“Casier judiciaire”: criminal record
The casier judiciaire is the criminal record held by the state, and it is issued in more than one form. The form an individual may request is deliberately the narrowest one, which is why an authority sometimes asks for something you cannot obtain for yourself.
Checked on 8 September 2026 Last updated 8 September 2026
In brief
- Document category
- Judicial documents
Casier judiciaire is the criminal record kept by the state on an individual. The document you are asked to produce is an extract from it. What trips people up is that the record is issued in several versions with different levels of detail, and access to them is restricted by version rather than by country.
Several versions, different readers
In the French system the record exists in more than one bulletin. The fullest is reserved for judicial authorities, an intermediate one is available to certain employers and public bodies for specified roles, and the narrowest is the one a person can request about themselves. Belgium works on a comparable principle: extracts are issued by the commune in different models, and the model required depends on the purpose — working with minors, for instance, calls for a specific one.
The practical lesson is to send the receiving authority’s wording to whoever issues the document, rather than asking for “a criminal record”. Which model or bulletin is expected should be confirmed at source on the day, because these classifications are revised.
The Turkish counterpart, and its trap
Türkiye issues two related documents: the criminal record (adli sicil kaydı) and the criminal record with archive (adli sicil ve arşiv kaydı). The second includes entries removed from the current record after the sentence has been served or expunged, and foreign authorities asking for a full history usually mean this one. Ordering the plain version when the archive version was wanted is a routine cause of a request for further documents.
Both can be obtained through the e-government portal, but a printout is not always enough: an apostille normally has to be applied to a wet-signed copy issued by a courthouse. The Turkish criminal record certificate page covers where to obtain it and which authority applies the apostille.
What it does not mean
- Not a police clearance from your country of residence. Most immigration files want a certificate from every country you have lived in beyond a set period, not only from your country of nationality.
- Not valid indefinitely. It is among the shortest-lived documents in any file, which is why it should be obtained last.
- Not a document that can be omitted when clean. A record showing no entries is still the required document, and its absence is treated as a gap.
- Not translation-free. There is no multilingual international form for it, so translation is always part of the chain — see apostille versus légalisation for the order of steps.
Timing it correctly
Obtain long-lived documents first and this one last. A certificate issued too early can expire while a diploma evaluation or a registry request is still running, and renewing it means repeating the apostille and the translation as well.
Frequently asked questions
Ask the receiving office. Where it wants a complete history, or the wording refers to spent or expunged convictions, the version including the archive record is the one meant. When in doubt the fuller version is the safer order.
Yes. A power of attorney drawn up at a Turkish consulate lets a representative request it from a courthouse and take it through the apostille step. The consular power of attorney needs no apostille of its own.
Sometimes, because it carries a verification code. But an apostille is applied to a document issued by an authority, so a wet-signed copy is usually required as soon as certification enters the picture.