Inmate Records

One of the many times of background checks that can be performed on an individual in the modern era is a search of inmate records to see whether that person has been jailed, for how long, and various other information about a possible prison history. Whether the searcher is a young person trying to discover if a date met on the Internet is a safe person to be around, a hiring officer in the human resources division of a large company checking on the trustworthiness of a potential employee who would have access to money or sensitive data, or simply someone inquisitive who wants to find out about their friends and neighbors, there are many resources for finding inmate records.

The dawning of the information age, with the globalization of the Internet, the creation of highly effective, cheap, readily-available computers, and the human drive to catalog and research everything, has been an immense boon to those who wish to pry into the past of their fellow man, whatever their exact motivation. Connecting to the Internet, using a search engine to find inmate records sites, and searching those sites (for a fee, in many cases) is the matter of a few minutes. An hour or two of fairly easy investigation can turn up more information on another person's past than at any other time in history.

Inmate records in the United States are usually stored by the state, rather than by the federal government. The records are therefore kept at two levels. One is at the county level, where the sheriff's office (and sometimes the county jail) maintains records of incarcerations for that specific county. The other is at the state level, where the state's Department of Corrections maintains an overall database of all imprisonments within the state boundaries - a font of inmate records that can be tapped with a little effort and intelligence.

Beginning a search for inmate records on the Internet is the logical first step. This will allow the searcher to find out if the individual in question has, in fact, been imprisoned - it is useless to approach the state government or sheriff's office about an individual who was never a prisoner. The web search will also reveal highly useful data that is necessary for gaining higher-quality inmate records later, if necessary. The place of incarceration, the dates of said imprisonment, and so on, will all help the searcher find which Department of Corrections to contact and what dates the officials there should search their archives for.

Once the basic information about inmate records has been obtained - the name, the place, and the dates - the search can be continued in more detail if desired. Armed with these keys, the searcher can approach either the state Department of Corrections, or the county sheriff's office, or both, in order to find more detailed records. Some states offer online databases of inmates both past and present, while others require contact by mail, fax, or telephone in order to obtain inmate records. As with any other public record, a small fee is likely to be needed for a hard copy of such files - but with modern communications and information systems, finding out the prison history of nearly anyone is a fairly simple, straightforward process.