Steps Involved in Finding Someone's Criminal History

Knowing whether or not a person has a criminal history is information that most people would want to know.  Criminal histories are recorded in numerous different types of public record databases, which can make accessing a particular file a little tricky. Knowing the basics about where criminal records are kept can save a person hours of time.

When searching for a person's criminal history the best place to start with is court records. The reason for this is that any criminal history that a person has will leave a trail of court documents recording all of the information concerning their legal infraction. There are millions upon millions of court records retained within the public records system, which allows a person to search and access the vast majority them. Due to the overwhelming number of court cases though, searching through them can take a great deal of time if you are unable to define or narrow the search. There are most likely thousands of John Smith's held within the system, but if you are able to narrow the search down to a particular state or even better a county, then the number of search results you will be forced to sift though will be severely diminished. This is a great type of search if you are simply checking upon whether a person has any criminal history, but if you are interested in a particular type of crime then there are more expedient ways to accomplish that.

Many crimes do not result in prison time for the perpetrator. If you want to know whether a person has done time in prison then there is a separate database for incarceration records. This can be done by contacting whichever Federal, State, or County Department of Corrections that you wish to access. These records vary greatly from state to state. Some states' DOC keeps incarceration records dating back to the 1970's and other states' DOC only keeps records upon current inmates. Also, states have different regulations about how their DOC records can be accessed, so make sure to find that out before calling.

The sex offender registry is a free of charge database that grants anyone access to the United States' entire sex offender list. There are numerous different ways to use this registry. It can be used to check upon a name of a person in order to ensure that they are not an offender. This is a common practice for parents when they will be leaving their child unsupervised with people like coaches or babysitters. Another aspect to the registry is an area search. This type of search allows a person to enter a particular area, like a city or street, into the database and the registry will display the location of all of the sex offenders in that area. It will also categorize the offenders into four groups of sexual crimes. The categories are offense against children, rape, sexual battery, and other offense.

Another type of search that is possible is a department of corrections search. This is the most inclusive of all the types of criminal records searches because it includes physical descriptions as a part of the search criteria. Another aspect to this type of search is that is allows you to search for specific types of criminal history. These range between anything from theft to murder and everything in between.