Digging through the criminal history of a specific individual is not an easy task to do. You have so many sources that you have no idea where to start. So you may turn to some agencies for help but they may have some disadvantages as well. This article will explore how to obtain a criminal history report in several steps.
1. Use an employment screening company
You should use this only if you're an employer. If you want to get a criminal history report as an individual, proceed to step 2. In order to check for someone's criminal history as an employer you need to have a written permission from that person.
2. Use free websites
They are limited in terms of the information they give you (nobody wants his personal information to be available to anyone on the web) but a very good starting point. One good site to start with is criminalsearches.com.
You can also search through government sites. Most of them have search engines for sexual offenders only. Let's say you want to find whether a person is a sexual offender in California. You can go to Google.com/Yahoo.com and type 'California sexual offender search' and look for sites ending with .us or .gov. They are the official websites for any state in United States.
3. Use a background check company as an individual
The main advantage here is that you don't need a written permission from an individual if you want to do a criminal check on him. The main disadvantage is you don't get federal records, but you should get every record from the courts of every state in the US. This is the best type of screening you can do as an individual and many people choose it for convenience (you usually get your results fast since the information is stored in digital files.)
