posted by lawyersofmelbourne.com.au admin on Nov 14
Do you suspect that someone you know or interact with has a secret criminal past? Is someone around you (perhaps even your partner) being evasive about their past or otherwise acting suspiciously. Are you trying to confirm that the landscaper, housekeeper, and people watching your kids for you are trustworthy? Your reasons for wanting to do a search are your own. My job is to advise you on how you can do it. Here’s what you need to know if you want to search criminal record databases in a practical, efficient way.
Under the right circumstances, doing a free criminal record search is fairly quick and easy. If you are certain that the person in question has lived in only one or a few locations, this is a viable option. You’ll almost surely find the records you seek in the local courthouse. Except perhaps for very new records that haven’t been processed yet. These records may be archived somewhere out of the way, but as public records, they will be available. You should know that some jurisdictions are now making their information available online. You should also know that some jurisdictions are starting to charge for access to these records. This means you’ll probably want to call the courthouse or police station to check for these things before you stop in & ask for access. Once you’ve finished doing this for one place the person lived, you need to do it again at every other place they lived.
Things get even more tricky if you only have limited information about the person in question. If you don’t know all the names they’ve used over the years, or every place they’ve lived, finding complete information using free methods becomes completely impractical. Paying a Criminal Record Search firm to do the work for you makes far more sense. One of the biggest benefits of these services is that they gather information from as many sources as possible, and present it to you in one report.
What this means to you is that will have a greater chance of identifying criminal records with these types of services than if you try to do it yourself. While you can do a preliminary search for free, getting the full report requires paying a modest fee. Even if it is possible to do the work yourself successfully, you still need to weigh the time and effort you will expend versus the fee you will pay. In almost all cases, using a paid service makes the most sense.
To learn more about criminal record research and to run a free preliminary public records search, CLICK HERE.