The Easiest Way to Search for Warrants in Texas

Warrants are issued every day in all parts of the country. It’s a big part of what allows our criminal justice system to function at all. When it comes to our interpersonal relationships, knowing if someone has a warrant can tell us a lot about what they could have been up to recently. That’s good both for vetting potential suitors and friends as well as keeping tabs on your loved ones. If you live in the state of Texas, there’s a good chance that you’ve wondered at least once how you could do a Texas warrant search. 

Fortunately enough, these kinds of searches are incredibly simple. Most of the time, all you need is an internet connection and a basic understanding of how to navigate the internet. It, however, can be a little tricky if you don’t know the right places to look, and even more so if you aren’t aware of all of the tools that you have at your disposal. Let’s take a look at how exactly you can find warrant information in Texas both in an easy way and in a more difficult way so you can go and find all of the warrant information you need to give you a little peace of mind. 

What Exactly is a Warrant?

The criminal justice system, neigh, the entire legal system in the United States is incredibly intricate. Writing down every law, ordinance, statute, regulation, and code in the country could fill up a whole encyclopedia set, if not an entire library. With that in mind, it’s understandable that some people might have a few blind spots here and there. Warrants in particular are the backbone of the criminal justice system, and without them, not much would be able to get done.

The reason for that is that we have some rights that cannot be violated by the government listed in the constitution and the bill of rights. The amendment that warrants directly affects is the fourth, which protects people and their property from unreasonable searches and seizures. Even in the amendment itself, it says that this can only be bypassed by the use of a warrant with probable cause. When someone is arrested, they are being seized by legal definition so that’s why they are offered protection under this amendment. Because of this amendment, without warrants, it would be difficult for the criminal justice system to pursue justice for any crime. 

A warrant is an order that is issued for the search or seizure of a person or their things. The order must be signed by a judge or magistrate and include either a name or description of the person in question, the crimes they are suspected of committing, and the county where they are to be tried at a bare minimum. Once the warrant is sent out, all police officers in the county are made aware of it so they can arrest the person in question should the opportunity present itself. 

Where did Warrants Come From? 

Everything has to have come from somewhere. Even something as simple as the wheel needed to be invented and reinvented over time. So where exactly did warrants come from, and how long have they been used? It’s an excellent question and important for understanding some of the contexts behind the system that we have in place today. Just like everything else, warrants haven’t always existed, but they have been around for a very long time at this point in history. Such a long time, in fact, that there’s no one that has ever lived in the U.S. that would be able to recall a time before them. 

Warrants have been used for all sorts of reasons for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Royal families have had the power to send out a general warrant to have someone arrested or even executed for any sort of crime. These warrants didn’t look much like the ones that we have today, in fact, they didn’t even usually say what the warrant was for. These were called general warrants, and our fourth amendment was actually created specifically to combat them. 

One of the most infamous uses of a warrant in history was likely by Queen Mary I. In 1558, she sent out warrants to arrest seven protestants and have them executed. The “protestant heretics” were already prepped for execution, being tied to firewood bundles mere moments from being set ablaze, when a royal messenger came to announce the death of Queen Mary I. Her successor, Protestant Elizabeth I decided not to reissue the warrants for the protestants. That was actually one of her very first acts as the queen of England. Several weeks later, the protestants were released with their lives spared from a truly terrible demise. 

How to Find Warrants

Now, to get to the question at hand. How exactly does one go about finding warrant information? The reasons why you might want this information are as varied as they are personal, but regardless of your reasoning, you can breathe a sigh of relief. The process of finding warrants is actually pretty simple. There are a few ways that people go about finding warrants, and not all of them are the best way to go about it. We’re going to take a look at two ways today, and both will find you success to varying degrees.

The first and most commonly used method is to simply check your local law enforcement website. Usually, that means to go to your county Sheriff’s Department website, but that can vary from county to county. In some counties, in order to find warrant information you’ll need to check with your county court’s website. There’s no overarching rule that determines exactly where this information needs to be posted on a federal level, and no state has a law that dictates it on a state level either. If you’re going this route, you’ll just need to play it by ear to figure out where your county might keep this information. 

This method can prove fruitful. Some counties provide incredibly well-maintained databases that are full of accurate and up-to-date information, even going so far as to maintain and update their database on a daily or hourly basis. Those counties are great for these kinds of searches because you can just check in one place and get the information you need, assuming that you only want or need information from that single county. Things can get a little tricky with this method though, and that trickiness is only multiplied when you need to check multiple counties. 

Just like there’s no rule saying what website needs to host the warrant database, there’s actually no rule saying that the database needs to be provided at all or even kept up to date. That can mean a few things for your warrant search, and none of them are good. The first being that you might just find a page that says you need to email the Sheriff’s Department to obtain that information along with your I.D. card. The second, that you might find the database but it will be full of outdated information that won’t exactly help you with your search. 

Another issue with this method arises when you realize that even the databases that do exist aren’t connected because, well, they don’t have to be. It’s easier to keep these databases separated on a county level than to integrate all of them into a comprehensive database that contains all of the warrant information for an entire state. That means that what you don’t know about the person in question can run you into some major roadblocks that limit the amount of information you’ll be able to obtain from this particular search method. 

There is a better and more efficient way, and that is simply to use a warrant searching tool. They come in many different forms, ranging from services that only pull warrant information to full-blown personal background check services that pull any and all available public records about a person from anywhere in the country. Both of those are great for finding warrants because of the way they operate, and they can give you a lot of useful information from all over the place in mere moments. This method is so efficient it’s almost scary, and the information you find is usually highly accurate, so you can be sure that what you see is the truth. 

Warrant Searches Shouldn’t be a Headache

There are a lot of things in this world that are difficult. Pushing your car uphill after it stalled so you can get it out of the road, doing your taxes when you have several streams on income, you get the gist. Your warrant search should be something that gives you peace of mind, not something that only adds to your stress. Fortunately, the tools and tactics are out there that can make this entire search process a walk in the park for just about anyone.