How to search sex offenders in Arizona
A Arizona search is shaped by two decisions: what you scope it to, and which criterion you send. Get those right and the answer arrives scored, de-duplicated and labelled with the evidence that produced it. Below: the sequence, with runnable requests.
jurisdictions: ["AZ"], or left unscoped to cover all 58 jurisdictions in the same call. A date-of-birth criterion here resolves against age within the tolerance set by ageTolerance and returns age_match. Get an API key, read the API reference, or see how the sex offender API works end to end.The sequence
- Scope the request to Arizona. Set jurisdictions: ["AZ"] to keep the answer to the Arizona roster, or leave jurisdictions out entirely and the same request runs across all 58 jurisdictions at once. Those are the only two decisions about scope, and they are one line apart.
- Send a last name, then narrow. A last name is the one required criterion. Everything else — firstName, dob, city, zipcode — narrows rather than filters, so adding criteria sharpens the ranking without silently dropping a person whose record is thinner. Use prefixMatch when you have a partial name: three characters or more, matched against aliases as well as the registered name.
- Choose the birth criterion that fits Arizona. Send dob whenever you hold one — it is accepted in Arizona exactly as it is everywhere else, and it narrows rather than filters, so a record with thinner birth evidence still comes back on the name. In Arizona it resolves against age, returning age_match; send age instead when a date is not something you hold, and widen or tighten with ageTolerance.
- Search by place when you have one and not a name. city and zipcode filter on the published residence. For an area rather than a boundary, send lat, lng and radiusMiles — up to 100 — and the search returns registrants whose published Arizona location falls inside it. Addresses come back typed, so a Phoenix employment address is distinguishable from a home address.
- Read matchState and matchConfidence before you act. Every record carries matchConfidence, matchBasis[] and matchState. In Arizona a date-of-birth criterion resolves against age within the tolerance set by ageTolerance and returns age_match. The label is returned rather than folded into a single score, which is what lets your product hold one threshold for a full-date match and a different one for a weaker basis instead of inheriting ours.
- Page through the whole result set. Results are paged; read the pagination block on the response rather than assuming a first page is the answer. For a sweep large enough that a synchronous call is the wrong shape — a whole city, a whole Arizona roster — use the async endpoint and take the result on a webhook.
- Re-check over time, not once. A person clear today can be registered next month, so a single check ages. The data is continuously updated, and you can add a live block to re-verify a specific person at the source in the request. Every record returns its own lastCheckedAt, so a re-check is a diff you can actually evidence.
A Arizona search, end to end
Searching for a person
The common case: a name, a date of birth, scoped to Arizona. Send dob whenever you hold one — it is accepted in Arizona exactly as it is everywhere else, and it narrows rather than filters, so a record with thinner birth evidence still comes back on the name. In Arizona it resolves against age, returning age_match; send age instead when a date is not something you hold, and widen or tighten with ageTolerance.
POST /v1/search
{
"query": {
"lastName": "Doe",
"firstName": "John",
"dob": "1979-04-02",
"state": "AZ"
},
"jurisdictions": ["AZ"]
}Searching a place
No name, a location: every registrant whose published Arizona address falls in a city. Swap city for zipcode, or for lat/lng/radiusMiles to sweep a radius around a school, a site or a property.
POST /v1/search
{
"query": {
"city": "Phoenix",
"state": "AZ",
"perPage": 50
},
"jurisdictions": ["AZ"]
}| Scope | jurisdictions: ["AZ"] for the Arizona roster; omit it for all 58 jurisdictions in the same request. query.state is a separate, residence-side filter. |
|---|---|
| Birth criterion | Send dob whenever you hold one — it is accepted in Arizona exactly as it is everywhere else, and it narrows rather than filters, so a record with thinner birth evidence still comes back on the name. In Arizona it resolves against age, returning age_match; send age instead when a date is not something you hold, and widen or tighten with ageTolerance. |
| How the match is labelled | age_match — a date-of-birth criterion in Arizona resolves against age within the tolerance set by ageTolerance and returns age_match. Returned as a label rather than collapsed into a score, so the calling product sets its own threshold. |
| Location criteria | city, zipcode, or lat/lng/radiusMiles up to 100 miles. Addresses return typed — residence, secondary, employment, school. |
| Freshness | Regular reads the continuously-updated corpus; send a live block to re-verify named jurisdictions at the source in the request, and lastCheckedAt comes back on every record. |
| Compliance | Not a consumer report; not for FCRA-covered decisions without appropriate process. Use is subject to the acceptable-use terms accepted at onboarding and to applicable law. |
The full Arizona reference — record shape, registered population, and how the neighbouring jurisdictions behave — is on the Arizona registry page.
Beyond one lookup
A single Arizona check answers a question about today. A screening programme answers it continuously: re-run on the cadence your risk warrants, take large sweeps asynchronously on a webhook, and diff each result against the last using lastCheckedAt.
Batch search takes up to 1,000 queries in a single request, which is usually the right shape for a roster rather than a person.
See pagination, async & webhooks, how matching works and pricing.
Try it against Arizona
Run a live AZ-scoped search and read the response shape before you write a line of code.
Try a live search
Search the Arizona registry — no account needed
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Arizona search FAQ
How do I search for sex offenders in Arizona?
Send a last name with any narrowing criteria you hold and scope the request with jurisdictions: ["AZ"]. Send dob whenever you hold one — it is accepted in Arizona exactly as it is everywhere else, and it narrows rather than filters, so a record with thinner birth evidence still comes back on the name. In Arizona it resolves against age, returning age_match; send age instead when a date is not something you hold, and widen or tighten with ageTolerance. Results come back scored, de-duplicated across jurisdictions, and labelled with the match basis that produced them.
How many registered sex offenders are in Arizona?
The size of the Arizona register moves week to week, which is why the useful question is almost never "how many" but "is this person one of them". A scoped search answers that in one call, with the match basis stated on every result.
Will a Arizona search find someone registered in another state?
Yes, if you let it. Registration follows the person, so someone living in Arizona may be registered in California, Nevada and New Mexico. Omit jurisdictions and one request covers all 58 at once; name ["AZ"] when you deliberately want the Arizona roster alone. Every response reports which jurisdictions answered, so a narrow search is never mistaken for a clean one.
What identifier should I search Arizona with?
Send dob whenever you hold one — it is accepted in Arizona exactly as it is everywhere else, and it narrows rather than filters, so a record with thinner birth evidence still comes back on the name. In Arizona it resolves against age, returning age_match; send age instead when a date is not something you hold, and widen or tighten with ageTolerance.
Can I search Arizona by address or ZIP code?
Yes. city and zipcode filter on the published residence, and lat/lng with radiusMiles sweeps an area of up to 100 miles. Addresses are returned as typed entries — residence, secondary, employment, school — each with its own city, county, ZIP and coordinates where geocoded, so an address search in Phoenix can be read as precisely as you need it.
Can a Arizona search be used to make a hiring or housing decision?
Registry results are not a consumer report and are regulated in that use. Use is subject to the acceptable-use terms accepted at onboarding and to applicable law — build the workflow so a human makes the decision and the Arizona search supplies the evidence, with the official record link on every match as the citation.
Neighbouring jurisdictions
A registration in a prior state of residence will not appear in a search scoped to Arizona alone. Each guide below is the same sequence for a jurisdiction whose match behaviour may differ from this one.