Public Criminal Records
In recent years, running online background checks have increased in popularity. You can gather very valuable information regarding public criminal records very easily and quickly.
There are a few options that you can take to run a comprehensive background check on a person.
One option is to hire a private investigator who has a license allowing them to access more databases than you would if you ran an individual search. These can be expensive however, often costing more than $100 for a single report. Many of these private investigators may also charge hourly fees.
Make sure that you get the correct first name, last name, location, and previous residence of a person. Be sure to collect the any nicknames and aliases that the person goes by also as this may turn up different information. Different states have different public criminal records information on a person. For example, if a person ends up being charged in one state, the public criminal records may not show up in another state.
For this reason, many people opt to run a national FBI search. The problem with FBI searches is that most of them require fingerprints of the person undergoing the search. This is the service that hospital workers, public servants, and other trust based employees use in employment checks. These are the most comprehensive searches that you can gather, but they also require a lot of information to start your search and sometimes the permission of the person whom you intend to condeuct the search on.
The easiest and quickest option is to use an online background check services that pulls up public criminal records. Most of these services pull up an incredibly extensive amount of information including public criminal records, mortgages, court cases, divorce decrees, birth and death certificates.
There are free Nationwide Databases but they are often insufficient to carry out a background check as they are poorly updated.
Fact Sheets
