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Look Up Criminal Records California
Choose California DOJ record review for your own history or the filing court for a specific public case.
Start with the California record product that answers the question
A particular criminal case
Use the California Courts case-lookup guidance to identify the county Superior Court that owns the file. The public route is court-by-court, not one statewide trial-court database.
Your own state criminal-history summary
Use the California DOJ record-review process. It is fingerprint based and is designed for the subject of the record, not for a member of the public to pull someone else’s state summary.
A certified disposition
Locate the actual prosecution first, then order the judgment, dismissal, sentencing order, or other filed document from the Superior Court. A search-result screen is not a certified court record.
California case research is county-specific
| Question | Official starting point | What the result establishes |
|---|---|---|
| Where was the case filed? | California Courts — Look Up a Case. | The responsible county court and its available online or courthouse access. |
| Is this my own California history? | California DOJ — Criminal Record Review. | A fingerprint-based subject review of the DOJ state summary. |
| Do I need a local certified filing? | California DOJ fingerprint FAQ directs users back to the court for local certified court records. | The filed court document, with certification when ordered from the court. |
Build a search package before opening a court portal
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Pin down the county
Use a citation, court notice, arrest paperwork, or known incident location. A common name without a county can send the search to the wrong Superior Court.
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Keep the complete case number
Copy letters, dashes, and year designators exactly. They are often more reliable than a name-only search.
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Record the approximate filing period
A narrow date window helps when the portal limits old cases or returns several people with the same name.
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Name the document you need
Ask for the disposition, minute order, complaint, judgment, or another specific filing instead of requesting an undefined “criminal record.”
Request your own DOJ history only when that is the needed product
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Choose the correct fingerprint route
California residents follow the Live Scan instructions on the DOJ record-review page; people outside California follow the manual fingerprint-card instructions published there.
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Use the result for subject review
Compare identifiers and entries in the DOJ summary with records you already know about. The product is different from a public county-court search.
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Challenge inaccuracies through the official process
If an entry appears wrong, use the correction instructions tied to the DOJ record rather than asking a county clerk to edit the statewide summary.
A fee waiver does not erase every fingerprinting cost
Budget the DOJ step separately
The California DOJ fee-waiver page provides an official waiver route for eligible record-review applicants. The fingerprint rolling provider may still charge its own service fee, so verify both amounts before the appointment.
State summary, court docket, and certified filing are three different outputs
Keep the source label with every result. A DOJ personal history can help a person review their own statewide summary; a Superior Court docket can identify a prosecution; a certified disposition documents what the court actually filed. If the question is whether a named case ended in dismissal, conviction, or another outcome, the court record is the controlling public destination.