Search availabilities: Statewide

There are approximately twenty states that offer a genuine statewide criminal history search by name, date of birth and or social security number. Various additional states offer fingerprinting searches and even more offer no such search options to private companies. It is important to note that of these twenty states, only about fourteen of them offer statewide criminal search options that are feasible for pre-employment screening. When we talk about feasibility in pre-employment screening, we mean that the time it takes to get the results must be reasonable and certainly fall inside of our target two to four business day turn around time.

The steps we take to assure that your statewide criminal history search is conducted accurately and timely:

• Once we receive your applicant’s personal information via out FCRA guided authorization and disclosure forms, we verify the accuracy of this information against our databases.
• After this information is verified, we request that a criminal history search be conducted on your applicant.
• This request is usually submitted within the hour that you request the search and is done directly with a state source; most of these state sources are State Police records departments or central record archives. These searches typically take twenty-four to seventy-two hours to be returned to us from the official state entity.
• Once we receive these results, we combine them with any additional searches you requested and produce a detailed report outlining our findings.
• This report is revised for accuracy and is sent to you the client immediately.

Watch Out!

Be cautious that as an employer you don’t confuse a Statewide Criminal History Search with a “Felony Search”, “Department of Corrections Search” or a “State Repository Search”.

These searches claim total coverage, but are usually just a search with a privately maintained database or the Department of Corrections of that particular state. The Department of Corrections holds information pertaining to convicted felons that have served or are currently serving time in a state run correctional institution. These searches do not include misdemeanor convictions or felony convictions that did not result in a prison sentence. Furthermore, some if not most states do not keep their department of corrections data for more than three years after a person is released.

Alternatives

As an alternative to statewide criminal history searches, we offer county level criminal court records searches, which usually include more in-depth information on convictions, but are limited to the county we conduct the search in. It is recommended that we locate all the counties an applicant has resided in within the past seven years to assure that the proper counties are searched.