About Our Searches
Where do the criminal records originate? Criminal history reports are compiled with data from:
- court systems
- corrections departments
- law enforcement
- sex offender registries
- other related state, county and municipal agencies
Statewide court
records usually are collected at a central state office and come from criminal history reports delivered from all or some county court clerk offices in the state.
Statewide corrections
records likewise are maintained at a central office for the state prison system, but are delivered to the central office by prison facilities throughout the state.
Law enforcement
records usually come from county or metro law enforcement offices that track offenders throughout their movement in the appropriate criminal justice system. In the largest metropolitan areas, CriminalWatchDog.com attempts to supplement any statewide records with records directly from the county or metro court, corrections or law enforcement office.
CriminalWatchDog.com does not have all the criminal records in the U.S. Some states prohibit private companies from disseminating criminal records. Further, all but a few of our jurisdictions show only cases that have been disposed; that is, we very rarely report arrest records that are still pending.
CriminalWatchDog.com does not acquire records from credit reporting agencies such as Trans Union LLC or Experian. Rather, it maintains computer connections to these "credit bureaus" to enable users to perform "identity verification" using social security number and/or address lookups that access these companies'
Where do the criminal records originate?
Court records
contain personal identifying information:
- name and date of birth are included in all jurisdictions
- gender, race and address are included in most, but not all jurisdictions
Court records
also include corresponding case information about each charge, or offense, related to that person.
The
case information
usually shows:
- case number (assigned by the court)
- description of the charge (felony, misdemeanor, traffic, etc.)
Usually,
charge or case record
shows:
- disposition of the case (guilty, not guilty, dismissed, etc.)
- date of disposition or sentencing
- also may show the sentence imposed (prison time, probation, etc.)
Corrections records
also contain personal identifying information, along with information about the person's offenses.
Corrections records may include information only on persons who have been remanded to the custody of the corrections department and who actually have spent time in prison. However, CriminalWatchDog.com does obtain information from some corrections departments on criminals who were sentence to probation, not jail time. Regardless, most corrections departments report information on felonies (crimes punishable by at least 12 months in prison/probation), but not misdemeanors.
Law enforcement records
also contain personal identifying information, along with information about the person's offenses. These records often do not contain information about the disposition of a case.
Sex offender records
contain personal identifying information, along with information about the person's offenses. Since sex offender registries were created to keep track of offender's addresses,
all sex offender records show most recent known address.
How does the search logic work?
CriminalWatchDog.com's criminal history reports match first name, last name and date of birth. We allow users to type only the first two letters of a first name if desired; this is useful when the user is not sure of the exact spelling of the first name. Typing a date of birth is not necessary when performing a search on one state or Regional Search; however, due to the millions of records in our NCI file, a date of birth must be typed. The date of birth is necessary to help make a positive identification.