Dear GirlLegal: What is the best site for free criminal record searches?  I noticed that most sites that claim it have no results for searches.

Answer: That’s a good question. For the most part, I have not found any free criminal record searches either. These are usually paid services — and mostly corporations use them to run criminal searches on potential employees, or residential housing providers use them to run credit checks on potential renters.

There are many reasons someone may want to perform a background check or a person search. Small business owners may want to run a thorough check on a potential employee or another business. Landlords may want to perform bankruptcy or tenant checks. And, parents may want to know more about a babysitter or nanny. Knowing everything from felonies to fraudulent claims can help you better determine whether or not you should do business with or associate with a particular person.

As it turns out, there are free criminal records searches. But, then in order to actually get the information you may be required to pay a fee. However, I have found that most courthouse searches are free; but, you need to be prepared to spend time searching if you want to get the best results from a criminal records search. The caveat is that a number of courthouses have not converted to electronic storage of information, but for those that have, you can do searches if you have specific identifying information on the person you are searching.

I have also found that you could easily type a persons name into google, yahoo, or any other search engine for free and get limited information. If the person you are searching has an unblocked Facebook page, then you can usually find them and can try to get more identifying information that could help in your criminal information search.

I hope that you’ve found this response helpful.

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