Pennsylvania Public Records Search

The Pennsylvania public records includes, but are not limited to documents of court, vital records, death records, divorce records, property records and criminal records. These records can be obtained through various state and county agencies for free or for a fee.

Criminal Records

The Pennsylvania criminal records are available to the public through various public record forms. These records include national criminal records, federal criminal records, city and county criminal records. There are also online search available for inmates and sex offender.

You can search for inmates by name from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections from the website http://www.cor.state.pa.us/. The information about the Re-Entry program for offenders is also available from the Department of Corrections.

The Pennsylvania State Police maintains public documents, crime prevention tips, Uniform Crime Report, Fingerprint Locations, Amber Alert and it also provides Criminal History Request Online services. These services can be accessed from http://www.psp.state.pa.us/. The information about Pennsylvania Sex Offender Information is available from http://www.pameganslaw.state.pa.us/.

Court Records

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania have made the information like expungements, criminal justice forms, civil complaint, landlord and tenant complaint, private criminal complaints, police criminal complaints and other records available to the public. To access the records of the courts you can visit http://www.aopc.org/.

Vital Records

To access the vital records in Pennsylvania, you will have to contact the Division of Vital Records, State Department of Health, Central Building, 101 South Mercer Street, P.O. Box 1528, New Castle, PA 16103.

The Birth records can be available from the Vital Records Division for a charge of $4.00. The Death records are also available from this division at a charge of $3.00. But the records of the marriage and divorce records are available from the county court houses where the event of marriage or divorce occurred. The charge for receiving copies of marriage and divorce depends on the county court rules.

Land Records

The records pertaining to the land records in Pennsylvania begin in the form of deeds and mortgages which are found with the recorder of deeds. The Bureau of Land Management maintains these records but most of the county deeds and their corresponding indexes are available from the Pennsylvania State Archives. Some of the deeds which are unrecorded are found in the courthouses and some of them have found their way into the state archives from private hands, libraries and historical societies. One can contact the Bureau of Land Management at 7450 Boston Blvd. Springfield, VA 22153, Phone: 703 440 1600, Fax: 703 440 1599.

State Archives

The Pennsylvania State Archives can be accessed from http://www.portal.state.pa.us/ . The state archives collect, stores and preserves and makes the PA public records available for studies and research work. The Pennsylvania State Archives provides various resources to the public to access such as genealogy, land records, ARIAS military records and others.

The extensive details of Genealogy records are available online and can be accessed from the official website. The state archives also holds the land records which includes deeds like land title transfer deeds and other details. The state archives stores these records on microfilm for researchers and general public to search federal land records. The state archives of Pennsylvania holds military records providing evidence of enrollment or service with Pennsylvania military units during the period 1775-1985. You can access the Pennsylvania Digital Archives through ARIAS which is also known as the Archives Records Information Access System to access the archival records.