| Important
Disclaimer:
The following article contains tips and suggestions for
conducting an investigation. Laws vary from one region
to the next, and what is legal in one state/country may
not be in another. Therefore, this article should be considered
for entertainment purposes only. Please see our
complete disclaimer
& EULA for more information. |
No
matter what articles or websites may lead you to believe,
accessing "criminal records" is not as easy as it
may sound. Most of the paid detective sites want you to
think that it is easy, so you can use their service to search
for records that are actually easily available and most of
which can be found with a Google search. And in this case,
what you're searching at this point are court records
- which may contain criminal accusations or cases - not actual
criminal records.
Do
you have access to an actual police database? NO! Of course
you don’t, because those are not intended for use by
regular citizens - they are only for members of the police
force. So it is impossible for someone without proper authorization
to access and search actual criminal records. Only law enforcement
agencies along with other governmental agencies have access
to those records.
On
the other hand criminal history can be researched by
accessing publicly available records. Publicly accessible
records include sex offender’s records, as well as prison
records along with arrest warrants and court records and dockets,
there are also many other sources of public records than can
be accessed to piece the picture together that indicates if
a subject was or is involved in any criminal activity.
Accessing
Local Court Records
The
legal system in the United States is made up of a series of
local and supreme courts. When looking to do a genealogical
or background search you should first start by checking local
courts, these local courts are loaded with information. If
you are looking to find out about your ancestry, who are related
to you and where and when they lived, then you may need to
write a letter with your specific question to the clerk working
at the court in the area where you think that your ancestors
might have lived, you can also visit the court in person.
Accessing
Federal Court Records
Now
in addition to the various state and local courts, there are
also as many as 89 federal district courts, along with the
U.S. circuit courts of appeal in addition to the Supreme Court
of the United States. Federal cases are dealt by federal courts
where federal law is exercised or in cases where the provisions
of the U.S. Constitution have been violated. If you are seeking
information about individuals you can access most of this
information via criminal case records. You can either write
to the court’s clerk with your question, or you can visit
the court in the area you are interested in. This will also
give you an opportunity to conduct an interview with many
of the residents that might have known the subject.
Accessing
Publicly Available Court Records Online
These
court records are fairly easy to access but might require
that you do some legwork in order to access them effectively.
Alternatively these records can also be accessed online via
various websites that have claimed to index those records
in their database.
For
instance SnoopStation, which is the most comprehensive database
and contains complete public records listings online. It indexes
an exhaustive list of publicly available court record search
websites, which allows you to conduct both nation wide and
state wide searches.
You
can access SnoopStation’s public records in our free,
Comprehensive
Public Records Directory. The website is geared
towards people who are looking for publicly available information
but minus the leg work they would otherwise need to do. The
information offered up by snoopstation.com can be accessed
within minutes, hence cutting the time it takes to investigate
a person or family significantly.
The
snoopstation wizard is free to use and enables you to construct
a relevant search path that is based on the user’s investigation
criteria as well as applicable area. SnoopStation’s wizard
is located at: SnoopStation's
Free Background Check Wizard
Court records are a resource especially important for people
who need help finding people they have lost contact with over
the years. Court records can also present you with accurate
information about a person’s criminal history as well
provide you with enough data to construct a relevant profile
of your subject. The interest in searching court records to
find people has grown over the years, and the internet has
only made it easier for people to locate individuals as well
as find out about their past.
This
information can be especially useful for people looking to
start a partnership with someone or an employer looking to
hire a new employee. Knowing the other person will enable
you to take the right action. For instance if the person you
are about to hire has a history of being convicted of petty
theft, you may think twice before hiring him or her, specially
if you were going to put them in charge of the cash register.
It
will give you insight in to the life of a potential partner,
if he or she has a history of dissolving partnerships and
getting away with money, then you will know exactly what to
do. By creating a search profile along with a criteria you
can discover a whole host of information, it is like creating
a person’s profile. It just goes to say that getting
background information is important, whether you are about
to start a business venture or get married, knowing the other
person will help you make the right move.
However,
you should be aware that the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act)
has specific guideliness for what kinds of information can
be used as the basis for making a hiring decision, renting
to tenants or even forming a business relationship. You
want to be sure that you're not unfairly discriminating against
an individual, and you should know the legal boundaries for
which a background check can be used.
Skip
tracers regularly use these online services to track down
skippers, since actually visiting the actual local court house
in each state the skip might have lived is impossible. Searching
online court records online is one of the easiest and fastest
ways to locate individuals, and services such as snoopstation.com,
make it much easier to create a profile.
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Conduct
a 100% Free Background Check Below...
Yes,
it's actually free and won't cost you a dime.
Use
the SnoopStation Wizard (on the left, below) to perform
a 100% free
background check and public records search
for any individual or business in the United States. Our wizard
will configure a customized "search path" based
on your criteria, showing you exactly which resources to
use to find what you want, for free!
Or,
you can use the premium search (on the right, below), which
is a paid service that gives you access to a proprietary records
database where you can search millions of documents, all at
once and instantly...
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Basic
Background Check (FREE)
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Complete
Background Check
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STEP
1
Choose
the Best Option:
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All
information & resources made available on this site fall
under the category of "public records", and are
completely legal to access
for US citizens. However, some restrictions apply - for example,
you cannot use SnoopStation.com to investigate celebrities
or juveniles. See
our terms of use for full details on how you can
use this site.
