Under the Kentucky Open Records Act (KRS 61.870–61.884), arrest records maintained by public agencies are classified as open records and must be made available for inspection upon request. This includes booking photographs, charge information, and related documentation held by county jails and law enforcement agencies. The Act establishes a presumption of openness—records are public unless a specific statutory exemption applies, and the burden of proving an exemption falls on the agency withholding the record.

Kentucky has 120 counties, more per capita than almost any other state in the nation. Each county operates its own jail or regional detention facility, creating a highly decentralized system of booking records. This county-heavy structure is a legacy of Kentucky's 1891 Constitution, which required that no citizen live more than a day's horseback ride from their county seat. The result is that arrest records are scattered across dozens of independent facilities rather than centralized in a single state database.

Major Detention Facilities

Kentucky's largest booking facilities are concentrated in its metropolitan areas:

• Louisville Metro Department of Corrections (LMDC) — The largest jail system in Kentucky, serving Louisville Metro (Jefferson County). LMDC operates multiple facilities including the Main Jail and the Community Corrections Center, processing the highest volume of bookings in the state. The facility maintains an online inmate lookup system.
• Fayette County Detention Center (Lexington) — Serves Kentucky's second-largest city and surrounding Fayette County. The facility is operated by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government Division of Community Corrections and provides an online inmate search.
• Kenton County Detention Center (Covington) — The primary detention facility for Northern Kentucky, serving the greater Cincinnati suburban region. Located across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Kenton County processes a significant volume of bookings driven by the area's cross-state metropolitan dynamics.
• Hardin County Detention Center (Elizabethtown) — Serves the Fort Knox region and surrounding communities in central Kentucky.

How to Search Kentucky Arrest Records

There are several methods for looking up booking records in Kentucky:

• County jail rosters — Many Kentucky counties maintain online inmate rosters that show booking photos, charges, bond amounts, and arrest dates. These are typically free and updated within hours of booking.
• Kentucky State Police background checks — The Kentucky State Police (KSP) provides criminal background checks through their Records Branch. Name-based checks are available for a fee and return Kentucky criminal history information.
• CourtNet 2.0 (courts.ky.gov) — The Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts operates CourtNet, a public case lookup system covering all Kentucky circuit and district courts. This system allows searches by name, case number, or citation number and returns case details including charges and dispositions.
• In-person requests — Any person may visit a county jail, sheriff's office, or clerk's office to request arrest records under the Open Records Act. Agencies must respond within three business days.

Mugshot Removal and Expungement in Kentucky

Kentucky does not have a specific statute targeting the removal of mugshots from government or third-party websites. However, the Commonwealth has expanded its expungement provisions significantly in recent years. Under KRS 431.073 through KRS 431.079, individuals may petition to expunge certain felony and misdemeanor convictions, as well as charges that were dismissed, resulted in acquittal, or were resolved through diversion programs. Class D felony convictions may be eligible for expungement five years after completion of the sentence, and misdemeanors may be eligible after five years as well. Upon successful expungement, the associated arrest records, including booking photographs, are ordered sealed by the court.

Kentucky also enacted legislation requiring that records of arrests that do not result in conviction be automatically expunged after specific waiting periods, reducing the burden on individuals who were never found guilty. The Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training and the Administrative Office of the Courts coordinate the expungement process across the state's 120 county court systems.

Population and County Structure

Kentucky's approximately 4.5 million residents are spread across 120 counties that vary enormously in size. Jefferson County (Louisville Metro) is the most populous with roughly 790,000 residents, while several eastern Kentucky counties have populations below 5,000. The state's major population centers include the Louisville metropolitan area in the north-central part of the state, the Lexington-Fayette urban area in the Bluegrass Region, and the Northern Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati (Kenton, Campbell, and Boone counties). Central Kentucky's “Golden Triangle”—the region bounded by Louisville, Lexington, and Covington—contains the majority of the state's population and economic activity.