The Keyboard Detective

BYOD: Florida Probation and Prison Records

You can search the Florida Department of Corrections to find out whether someone has served state time or is currently on felony probation. This site lists the criminal charges of anyone who's been in prison since 1997. Sentences of less than one year are usually served in county jail and are not included here.

Go to Offender Search and enter the name of the person you want to check. It’s usually best to be as vague as possible on this site, so I suggest using only first and last name, sex and race. Don’t worry about the other fields.

If no names match your public records search, try searching by last name and gender only. If still no names match, you’re done here.

Otherwise, you will get a list of name matches in four possible categories: Released inmates, incarcerated inmates, fugitives and probationers. Open each link and look at the results, which will show the name, county of conviction and date of birth.

Open any that could be possibilities. Almost all the public records results will come with photos, so it should be easy to tell if you have the right person. The offender page will show you the specific charges for which the person received state time or felony probation. It should also show the address to which the person was released from prison, which likely will be out of date, or a current address if the person is on probation.

Later on, you can check county public records where the person was convicted to get details of the crime.