OVERVIEW
Many of us are under the impression that the Privacy Act somehow bars access to criminal records. Such is not always the case at the Federal level. The Privacy Act applies only to personal records stored and maintained by the Executive (not Judicial) Branch of the U.S. Government.
Unlike credit reports, which are controlled by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you need not, in most cases at the Federal level, obtain consent from the subject of your inquiry nor must you demonstrate a "need" for the information.In theory, criminal records are a matter of Public Record. Federal law not only permits, but requires, that courts provide the public with full and timely access to most of the criminal records in custody of the court. An exception to this is court records which have been sealed or expunged, or pertain to offenses committed by juveniles; in these cases, the records will not be available.
Currently, only 13 states record criminal information statewide (CO, FL, IN, KS, MO, MT, NE, ND, OK, OR, SC, WA, WI). Other than these, all other criminal information is recorded on a county-wide basis. And, although all counties are supposed to forward their criminal records to the state level, not all counties actually do so. Often, too, the information forwarded is incomplete. Furthermore, even if the counties do report regularly, county-court crimes are often plea-bargained down to misdemeanors and, therefore, not forwarded to the state.
Records are also sent directly from the various courts and police departments to the FBI's National Criminal Information Center (NCIC) where law enforcement officials (and only law enforcement officials) can access information as needed.
This faulty reporting process is probably due to mostly to an overall lack of computerization. In fairness, though, many courts are extremely busy and don?t always have enough time to process their paperwork properly.
Because most court record checks are not available on a statewide basis, but must must be conducted on a countywide basis, criminal record checks can be very costly. If you don't specifically know where your subject might have been found guilty of a crime, or was the subject of a civil action, you might have to search a number of county or state courts. A nationwide search would be prohibitively costly.
Considering the expense involved, a prudent first step is to order a credit report. A credit report will tell you a great deal about a subject - most of the time! In addition to civil court actions, a credit report will raise "red flags"! That is, if a subject has bad credit, no credit, a questionable Social Security Number, aliases, a questionable date of birth, etc., you might, or might not, want to investigate the subject further, depending on what it is worth to you.
If the potential exists for you to lose a lot of money, you should absolutely know all you can about who you are dealing with! A criminal record check might be a bargain relative to the alternative.
Civil Court Records
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Click Here To EmailFor each search, please provide as much information as possible, including FULL NAME(S), DOB, ADDRESS(ES), TELEPHONE NUMBER, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS (if applicable) or FEDERAL EIN NUMBER.
State-Wide Civil Court Searches - Price Quote per state in CO, FL, IN, KS, MO, MT, NE, ND, OK, OR, SC, WA, WI. As stated above, not every county will have reported to the state in a timely or complete manner. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for errors or omissions.
County-Wide Civil Court Searches - Quote per county. Searches in states not included above must be made on a county-wide basis. We can manually search any county in the country. Likewise, we can retrieve hardcopy documents of any case as well. Document charges are additional.
Criminal Court Searches
County Criminal Search - Price Quote to search any individual county in the nation, in any applicable state.
Statewide Criminal Search - Price Quote to search the criminal files of any of the 32 states with a central criminal repository. Statewide searches are available in: AL, AR, AZ, CO, FL, GA, HI, ID, IN, KS, MASS, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MT, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, VA, WA, WI.
Liens and Judgments
State Judgement and Liens - Price Quote per state, Price Quote to search all states.
National UCC Search - Quote per state, Quote to search all states for UCC filings. This is a critical sweep if your investigation targets corporations.