What are arrest records and arrest warrants?

Arrest warrants are court orders that are issued by local criminal tribunals of Oregon State. These directives authorize law enforcement officials to detain a person and present him before the judiciary to answer for his criminal misdeeds. Depending on the matter presented before the court and the specific circumstances of the case, the sitting magistrate may issue a bench warrant, an order for detention in a misdemeanor or an active warrant against a person accused of a felony.

Of these three, active warrants which are issued in case of serious felonies do not have any restrictions of time or geography applied to them. This means that such judicial orders can be served at any time regardless of how old they are and in any part of the country. While arrest warrants are frequently sought in criminal matters, the police are authorized to take a person into custody even without such a court order.

This is usually done when the offender is caught while he is in the act of committing the crime or is escaping from the scene of incident after having committed. A recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Oregon allows peace officers to make warrant-less arrests even in case of DUIs.

The types of arrest warrants issued will vary depending on the criminal category that the accused is being charged off and case specifics. The most common detention instruments used by the tribunals of Oregon include:

• Bench warrants: These arrest orders are issued when a defendant fails to appear in court as ordered.
• Outstanding warrant: This term refers to an arrest order that has been held back in the police database because it could not be served for any odd reason.
• Local control warrant: These detention decrees are issued against people who are to be held in local custody.
• National search warrant: These arrest orders prevail within the state of Oregon and outside. They are issued under the provisions of the United States Patriot Act.

Arrest Records

The term ‘arrest records’ applies to all crime history related information held by Oregon State police. This data is easily accessible to law enforcement and licensing agencies from within the state and outside. In fact, such an inquiry brings about a full disclosure of records. Apart from government departments, private contractors that provide care and treatment to children, mentally unstable individuals and seniors are also allowed to request full disclosure searches.

From a public point of view, arrest records include the results of a warrant search initiated through the Open Records Unit of the OSP. This is a name based search and it brings back details on the arrest date, warrant issuing authority, the agency that apprehended the offender, charges levied against him and sentencing information.

How do I search for Oregon arrest records and arrest warrants?

Every division of Oregon State Police as well as the local county clerk’s office maintains its own database of arrest records and warrants. You can find a list of the state’s most wanted as well as information on the active warrants against a specific person by visiting the official website of the agency at http://www.oregon.gov/ .

The inquiry can be initiated by contacting the OSP through mail or fax or you could visit their office in person to request a warrant search. The Open Records Section can be contacted at 3772 Portland Rd. NE Salem, OR-97303. General inquiries are also entertained over the phone at 503-378-3070.

A list of the most wanted criminals in the county can usually be found on the website of the local sheriff’s department. Alternatively, you could check out the Oregon Department of Corrections webpage at https://www.oregon.gov/doc/Pages/default.aspx.

Oregon criminal statistics

Through the ten years that started in 1999 and ended in 2008, over 1630,000 crimes were reported in the state of Oregon. This data was collected on the basis of the reports filed by all the sheriffs’ departments in Oregon. On an annual basis, nearly 160,000 crimes transpire in the various urban and rural pockets of the state. A daily average can be worked out from this figure, and it is quite alarming since one crime is reported in Oregon every 3 minutes.

Of the decade long crime average, sexual assault cases were the most prolific incidents of violent crime with nearly 12,000 reports while murder lagged behind with less than 1000 incidents. However, the crime category that resulted in the maximum number of cases was theft with more than one million reports.

Over the ten year period mentioned above, there has been a marked improvement in the crime scenario of Oregon with violent crimes rates plunging by a record 30% and the number of reported criminal incidents going down by over 20%.

Despite this, in most criminal occurrences, the victim is targeted when he is close to his home or office. Yet, if the state police manage to keep their hold on the law and order situation, it won’t be long before the annual crime average for Oregon falls well below the 140,000 mark.