"Crimes and Misdemeanors"

There are no shortcuts in comprehensive background checks. Used as part of due diligence on joint ventures or board member profiles, its important not to cut corners as it could lead to misperceptions about your subject. The only way to ensure thoroughness is by doing a complete county criminal search in the locations where the subject has lived. In most cases this needs to be conducted in person and done in conjunction with a social security number verification identifying which counties should be searched.

A thorough background check cannot be done properly on the internet regardless of the claims made by some vendors and here’s why:

There is no such thing as a nationwide criminal records check. The FBI database is the closest thing we have to a nationwide criminal database but it is not accessible by the general public, only law enforcement and government agencies. The FBI database is not comprehensive as it doesn’t include misdemeanors, only felonies (more on the differences between these below) and some records never complete the journey from the county court to the state level and then to the FBI.

State Repositories of criminal records are where most internet background check vendors get their data. The completeness and accuracy of these repositories vary from state to state and most include only some misdemeanors or none at all. Thus only the most violent criminal will be included in these databases. Again, county courts often fail to send records to these state repositories rendering them incomplete as sources for background checks.

Staleness is another issue when dealing with background check on the internet with some databases updated only every 6 months or less. Also, some of the records might not include identifiers such as date of birth or social security numbers. Therefore, if you run a search for someone with a common name you may receive records that have nothing to do with your subject.

For a better understanding of the criminal records system, I’ll go over the four types of records involved.

• Arrest Records
• Criminal Court Records - from the state, local or federal level.
• Correction or Prison Records – if convicted of a misdemeanor the subject goes to jail, if convicted of a felony the subject goes to prison or possibly jail
• State Criminal Repository Records – statewide records made up of arrest, criminal court and corrections records.

Depending on the circumstances and how thorough you need to be will determine which level of records you want searched on your subject. As part of your due diligence is it important for you to know whether a person was arrested even if they never went to court or were convicted? Would you want to know if the person had been convicted of a misdemeanor such as involuntary manslaughter or petty theft? Those might not turn up in an internet background check?

Assessing your due diligence needs and knowing the limitation to background checks will help you make better decisions in choosing you business partners and board members.