A Criminal Record Search Reports felony and/or misdemeanor records. A vital report for anyone hiring people. Essential to avoid legal liability from Negligent Hiring. Your choice to search by County, Metro area by County, Statewide, or in Federal Court.

PURPOSE: This search provides criminal information in areas where requested to supply you with additional information to aid in making a better hiring decision.

County Criminal: A county criminal search is the most widely used criminal search. It is a quick (average 2 day turnaround nationwide) and comprehensive report. This is usually performed in the county of residence. If however the applicant has lived I year or less at current address, you may want to pull the county of the prior address listed. Software should, based on the zip code, provide you the appropriate county to pull, saving YOU research time.

Statewide: Many mistake the statewide criminal search as a search conducted with every felony and misdemeanor court in the state. This IS NOT necessarily so. In some states, the database may reflect incidents that occur with state troopers only.

Also, all city and county courts within a state may not participate in reporting to the state level. In Maryland, for example, all county district courts supposedly report criminal convictions to a state database but only a few county circuit courts report to the state database. Thus, in Maryland, it is possible for an individual to have a felon in a circuit court that does not report to the statewide database. In summary, the statewide report can be a very limited report. If there are departments that mandate a Statewide search by law, you must comply. However, you may want to consider generating the county of residence and SSS for added assurance.

Access Fees:There are a few counties across the country that charge access fees to agents when gathering data. If this happens, your provider may pass through this cost to your Firm, when applicable.

HINT: If you wish to order a criminal search, it is important to obtain all other names an applicant may have used. It is important to get maiden name for females and, if ordering a criminal conviction search, make sure you research records under both names.

HELP: Get as much information as possible:Full name, DOB, SSN, Sex. Race, Court tracking systems vary from county to county; many may not have a DOB or SSN on the record. Therefore the more identifiers you can supply, the quicker and more thorough the search. See price sheet for types of criminal searches available.