanors or when a defendant waives their right to a grand jury proceeding. It serves the same function as an indictment without a grand jury.
If the case has concluded, look for the “Judgment in a Criminal Case.” It lists the final counts of conviction, the sentence imposed, and any supervised release terms. Reading the indictment together with the judgment gives you the full picture: what the person was charged with and what they were ultimately convicted of.
What PACER Costs
PACER charges $0.10 per page to view documents, capped at $3.00 per individual document.6PACER: Federal Court Records. Public Access to Court Electronic Records The cap doesn’t apply to name search results or transcripts. If total usage stays at $30 or less in a given quarter, fees are waived entirely.7PACER: Federal Court Records. Why Does PACER Charge a Fee? Pulling one indictment and one judgment will almost certainly fall under that threshold.
Free Ways to Access the Same Records
Every federal courthouse has public access terminals where you can view PACER records for free during business hours, with no charge for viewing or printing.8PACER: Federal Court Records. PACER Pricing – How Fees Work
The RECAP Archive is another option. It’s a free browser extension that saves PACER documents to a public database at CourtListener.com. If anyone has previously purchased a document through PACER with RECAP installed, you can read it for free. Coverage isn’t complete, but for higher-profile cases the key documents are often already there.
Asking the Clerk’s Office
If online databases aren’t for you, the clerk’s office at the federal court that handled the case can help. Call, visit in person, or send a written request. The clerk can look up a case by defendant name or case number and tell you what documents exist.
Paper copies of court documents cost $0.50 per page under the federal fee schedule, whether the copies come from original documents or microfilm reproductions.9United States Courts. District Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule Providing the register number or case number speeds things up. If you’re not sure which district handled the case, the BOP locator or PACER Case Locator can point you there.
If the Person Was Just Arrested
There’s a gap in the BOP locator that trips people up. When someone is first arrested on federal charges, they’re held in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service, not the Bureau of Prisons. The Marshals are responsible for federal prisoners from arrest until acquittal or transfer to a BOP facility after sentencing.10U.S. Marshals Service. Custody and Detention They contract with local jails, private detention facilities, and sometimes the BOP itself to house pretrial detainees, and they don’t have a public online search tool.
Someone recently arrested and not yet sentenced may not appear in the BOP system at all. In that situation, the court docket on PACER is your best route. The initial appearance and detention hearing will usually show where the person is being held. The clerk’s office for the district of arrest can also confirm the location.
When a Case Doesn’t Show Up
Federal judges have authority to seal documents or entire cases in certain circumstances, including protecting cooperating witnesses, safeguarding an ongoing investigation, or preserving a defendant’s rights. Sealed documents won’t appear in a standard PACER search, or will show only a notation that sealed material exists. A motion to seal will often appear on the docket even when the underlying documents don’t.
Sealed cases are the exception. The overwhelming majority of federal criminal records, including charging documents and judgments, are available to anyone willing to look them up. If you can’t find a case you know exists, sealed status or a very recent arrest that hasn’t been processed into the system are the two likeliest explanations.