Arrest Records

In keeping with the modern era's tendency to retain detailed information on all people - making the entire system a type of panopticon, where all members of society are under constant surveillance - arrest records are as publicly available as the records of birth, death, marriage, divorce, criminal conviction, residence, bankruptcy, and nearly every other personal detail short of one's favorite food or one's favorite intimate activity with a spouse - although these may come in time.

A background check can be carried out easily using the Internet. Anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and a credit card to pay the fees can obtain arrest records for nearly anyone in the United States, including a spouse, a neighbor, a potential employee, or even themselves. Entering "arrest records" in a search engine will yield dozens, if not hundreds, of companies which offer to provide arrest records and a host of other data for anyone in America, and it is only a matter of time until such services are available abroad as well.

Information matching should be carried out to ensure that you have obtained the correct arrest records - there are very few unique names, after all, and it is even possible for someone to have the same name as another person in the same town. This is fairly easy, however, and you will soon know whether the person you are interested in finding out the background of has been arrested in the recent past, how many times, and possibly on what charges as well.

It should be borne in mind that an arrest is not as serious a matter as a criminal conviction - indeed, it is far less serious and in some instances may even be a mistake. As such, an arrest should not be taken as an automatic sign of criminality, especially if there are only one or two arrests on record and these did not lead to criminal penalties of any kind. Infrequent arrests may indicate nothing more than a tendency to 'party' excessively once in a while, or a quarrelsome nature under special circumstances.

Of course, constant arrests, even if these do not lead to convictions and have no court records, are a red flag for erratic behavior and possible instability. Someone who is arrested every few months on minor charges probably has some serious character flaws, even if they are not criminally inclined, and should not be considered for positions where these flaws might interfere with work or similar activities.

Arrest records are considered to be less serious than criminal records, and as such, cannot be used for employment screening purposes after seven years have elapsed. There are also movements afoot to have arrest records completely purged from information available to background checks, leaving only conviction information, to protect privacy and prevent harassment and unfair denial of work based on very minor incidents.

At the moment, however, arrest records are as readily available as any other kind of background check data. Many websites offer arrest records, conviction records, and other personal data for a fee, and finding out if your potential employee, renter, date, neighbor, or service provider has been arrested in the recent past is as simple as entering their name and details on a commercial website, paying a nominal fee, and printing the resulting information to scrutinize at your leisure.