Sources & Methodology

1. Methodology Mission

Public-records portals migrate, get redesigned, change form numbers, and get replaced. State legislatures rewrite open-records laws. The FBI updates its Identity History Summary procedure. Counties move from a homegrown jail-roster system to a vendor platform. Generic, evergreen prose ages badly in this niche; what matters is whether the link still works, the procedure still matches, and the fee is still current.

Our methodology is built around that reality: never trust your own memory of a portal, never describe a procedure without seeing the live screen, and never publish without a quarterly review schedule that catches drift before it strands a reader.

2. Six-Tier Source Hierarchy

Every claim on a state page traces back to one of six tiers. The hierarchy isn’t ornamental — it’s the order we consult and the weight we give. Tier 6 never overrides Tier 1. A blog post from a law firm cannot be the source for a portal URL; the portal itself is the source.

9. Seven-Step URL Verification

1. Open the URL in a fresh browser session. No cached pages, no autocomplete shortcuts.
2. Confirm the domain is the agency’s actual domain. Looks at the URL bar — .gov for federal and most state agencies, .us for some state and local entities, recognized state-system domains for vendor-hosted portals.
3. Confirm the destination is the search/locator tool, not a generic landing page. A page reading “Welcome to the Department of Corrections” is the wrong link — the right link goes directly to the inmate locator.
4. Confirm the SSL certificate is valid. A broken certificate or “not secure” warning gets flagged for further review.
5. Confirm the page is responsive. A search portal that won’t load on a current browser is flagged.
6. Confirm the page is in English (or has an English version). Where Spanish is available, we link the Spanish version too.
7. Document the URL with a “verified on” date. Stored in the editorial workflow for the next quarterly review.

10. Live Portal Sample Search

For every inmate locator, jail roster, court e-system, and sex-offender registry we link to, we run a sample search using either:

• A name with a high probability of returning multiple results (a common surname like “Smith” or “Johnson”) — to confirm the search returns results and the result columns load
• A documented public test record — where the portal publishes one
• A name that publicly appears in the system (a high-profile case that has been widely reported) — only used to confirm system-level functionality, never to gather information about that person

The walkthrough on the state page is then written from the field labels and column headers we actually saw on the live portal — not from a template.

11. Two-Source Cross-Reference Rule

12. Update Cycles

Update triggers we watch for: state legislative sessions, FBI procedural announcements, federal court system migrations, large-scale state DOC system migrations, FTC/CFPB FCRA enforcement announcements, and reader correction reports.

13. Citation Standards

• Statutes are cited by jurisdiction, code, and section: “Tex. Gov’t Code §552.001,” “Cal. Civ. Code §1798.91.1,” “F.S. §943.0585”
• Federal statutes use Title and section: “15 U.S.C. §1681,” “17 U.S.C. §512”
• Agency names are spelled out on first use, with the acronym in parentheses, then used as the acronym thereafter
• Court cases are cited by name and reporter where relevant: “Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., 815 F.3d 1145 (9th Cir. 2016)”
• External links open in a new tab and use rel=”noopener”

14. What We Don’t Use as a Source

• Anonymous blog posts about state procedures — too easy to be wrong, no accountability
• Wikipedia as the sole source for a current portal URL or fee — fine for context, never sufficient on its own
• Mugshot republication sites — these are typically the entities our readers want to avoid
• Generic AI-generated content from non-authoritative sources
• Social media posts about agency procedures, except for verified agency accounts
• Out-of-jurisdiction guidance applied across states — Texas procedure does not describe California procedure, and vice versa
• Any commercial people-search service’s “FAQ” pages presented as a substitute for the agency’s own instructions
• Any source that conflates “people search” with “FCRA-compliant background check” — we do not propagate that confusion

15. Reader Contributions

Our most valuable correction reports come from people who use these portals daily — paralegals, public-defender offices, court clerks, journalists working a public-records story, family members of incarcerated people, attorneys filing expungement petitions. If something on the site doesn’t match the live portal, you almost always see it before our quarterly review does. Email info@usa-arrests.org with subject line “Correction” and the page URL.

16. Audit Trail and Openness

If you want to verify a specific claim on a state page, every Tier 1 link is publicly accessible — click through and see for yourself. Every statutory citation is publicly searchable. Every fee number can be confirmed against the agency’s printed instructions. We try to publish in a way that is auditable end-to-end: nothing about the methodology is hidden, and the source on the other side of every link is the source of truth.