County Criminal Searches are the most accurate and comprehensive searches you can run because courthouses keep detailed information on file for each case number and most will update their records daily. A standard county search includes both district and superior court searches, pulling information on all felony and misdemeanor charges in that county. Just doing a county search would be as invaluable as just running a national search. You would need to know exactly where to look for it to be beneficial. There is no database that houses every single court’s records. Running both searches is really the only way to cover all your bases.
The Swiss Cheese that is a National Criminal Database Search
The National Criminal Database Search is the best search to start your background check but it should never be the only search ran. The issue with this report is that it’s not a very thorough search. There are twelve privately owned criminal databases across the country. Each database decides which sources to gather information from and how often they want to update the information. As a Consumer Reporting Agency, we have to decide which databases will give us the most up to date information because this is where we start our search.
Behind the Processing: the Intricacies of a Background Check
There is far more information on a person’s record than what shows on their background check. Name, Social Security Number and date of birth are required to run a National Criminal Database Search. This report covers an array of searches, but it isn’t a very thorough search when it comes to crimes at a county level (more information to come later on this topic). The main reasons to run this search would be to verify SSN validity, alias history, and lifetime address history. It will also pull all violent and sex offender registries. Based on any county information that does pull from the National Database, a county criminal search will need to be ran to verify the information is accurate and up to date.
