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Conduct a thorough criminal background check by searching criminal records, court records, find criminal history, check prison, jail inmate records, and department of corrections records. Also check professional licenses and other credentials.
What do Criminal Records searched by County Include?
The criminal record is a record from county courthouses showing all criminal offenses committed as follows:
- Traffic Offenses: serious offenses for example "driving under the influence" DUI or "hit and run" violations are included in criminal records.
- Misdemeanors: Less serious, minor offense, but misdemeanor is still a crime punishable by incarceration.
- Felonies: more serious offenses that carry a penalty of incarceration from 1 year to life or death penalty.
Each state has different laws and rulesvabout classifications of criminal activity. Civil cases or lawsuits and bankruptcies, are not included on the criminal record. The nationwide searches usually go back as far as seven years. .
Interest in Criminal History Screening
There is widespread interest in obtaining access to criminal history record information from reliable sources for the purpose of screening an individual’s suitability for employment, licensing, or placement in positions of trust. The interest comes from private and public employers, as well as non-profit organizations that place employees and volunteers to work with vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, and disabled persons.
Private Sector Criminal History Databases and Background Screening Services
Most private employers’ demand for criminal history background checks is currently met by private sector enterprises that provide professional background screening services and/or commercial databases that aggregate criminal records that are available to the public from government agencies. The commercial databases are not complete because not all states, and not all agencies within individual states, make their records available to such databases; nor does the FBI make its federal or state criminal records available to such databases. In addition, the information in the commercial databases may only be updated periodically. The commercial databases may also be missing important disposition information that is relevant to a conviction record’s use for employment suitability purposes, such as sealing and expungement orders or entry into a pre-trial or post-trial diversion program. Checks of these databases are based not upon positive, biometric identification (such as fingerprints), but upon personal identifiers such as names and other information that can help confirm a person’s identity. Nevertheless, these databases provide a source of information that is significantly broader than going to individual county courthouses in the counties where an applicant indicates that he or she has lived. Professional background screening services also provide overall screening services to employers, performing the function of going to all appropriate data sources, whether primary sources (such as a courthouse) or secondary sources (such as public and private databases) to gather criminal history records and other information, such as financial history, that an employer may be seeking to evaluate a candidate. These services also assist in obtaining the current status of a record at the primary source when it may not necessarily be reflected in a database.
The private data providers and screening services are considered consumer reporting agencies under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and state consumer reporting laws. The activities of consumer reporting agencies in providing information on individual consumers are regulated under these federal and state laws. Some state consumer reporting laws are more restrictive than the FCRA. All of these laws impose fair information-practice requirements by consumer reporting agencies that report public record information, such as criminal history records, for employment purposes. The privacy protections provided to consumers under these laws include the right to consent (including opportunities to opt-in or opt-out), the right to access information about themselves in databases, the right to notice about reporting disclosures that have been made, and the right to challenge the accuracy of the information before adverse action is taken by the user based on the information. They also restrict the reporting of certain types of information, such as, in the case of the FCRA, records of arrests that did not result in a conviction that are older than seven years. Some states restrict the reporting of any arrest-only records by consumer reporting agencies.
Types of records you can search for criminal records
- Arrest records
- Criminal History
- Criminal Indictments
- Criminal Records Check
- Correctional Files
- Conviction Records
- Felony Records
- Criminal Record Search
- Felony/Misdemeanor
- Incarceration Records
- Inmate Records
- State Criminal Search
- Police Records
- Mug Shot Records
- Nationwide Criminal Search
- National Criminal Registry
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