Be Your Own Detective

After a criminal charge is dismissed, you might assume you would have a clean record, but in a routine criminal background check by an employer, the arrest shows up. Years later, the arrest still shows up. How can this be? How is this possible? It’s because the arrest was never expunged. Hypothetically, you are arrested, [...]

If you’re like most people, you probably were required to be fingerprinted at one time or another, for the purposes of a criminal background check, if you ever applied for a professional license. Teachers, Nurses, Foster Parents, Insurance Agents, Adjusters, Title Agents, HAZMAT drivers, and even college students are a few examples. In some states, [...]

A common growing complaint of hiring managers is the quality of job applicants just isn’t what it used to be. When a criminal background check turns up something, that comes as little surprise.
Almost every category of background check turned up more hits in 2006 than previous years. Criminal records checks yielded 9.1% hits, up from [...]

Years before the Virginia Tech shootings, there were early warning signs. In 2005, a court order was issued to Seung Hui Cho. “Cho is mentally ill and in need of hospitalization, and presents an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness.”
Federal law prohibits anyone whom a judge has adjudicated mentally [...]

Amazingly, in this post 9-11 era, US Military bases were rarely doing criminal background checks on civilians who routinely access military bases. Had checks been performed, the 6 Islamic militants who plotted their terrorist attack on Ft Dix NJ, would have been arrested long ago, instead of more recently from a lucky tip-off.
3 of the [...]

In America, convicted criminals are not supposed to be able to buy guns, but many fall through the cracks during the required criminal background checks and are ok’d to buy a gun. According to a report by the US Dept of Justice titled “Broken Records” this is a real problem. 22 states received failing grades [...]

In response to the recruitment shortage with the ongoing war in Iraq, criminal background waivers for new US Army recruits have increased to 65% from 2003 to 2006, according to DOD records.
The US has an all-volunteer Army and the Bush Administration pledged not to have a draft, the US Army has employed various strategies to [...]

As more employers are running criminal background checks on job applicants, critics are complaining that this is unfair to blacks, since they are more likely to have criminal records.
Actually a new study done by The Journal of Law and Economics have found just the opposite to be the case. Employers who run criminal background [...]

“Background investigation” is a very broad term. There many different levels or tiers of background investigation. Most lay-people think of it as finding out if somebody has a criminal record. This is the easiest part of investigation, and there are a number of effective inexpensive do-it-yourself detective tools available on the market for this purpose.
We [...]

When having a criminal record Exploring sealed or expunged, you have to wonder, is it truly sealed? Was is a waste of time & money? Criminal records for a long time, were kept only on paper file by law enforcement, courts and departments of corrections, so privacy was much better protected. Today as they have [...]