To look up federal charges, start with PACER, the federal judiciary’s online docket system, which holds filings from every U.S. District Court and lets you pull indictments, plea agreements, and sentencing orders by name or case number. If the person is or was in federal prison, the Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator will confirm custody status. For the investigative side of a case — FBI or DEA files — you’ll need a Freedom of Information Act request. Each tool answers a different question, and knowing which one to use saves hours.
What to Gather Before You Start
A few details up front will keep you from drowning in false matches. The person’s full legal name is essential, and a middle name, alias, or year of birth helps when the name is common. If you know the federal district where charges were filed, that narrows things quickly. The country is divided into 94 district courts, each covering a defined geographic area.1Legal Information Institute. District Court
A case number is the fastest route of all. Federal criminal case numbers look like 1:25-cr-00123-ABC: the first digit is the court division, the two-digit number is the filing year, “cr” means criminal, and the trailing letters are the judge’s initials.
Searching PACER
PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is the primary online source for federal court filings across district, appellate, and bankruptcy courts.2Public Access to Court Electronic Records. PACER – Public Access to Court Electronic Records Register for free at pacer.uscourts.gov. Providing a credit card during signup gets you instant access; skipping the card means waiting 7 to 10 business days for an activation token by mail.
Once you’re in, the PACER Case Locator at pcl.uscourts.gov searches every federal court at once. Run a Party Search by name, or a Case Search if you already have the number. You can filter by court type, region, date range, and case status. Results show the case title, court, filing date, and a link into the individual court’s docket.
Clicking a case opens the full docket sheet — every motion, order, hearing, and judgment. From there you can download the actual PDFs of the indictment, any plea agreement, and the sentencing order to see exactly what was charged and how it ended.
What PACER Costs
PACER charges $0.10 per page for search results and documents, capped at $3.00 per document.3United States Courts. Electronic Public Access Fee Schedule If your total stays at $30 or less in a quarterly billing cycle, the fees are waived. The judiciary reports that about 75 percent of users pay nothing in a given quarter.2Public Access to Court Electronic Records. PACER – Public Access to Court Electronic Records
Reading a Federal Docket
Federal dockets are shorthand-heavy. A few of the entries that come up most in criminal cases:
- Indt — indictment, the grand jury’s formal charging document
- Sindt — superseding indictment, a revised set of charges replacing the original
- arr — arraignment, where the defendant enters a plea
- PSR — presentence report, prepared before sentencing
- IOS — imposition of sentence
- mot — motion, a request for the court to act
- dism — dismissed
Personal identifiers are redacted from public filings. Federal rules limit Social Security numbers to the last four digits, birth data to the year, minors to initials, and financial account numbers to their last four digits.
Free Ways to Read PACER Documents
Two options bypass PACER fees. The RECAP browser extension, available for Chrome and Firefox, automatically shows you free copies of any PACER document another user has already purchased and shared into its public archive, which contains tens of millions of documents including every free opinion in PACER.4Free Law Project. RECAP Suite – Turning PACER Around Since 2009
Every federal courthouse also has public-access terminals in the Clerk of Court’s office where you can view electronic records for free.5United States Courts. Find a Case (PACER) Printing costs $0.10 per page, but reading on screen is free.
Finding Someone in Federal Custody
If what you actually want to know is where someone is being held, use the Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator. It covers anyone in federal prison from 1982 to the present and searches by name or by BOP Register Number, the eight-digit identifier assigned on intake.6Federal Bureau of Prisons. About Federal Inmate Records Results show the current facility or, for people no longer in custody, their release date.
Two limitations matter. The locator only tracks BOP-operated or BOP-contracted facilities, so pretrial detainees held in local jails under federal contract may not show up at all — meaning someone recently charged might be invisible here even though the case exists on PACER. And “Not in BOP Custody” doesn’t necessarily mean freedom; the person could be on supervised release, in a halfway house, or in another agency’s custody.7Federal Bureau of Prisons. Inmate Locator
Checking Your Own FBI Record
To find out whether you personally have a federal criminal record, request your Identity History Summary — the “rap sheet” — directly from the FBI. It compiles arrest and disposition data reported by federal, state, and local agencies, and is separate from court filings.
You’ll need to submit fingerprints, either electronically at a participating U.S. Post Office or by mailing a completed fingerprint card. The fee is $18 either way.8Federal Bureau of Investigation. Identity History Summary Checks FAQs Fee waivers are available if you contact the FBI before submitting. The response either lists your record or confirms none exists. This process only works for your own record; you cannot use it to check anyone else.
Getting Investigative Files Through FOIA
PACER shows what happened in court. Investigative files — FBI reports, DEA memoranda, agency records built during the case — sit with executive agencies, and the way to request them is a Freedom of Information Act request under 5 U.S.C. § 552.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 552 – Public Information; Agency Rules, Opinions, Orders, Records, and Proceedings
File through FOIA.gov or the agency’s own portal, and you’ll receive a tracking number. Agencies are required to respond within 20 business days, but complex requests routinely take months or longer.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 552 – Public Information; Agency Rules, Opinions, Orders, Records, and Proceedings Expect heavy redactions. Exemptions protect ongoing investigations, confidential sources, law enforcement techniques, and the privacy of third parties named in the files.
When a Case Is Sealed
A PACER search that returns only a “sealed” notice means the court has closed the file to the public, and there’s generally no way to see the documents without a court order.
Grand jury proceedings are secret by default under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6, and the jurors, court reporters, interpreters, and government attorneys are all barred from disclosing what happens inside.10Legal Information Institute. Rule 6 – The Grand Jury Indictments themselves can be sealed by a magistrate judge until the defendant is arrested or appears in court, at which point they’re typically unsealed and become visible on PACER.11United States Courts. Sealed Cases in Federal Courts Cases involving cooperating defendants sometimes stay sealed longer. Presentence reports, plea agreement supplements, and wiretap orders are also commonly sealed.
Older Cases and Records Not Online
For cases that predate electronic filing or documents you can’t locate through PACER, go to the courthouse where the case was filed. The Clerk of Court can pull files still stored on-site and produce official copies when you need them for legal use. National fee rates:12United States Courts. District Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule
- Record search: $34 per name or item
- Paper copies: $0.50 per page
- Certification: $12 per document
Records more than 30 years old are generally transferred to the National Archives.13eCFR. Part 1235 Transfer of Records to the National Archives of the United States Files stored off-site at a Federal Records Center cost $70 to retrieve the first box and $43 for each additional box; electronic retrievals cost $11 plus any storage-facility charges.12United States Courts. District Court Miscellaneous Fee Schedule Ordering copies directly from the National Archives (NATF Form 92) runs $35 for pre-selected documents or $90 for a full criminal case file, with additional labor charges on files over 150 pages.14National Archives. NARA Reproduction Fees
Why Old Federal Charges Rarely Disappear
If your search comes up empty, don’t assume there was never a case — but if you find one, don’t expect it to have been wiped. Unlike many state systems, the federal system has no general expungement statute. Federal criminal convictions remain on the record permanently in nearly all circumstances.
The exceptions are narrow: correcting inaccurate records, removing DNA records after an overturned conviction, and a provision allowing people under 21 who received a civil penalty for simple drug possession to apply for expungement after three years if they’ve paid the penalty, stayed drug-free, and have no later convictions.15GovInfo. 21 USC 844a Some federal circuits recognize a common-law “equitable expungement” power, but most have rejected it, and even the circuits that allow it reserve it for extreme circumstances. In practice, federal charges — whether they ended in conviction, dismissal, or acquittal — stay findable through PACER and the FBI’s records indefinitely.