City-Level Criminal History Resources
Looking up criminal history in South Carolina by city is a common starting point, but the records themselves are stored at the county level. Every city in South Carolina falls within a county jurisdiction, and criminal cases arising in that city are filed and maintained by the county's Clerk of Court. This page links to criminal history resources for the state's largest cities, covering how local court records connect to county systems and the statewide SLED CATCH database.
How South Carolina Criminal History Is Organized by City
South Carolina does not maintain separate criminal record systems for individual cities. When a person is arrested within city limits, the case moves into the county court structure that covers that area. A Charleston arrest, for example, runs through Charleston County's General Sessions or Magistrate Court depending on the charge. The records end up with the Charleston County Clerk of Court and are also indexed in the SC Public Index.
City police departments and county sheriff's offices both feed arrest data into the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division statewide database. A name-based search through SLED CATCH will pull criminal history records regardless of which city or county the arrest occurred in. That makes CATCH the most practical tool when looking for a person's complete criminal background across South Carolina rather than limiting the search to a single jurisdiction.
For city-specific incident reports and recent arrest logs, most municipal police departments post this information on their own websites. Under Section 30-4-50 of the South Carolina FOIA law, crime reports for a rolling 14-day window are available to the public without a written request. Individual city departments may handle these requests differently, but most post logs online or respond to direct requests promptly.
Note: When searching criminal records for a city resident, always check both the county Public Index and SLED CATCH, since the two systems draw from different sources and neither one alone is guaranteed to show every record.
Browse South Carolina Criminal History by City
Select a city below to find criminal history resources, including the county court system that handles cases from that area and relevant public records access points.