Michigan warrants are court directives which are handed over to the police in order to bring a defendant before the tribunal, so that trial proceedings can be initiated against him in the criminal matter that he is being accused of. An outstanding warrant is simply a judicial directive of this nature which is a few days or weeks old and hence has been stored in the police database for execution in the future.
How is an outstanding warrant different from an active arrest order?
Legally speaking, there is no difference in the powers bestowed by an outstanding warrant and those conferred by an active warrant on law enforcement agents. The difference in terminology merely shows for how long an arrest order has been out and the various databases that it has founds its way into over that period.
For instance, upon release a warrant is simply sent to the court services division of the county sheriff’s office. Of course, the magistrate’s court also keeps a copy of the document and the affidavit filed while procuring it. Save for these two only the office of the clerk of court which sends its deputy to record the trial proceedings has information on active warrants.
In contrast, when an arrest order becomes outstanding just about every law enforcement agency is kept in the loop about it. From the US Marshall’s office to every sheriff’s department across the country and even state troopers and the FBI are offered information on these pending detention orders through the centralized database maintained by the federal law enforcement agency.
Because it is taken for granted that a person evading arrest may have absconded to any part of the country, this is done to ensure that whenever he/she is confronted by the law, the officer in charge has information about all pending arrest orders in his name. Although, a misdemeanor charge may just earn a rap on the hand for the accused, a felony case means that the offender will be deported to the county in which the outstanding warrant was issued.
Information on Michigan outstanding warrants
Among the myriad of ways in which you can get information on outstanding warrants against the subject of your inquiry is to get in touch directly with the local law enforcement agency or any judicial entity that was involved in the process of issuing these orders. So, in any county of Michigan, you could simply walk into the office of the sheriff or the local justice center and request them to get a warrant search done for you.
If the prospect of visiting these agency offices in person seems needlessly taxing, you can also get information on arrest warrants through online service providers. Using the form on this site will enable you to use information from a privately maintained database for your search. For generic warrant details, it would help to look at the most wanted list for a county. While not all law enforcement agencies offer this information, some that do are:
- Oakland County: https://www.oakgov.com/sheriff/pages/most_wanted/default.aspx
- Washtenaw County: http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/sheriff/community/most-wanted/washtenaw-county-most-wanted
- Allegan County: http://www.allegancounty.org/Government/SD/DET/MostWanted.asp?pt=government
- Crawford County: http://www.crawfordsheriff.org/Misc/wanted/wanted.htm
It will help to understand here that the information offered by most police departments is restricted to the geographical area under their control or to the bounds of the state. On the other hand, when you go with a third party repository, you can access information on warrants not only from Michigan State but also the other parts of the country.
However, if you intend to use this data for employment or other official purposes, you may have no other choice but to approach a law enforcement or judicial agency for the information since only these entities can notarize the background report for you.