CAN I DO A NATIONWIDE CRIMINAL RECORD CHECK THAT COVERS ALL CRIMINAL RECORDS IN THE COUNTRY?

I HAVE SEEN REFERENCES TO NATIONAL or NATIONWIDE CRIMINAL RECORD CHECKS. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

This usually means that the agency offering the service is able to check criminal records in any county in the US, but not ALL in one shot.

There is no legal way that one can check the national FBI NCIC database of criminal history records without congressional authorization.

A national check of major newspaper and wire services databases for news articles reflecting conviction information will only turn up a small fraction of existing records.

However, there is a database that consists of mainly felony convictions and sex-offender registry information that is available (see our National Criminal check for only $18.75).

It consists of sex offender registries from about 32 states that is updated generally on a 1-2 months basis plus mostly felony conviction records and some misdemeanor records from about 37 states.

This is a very useful database, but ONLY in addition to running a normal county criminal record check in the jurisdictions where a person has lived or worked. That is because none of the databases contain ALL criminal records in any of the jurisdictions listed. In most states, they contain only records of persons who were convicted of a felony and sentenced to more than 1-year in a state prison.

That usually means that the other 95% of persons convicted of a crime in that state will not appear in the database.

A good example is NY State.

In NY, there are about 500,000 arrests per year. Out of those, about 18,000 end up as felony convictions with a sentence of more than one-year in state prison. Those 18,000 are the only ones that end up in the NY portion of the database, which means that the other 482,000 arrests will not appear in the database.

The percentages don’t change much in other states, hence that is why we recommend this database as an add-on search, but do not offer it as a stand along background check because of the gaps.

Another caution on the databases. They are not current. Some states only get updated on a semi-annual basis, others every two months and some every month.

The following links will take you to the NY State Criminal Justice statistics. Note that references to PRISON mean persons sentenced to a State prison. JAIL means those who served time in a county or town jail.

WHAT ABOUT STATEWIDE CRIMINAL RECORD CHECKS?

A number of states that offer their records for public review are far from complete. Each State has a different policy.

A few states have roadblocks that make it impossible to search the records in a timely fashion. Some require special notarized authorizations; others take too long and some release only a small percentage of what is in their files.

In all cases, you have to keep in mind that none of the state repositories contain records of ALL cases on a person in that state.