County Criminal Search
The Gold Standard
Country criminal records are retrieved directly from the original source, the courts where they are housed. This information is very accurate, acting as the gold standard by which unverified criminal data is backed. County criminal records retrieval is a fundamental component of most any effective background screening package.
Common Questions
County criminal searches provide data directly from the county courthouses. This information includes misdemeanor and felony charges that were processed within a specific county court.
While civil disputes are often processed in the same building as criminal cases, they are separate considerations. County criminal reports are not a reliable source of civil records data.
If you want to check on civil records, it’s best to run a county civil records report. This will ensure that the correct files are searched. They are often archived separately.
County courthouse information is very accurate. It is where case proceedings for non-federal crimes are carried out, logged, and updated.
This depends on the needs of those ordering the reports. As a background screening baseline, it’s recommended to search each county where an individual has lived, worked, or gone to school in the past 7 years.
Many counties require a manual data pull, so turnaround times vary. However, most records are returned within three business days.
The Peopletrail national average is 1.6 business days.
Just because information comes from the court, doesn’t mean employers are legally able to use it in a hiring decision. There are a number of state and federal regulations in place to protect job applicants.
It’s important to partner with a screening provider who holds compliance in high regard. PBSA accredited CRAs such as Peopletrail usually will only report information that employers can use to base hiring decisions.
The occasional record dispute is inevitable. The key is to handle them with care and according to legal protocol. If addressed properly, most disputes can be painlessly resolved without any escalation.
The Peopletrail Approach
Our focus is to provide county criminal record information in a timely, compliant manner. When it comes to the retrieval and reporting of sensitive information, there is no place for carelessness. Our researchers manually audit each and every record to verify correspondence to the candidate, and ensure that the final report is thoroughly compliant.
Each month we go through a seeding process where known positive records are sent randomly to our researchers without their knowledge. These records are checked via internal audits to determine if they are finding the seeded records. If there are errors, we notify the researcher and put them on administrative leave until they have either been trained properly through our Quality Assurance program. If an error is found a second time they are promptly replaced.
