Public Criminal Background Check - Are Background Criminal Checks A Waste Of Time?

Getting a public criminal background check has some unknown traps for new players and there are things you need to know as we explain in this report.


So you have your suspicions- about that future employee, new neighbor, on-line dating service sweetheart that seems too good to be true, and you decide to do a public background criminal check.

While there are many sources to obtain the information, many are not linked to each other, have incomplete information, or only have current offenses and not past ones. You can fool yourself into a false sense of security, when you believe you have done all the searches and not found anything, but you must still exercise caution if you decide to do a public background criminal check yourself.

Criminal Check Tips

You can use a search engine and input the name or address, and maybe some information will come up, but it may not be complete. It will give you a general idea if the person is a criminal if you find something, but if you don’t, then you still don’t know if you have a complete background check or not.

This is where many amateurs make judgment errors and unknowingly employ, or become involved with a fugitive, sex-offender, or worse. There is one all-encompassing source called PACER-mainly available to the FBI and not the public. Many states and counties have their own websites where you can do a public background criminal check, but they may not have websites available for general criminal checks, just other purposes.

You could use The U.S. Federal Prison Database to do a background criminal check on inmates, and a limited archive of past inmates, parolees, and probationary criminals.  The Highway Patrol has sources to do your own background check; however, you need to know all the places an individual has been to know where to look for their background or history.

The main thing to consider when you are doing background criminal check is that it is very time consuming to check all databases, even if you have all the information, which you probably don’t.  A criminal wanting to hide their past, may know ways to keep things hidden in an employment application, dating situation, and in moving next door to you.

The U.S. Department of Justice now requires convicted sex offenders to be registered, but usually doing a public background criminal check does not list outstanding warrants and arrests until they become convictions.