Many years ago, it was a very difficult thing to search criminal records. You would need to ask a private investigator to do this kind of job for you. But things changed now. It is quite easy to search criminal records online from your own home today. There are many online criminal records search services you can use. You may even search criminal records for free, while you need to pay a fee for most of the search services.
Here are a few methods you can try to run a free criminal background search:
1. Use search engines
You can enter the someone's full name in the search box of a search engine, with the quotation marks for a phrase match(i.e. "Full Name"), or square brackets for exact match(i.e. [Full Name]), in order to narrow down the search results. Make sure the spelling of the name is correct in order to get the results for the right person. It will be a plus if you also know the birth date of the person. Many newspapers have an online version, which includes a fire and police section indexed by search engines. If you have a good luck, you may be able to find what you are searching for from the online newspapers.
2. Visit relevant websites
There are some websites, such as National Sex Offender Registry, or the Family Watch Dog, which keep the records of sex offenders who are released from prisons. If you are going to find out whether someone has ever been convicted for a sexual crime, you can visit these websites, enter the full name to find it out. You may still need to enter the social security number in some states to run a criminal records search.
Free search is always a good option. But it may take a long time in order to find the free result, and the results may not be as accurate as expected. There are many professional criminal search services online, which let you search their databases for a small amount of one-time fee. They can provide a lot of information such as:
- Court records,
- Criminal records,
- Jail records,
- Sex offender records,
- Felony conviction records,
- Arrest records,
- Background checks,
- And so on.
Their comprehensive databases can provide accurate information easily and quickly. And it provides the option for you to run unlimited criminal background searches in a certain duration.
