Why We Built This Site
Public access in West Virginia depends on knowing who created the record. The West Virginia State Police Criminal Identification Bureau compiles fingerprint-linked criminal histories and processes official checks. The Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation maintains prison and regional-jail search tools. The State Police Sex Offender Registry serves a separate public-safety purpose, and the Judiciary provides statewide Circuit and Magistrate case searches. Yet the original arrest report, booking details, and full court file usually remain with a local agency or clerk. West Virginia Criminal History connects these statewide systems with a site for each county in the network. The county directory leads to local contacts, portals, and request details for all 55 counties.
What You Will Find Here
- Statewide system guides: what the repository, court searches, corrections locators, and registry hold and how their roles differ
- Record guides: ways to find and read criminal court case records across West Virginia
- Official check walkthroughs: how authorized fingerprint checks work through the West Virginia State Police repository and IdentoGO
- The county directory: links to criminal records resources and local agency contacts for all 55 West Virginia counties
- Record cleanup help: where West Virginia expungement petitions begin and which agencies implement an order
What We Cannot Do
This is a privately run reference site. We have no connection to any West Virginia court, sheriff's office, police department, or state agency. There are real limits to what we can help with:
- We cannot run an official background check or pull a criminal record for anyone
- We cannot give legal advice about a charge, case, warrant, or expungement issue
- We cannot issue a certified court document, official rap sheet, or other government record
- We cannot submit an expungement petition, public-record request, or other filing for a visitor
- We cannot promise that every public office address, fee, phone number, or procedure remains unchanged
Only the West Virginia State Police, the court, or the local office that created a record can issue its official copy. West Virginia Criminal History can identify the source, but cannot supply the document.
Search Partners
Third-party providers power search boxes on some pages. Those providers operate their own services, set their prices, and control their results. West Virginia Criminal History may receive a referral fee if a visitor follows one of those tools to a paid service. That income helps support free access to the reference material. We do not set a partner's charges or decide which records its product returns.