Have you ever had a weird feeling about someone that you just couldn’t shake? The answer here is probably because sometimes people just put off weird vibes, even if they are super friendly and nice. Unfortunately, even the kindest people can be capable of committing atrocities, and there’s no real way of knowing that just by looking at them or talking to them. Could an arrest record search make finding out if your weird feeling is justified or not? We plan on diving into the answer to that question while looking at exactly what details you can find with an arrest record search today.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last twenty to thirty years, you’re probably all too familiar with the impact that the internet has had on our lives as well as on society as a whole. Everything from buying clothes to doing research and even talking to strangers from all over the world has been made so much easier than it has been in the past that it’s hard to imagine a world without the internet if it’s older than you.
Clark’s third law states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and the internet is a shining example of that. The systems in place to even make the internet work are immense, and the result is the total sum of human knowledge fitting neatly in the palm of your hand. Truly, this kind of technology is indistinguishable from magic, and if you were to show what we have today to someone even back in the 1980s, they wouldn’t be able to grasp it in its entirety.
You may be asking what this has to do with arrest record searches, but it actually has everything to do with it. In the modern-day, the internet is the biggest tool that you have for doing an arrest record search. Most government agencies use the power of the internet to make their lives easier, up to and including putting arrest records online in publicly accessible databases.
It makes it easier for the government because of the ability to search through files easily. You can use filters, keywords, or any other number of tactics to find extremely specific pieces of information or even to cast a wide net and get a lot of information about a specific topic. Both of these techniques make information searching a lot easier.
Arrest record searches are one of the most common types of public records searches, and that’s because of the amount of information that is available in them. Any time someone is arrested, they have it added to their arrest record so that law enforcement has easy access to the number of times someone has been arrested for something.
This information serves a purpose to a lot of people in our criminal justice system. Firstly, it allows for the law enforcement officers on the street to establish a pattern of behavior. For instance, if someone is often arrested for a specific crime, let’s say loitering, and never goes to court or gets charged, they know that they shouldn’t give that person any leeway.
This information is also helpful to judges and lawyers alike. Both the prosecution and defense attorneys have access to these kinds of records. It’s the prosecution’s job to eliminate any shadow of a doubt about the defendant’s guilt, and it’s the defense’s job to create said shadow of a doubt. Someone cannot be charged with a crime if there is a shadow of a doubt in their guilt because, in the American criminal justice system, you are innocent until proven guilty, not the reverse.
In court, arrest records are used in a very similar way to how law enforcement officers use them. To establish a pattern of behavior. Let’s expand on the example of the loiterer for just a moment. Let’s say that they’ve been arrested for loitering more than several times, and they finally appear before a judge. The prosecution would use this arrest record to point out a pattern of behavior, and the jury would decide if that eliminates any doubt of the defendant’s guilt.
As for what’s actually contained in this record, there’s some very useful information for anyone, whether they’re a layman or a criminal justice professional. Usually, these records contain things like the name of the person that was arrested, why they were arrested, the address of the arrest, as well as the date and time of the arrest. The more detailed these reports are, the easier it is to refer back to them later on.
As a member of the general public, the information provided here may be hit or miss for determining if someone is trustworthy, but it’s still useful. There are some people that are just in the wrong place at the wrong time while they just so happen to look suspicious, and that’s enough for police to arrest someone, even if the person in question is never charged. That being said, that’s not always the case. You may need to do a little bit more digging if you’re using this kind of search to evaluate someone.
The Easiest and Most Difficult Ways to do an Arrest Record Search
If you find yourself in a position where it would be advantageous to do this kind of a search, there’s a good chance that you’d like to know exactly where to start as well as how to make this search happen in as little time as possible. Fortunately, as we were saying, the internet has made this task child’s play if you know the right tools for the search.
The most intuitive way, and unfortunately least efficient way, is to check through the records that are provided directly by law enforcement. It’s entirely counter-intuitive to think that going directly to the source wouldn’t be the best way to get information, but that’s exactly the case here. If you don’t believe us, you can try poking around on a few county sheriff’s department websites and see for yourself.
If you do go and try for yourself, make sure that you pick a few counties so you can really understand the drawbacks to this method because the biggest drawback is how hit or miss it is. Some counties provide incredibly robust databases and are updated regularly with a lot of information about people who were arrested. This is common, but just because something is common doesn’t mean that it’s always that way.
There are a fair number of counties that either don’t make this kind of database easy to access, and there are even a lot of counties that do provide these databases but don’t update them regularly, so they could be full of inaccuracies and old information. On top of that, none of these databases are linked, so if you need to check in a lot of places, you’ll need to check every county individually and compile any results you find yourself.
If you don’t want to do that, you can easily save yourself the headache by finding a good personal background check service online. Many of these services have had years and years to hone their craft and make sure that their systems are as efficient as possible at finding any and all available information about the person in question.
Their systems are able to search through thousands of public records databases at once, and in turn, can give you instant search results, including a lot more than just arrest records. Many users regularly report being given criminal records, court records, warrant information, driving records, and a lot more. The information you receive can vary depending on who exactly you’re looking into and what’s available, but you can rest easy knowing that you’ll have access to any and all public information available about the person in question from anywhere in the country.
Because of the large number of public information databases these services are able to check, you don’t need to guess where you need to be looking to find this information, and you especially don’t need to rely on the person in question to tell you everywhere they’ve lived to find the information you want.
Find All The Information You Need Quickly
Information has only grown more important over time, which is saying something considering it’s always been incredibly important. Fortunately for us living in the modern-day, you can find a whole treasure trove of information without leaving the comfort of your home, no matter the time of day. Just about everything you could want to know is at your fingertips, and most of that information can be found in just a few short minutes.
***SpyFly provides consumers affordable, immediate access to public record information. Federal laws prohibit businesses from using SpyFly’s service to make decisions about employment, insurance, consumer credit, tenant screening, or for any other purpose subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 USC 1681 et seq.**
