Getting a free criminal background check is definitely something that is in high demand. With all of the current events pointing to relatives and close family friends as the culprit to some of the most violent and disgusting crimes, these types of reports are becoming common place in our society.

So, how do you get free police records?

In order to get someones criminal history check completely free of charge one must understand the technology that they currently have at their disposal. Where is the first place that most people go for information on line usually? Yup, you guessed it, Google. The same holds true for trying to lookup public records. You will be surprised to know that most newspapers and courthouses publish certain information online. This type of information normally includes arrest records and criminal history logs. For instance, if a news paper has a section of the paper that includes a police and fire section usually they will have a list of arrests for any given week.

It is because of this that you can often times dig up relevant information online by simply searching for their name, phone number, or address. It is wise to search for the various terms in a number of ways including, with quotation marks, without quotation marks, and different variations that you can come up to. One thing to keep in mind that due to the sheer power of a tool like Google you are often going to have many thousand or hundreds of thousands of results to sift through. Because of this, it is not always possible to rely on this method unless you have plenty of free time. This is especially true when you are seeking to do a criminal lookup on a person with a common name.

Is There another way to access public records?

Yes, there certainly are other options to get to the bottom of someones criminal past. when someone gets arrested or convicted of a felony or a lessor charge, this information is often considered to be a matter of public record. Because of this, you may be able to gain access to someones arrest record by getting access to the courthouses public database.

In order to do this though, you will first have to make an initial visit to the court in whatever jurisdiction the person lives in or has lived in for a majority of their life and fill out an application for information. Often times the different courts might have a website where you can apply electronically however, most of them require that you do it in person. After you have filled out the proper paperwork it usually takes anywhere from twenty four to seventy two hours for them to either approve or deny your request. If you are approved you will then have the opportunity to visit the courthouse and gain a limited amount of access to the public records database.

Keep in mind that the information that you are presented with is usually not organized or sorted in any particular way and it could take you several days to get the police records that you are looking for. It is also worth mentioning that if the person that you are investigating has lived in more than one city or state that these steps could possibly have to be repeated several times over in order to get the records that you are looking for. The people that have the most amount of success with this method are the people that have disposable time or time that is not already dedicated to other projects. While time consuming, if used correctly with a little bit of patience success is possible.

What if the above methods do not get me the background check I need?

If the above methods fail to get you the free criminal background check that you are looking for it is possible that you have to explore other options. By other options I am referring to sites that are available online for all of us to use that maintain a database of most of the countries population and the crimes they have convicted along with relevant convictions. One thing about these types of sites that is important to note is that the results are instant. From the time you enter the website you are in possession of a criminal history report in under a few minutes. It is this feature alone that makes these services so attractive and convenient to the do it yourself investigator. The report includes a detailed criminal background report on the target of your investigation that includes information such as arrests, convictions, address report, phone report, social security number verification, known associates, bankruptcy information, marriage records, divorce records, and other information that might be pertinent to your investigation.