Criminal Records: How to look them up

Criminal records, or sometimes referred to as police are the records of a particular person’s criminal history it contains information on whether the person has any record of conviction on offenses pertaining to criminal nature. The information on a typical criminal records cries with country to country and sometimes varies with different jurisdictions within a country. Most of the cases a typical criminal record contains only the non-expunged records of criminal conviction including traffic infringements like over speeding, drunk driving etc. While in some countries or jurisdictions criminal records contain only actual convictions by the court i.e. whether the person has pleaded guilty or has been indicted by the court whereas in other places it also contains cases where the person has faced arrests, charges pending and dismissal along with acquittals. Private investigators all over search and unearth criminal records for potential employers, lenders etc. so as to ensure credibility and trustworthiness.

Before looking up criminal records, private investigators need to have some specific information about the person for whom the criminal record is being searched.

·        Full name and date of birth from official and credible sources such as birth certificates etc for accuracy for there needs to be an exact match for name and date of birth.

·        The address where the person has lived or worked is also needed for one need to know under which jurisdiction the person has worked and lived so as search and acquire criminal records from that jurisdiction. 

Now that you know what is needed to search for criminal records, you need to know how to conduct the search for person’s criminal records in an effective way. The following elaborates the process.

·        First of all start with the obvious and most simplistic approach. Try searching the local courts, at whose jurisdiction the person has been residing or working. In some countries and jurisdictions the information has been put up online, in those places just search the record online and where it’s not you need to get the help of court retriever.

·        In many states a central criminal record database is maintained where criminal records from all the jurisdictions are kept as a state agency database. Although there are restrictions on who can access those records but state licensed private investigators can. A word of precaution here, sometimes the records may be inaccurate or outdated, so don’t use this as your primary source of information.

·         Sometimes the cases, especially with white collar crimes, may be pertaining to federal nature as opposed to being state matters. So in that case federal crime records needs to be searched. There are many databases such as Courtlink, which can be searched for criminal records.

·        When all else has failed, you can search the nationwide database for criminal records. Although it’s not highly advisable as they may contain outdated and inaccurate information, doing a nationwide search may help you in unearthing  records containing information about crimes committed in jurisdictions  and states other than that you have been searching.