County Criminal Records Search: The Baseline of Comprehensive Screening

Our County Criminal Records search is the most reliable and direct source for uncovering up-to-date criminal history. Because the vast majority of crimes are prosecuted at the local level, this search serves as the foundational building block for any robust screening program.
 

Why is this Search Essential?

While not all crimes are committed locally, statistics show that individuals are most likely to offend in the jurisdictions where they currently live, work, or have previously resided.

Running a county-level search allows you to:

• Mitigate Risk: Identify criminal history that may prevent you from safely moving forward with a candidate.
• Ensure Accuracy: By going straight to the source (the county court), you bypass the missing/inaccurate information often found in national or state-level aggregators.
• Maintain Compliance: All reports are curated to align strictly with the boundaries of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and applicable state guidelines.

How Does the Search Work?

We offer flexible 7-year, 10-year, or unrestricted look-back periods, allowing you to tailor the search to your specific compliance needs and industry standards.

With over 3,000 counties in the United States maintaining varying levels of technological infrastructure, our search process adapts to the specific county being queried:

• Electronic Searches: For counties with digitized records, we instantly search the same online databases used by court clerks.
• Manual Searches: For counties that do not make records available electronically, we deploy an on-site researcher to the county courthouse to manually pull records directly from the clerk or court repositories.

Best Practice Recommendation: A county-level search should be the foundation of your pre-employment screening. To ensure no gaps in your background checks, we advise searching all counties where the candidate has resided over the last 7 years. To automate this process, ask our team about the Unlimited County Criminal product, which does the heavy lifting for you by automatically searching all 7-year residential counties at once.

Note: Depending on the specific county being searched, additional court access fees may apply.

What Information is Uncovered?

This search investigates misdemeanors and felonies filed within a specific county's Central or County Seat Court. If a record is located, your background report will provide a clear, detailed picture of the offense.

Information you may receive includes:

• Charge: The specific criminal offense filed against your candidate.
• Level of Offense: The legal classification of the crime (e.g., felony, misdemeanor).
• Disposition: The official outcome or current status of the case (e.g., guilty, pending).
• Sentencing: Specific details regarding any penalties or court-mandated requirements resulting from a conviction.

[View our Criminal Case Reporting: What We Do and Don't Report Article.]

FAQ

Why is my County Criminal search taking longer than normal to complete? Extended turnaround times are typically tied to the specific operations of the local court. Common reasons include mandatory clerk-assisted searches (where court staff must manually pull physical records), jurisdictional court closures, or the need for our team to conduct deep-dive research to definitively verify a complex case. You can always check our Current County Court Delays page for real-time updates on known jurisdictional slowdowns.

My search scope is 7 or 10 years, why are older cases showing on my report? You may occasionally see a note on a report stating that certain cases fall outside the listed search scope. This happens for two primary reasons:

1. Release Dates: The reporting window often begins from the date of release (prison or parole) rather than the original conviction date, which can legally bring older cases into your requested timeframe.
2. High-Severity Crimes: In strict accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), state regulations, and company policies, we will report convictions older than your standard scope for high-severity crimes (such as homicide, kidnapping, and sex-related offenses) provided the records are easily accessible in the main court index.

Why does a case show an active warrant but lists the other details as “Not Available”? This formatting occurs when a candidate has an active warrant tied to a pending charge that is over seven years old. Under the FCRA, we cannot report adverse non-conviction information once it exceeds seven years. However, the active warrant itself is still legally reportable. Redacting the underlying case details ensures you are made aware of the active warrant while remaining FCRA-compliant.

Why did I receive a ‘Needs Info Request’ asking for a corrected SSN or Driver’s License for a county search? These requests are an essential part of our accuracy verification process. A valid SSN and an accurate Social Security Trace provide our team with vital secondary identifiers, such as previous addresses, middle names, and aliases. Similarly, court dockets frequently list a Driver's License number as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). When we investigate potential case matches, these extra identifiers allow us to definitively connect the case to your candidate—or safely rule it out as a false positive.

Why didn’t a specific case appear on the report if the candidate disclosed it to us? There are several valid reasons a known case might not appear on a county-level report. The most common reasons include:

• Jurisdiction: The case was a federal-level offense (which requires a Federal Criminal search rather than a County Criminal search).
• Scope & Status: The case fell outside of your designated search scope, or it was a non-conviction, which Verified First does not report.
• Candidate Data: The candidate’s name is misspelled or an alias name was not ordered.

We are fully committed to providing the highest level of accuracy. If you believe a reportable case was missed, please reach out to our Client Services team or your Account Manager so we can promptly investigate the discrepancy.