How to Do an Arrest Search in Miami/Dade County Florida

To find out if someone has been arrested in Miami-Dade County, you have a few options. The more information you have, the better. If the arrest is less than recent, the person may now be in prison. If someone is in police custody but not yet arrested, he may be in a police or justice center jail.

You can search Miami-Dade jail bookings (from May 29, 2015 to present) online. Bookings are listed in reverse chronological order, and you can also search by the defendant's name. The defendant's date of birth, criminal charge and arrest location are provided.

Remember, having an arrest record is not the same as being found guilty of a crime. An arrest is defined as the physical apprehension of an individual by law enforcement. This means some of the people listed on the Miami-Dade jail bookings may have been wrongfully arrested, mistakenly arrested or, in the case of older entries, found not guilty of all charges. Equally, people on the jail bookings list may now be serving time in jail or even have been released following a jail sentence.

If you think the person you are looking for may be in one of Miami-Dade's five correctional facilities, search the Miami Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation website. On the homepage, click "Inmate Search" and enter the person's last name followed by a first initial or first name. Miami Dade County inmate search results display a list of individuals in custody, providing information such as name, date of birth, race, sex, location, charges, bond amount, jail number, booking date and booking time, as well as a mugshot.

You can also call Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Central Records at 786-263-5892 to find out if someone is being held at a Miami-Dade correctional facility.

Websites like Instant Checkmate facilitate free online criminal records checks. The information provided by Instant Checkmate includes arrest records, but other websites may not. Instant Checkmate offers a low-cost trial membership, which costs $1 for five days of service from the date of purchase.

A criminal record search on Instant Checkmate also provides information on felonies, misdemeanors, warrants, traffic tickets, case numbers, arrest locations, sentencing information, offense descriptions and court dates. This tells you whether a person has been arrested anywhere in the United States.