Criminal Records

Criminal Record - Defined

Business owners, landlords or property managers don't want any surprises when it comes to making hiring or renting decisions and running criminal record checks before hiring or leasing out property is a good way of reducing risk to the company or property.

When ordering criminal record reports, you may want to know: What is included in a criminal record check from AAACSS?

To better answer the question, we must first identify "Criminal Record" as it pertains to background checks:

A Criminal Record or Criminal Background is a list of a person's criminal conviction history. This history can include criminal traffic violations, misdemeanors & felonies. Criminal Record reports does not include non-criminal cases filed in civil court such as tax liens, ivil rights violations and bankruptcy records.

Criminal record reports from AAA Credit Screening include the applicant's full reportable criminal record including the past 7 years (from the original date of criminal activity) of criminal convictions. The reason for the 7 year limit is to be in compliance with federal and state guidelines for the use of criminal record reports in employment background checks and tenant screening decisions.

AAACSS provides the following criminal record check options: U.S. countywide criminal records, statewide criminal records, nationwide criminal records, felony criminal conviction searches as well as international criminal record Reports.

U.S. Countywide criminal record reports are 7-year countywide criminal record checks including any 1 country or parish. Reports are gathered by searching local county court records for the most up to date criminal background checks possible. Turnaround time for these reports vary due to the restricted hours and turnaround times of individual country courthouses.

Statewide criminal record reports are 7-year statewide criminal background checks that include 1 statewide search and includes misdemeanor and felony convictions whithin that state. The normal turnaround time for statewide criminal record checks is 1 hour. Because information comes from a statewide criminal record database, there can be gaps in the information reported, because some counties may have a policy of not reporting to the state database. If a client has requested a statewide criminal report in a state that is known to have counties that do not report to the state database, AAACSS customer service will contact the client before reports are run to offer countywide criminal record reports instead. Address checks can also be run to obtain prior address information on candidates to narrow down which counties reports should be run in.

Nationwide criminal record checks include a 7-year U.S. nationwide criminal records, including misdemeanor and felony records and have a usual turnaround time of 1 hour. These reports provide clients with the widest scope of criminal record reports.

There are times that a hit on a criminal record report (Statewide or Nationwide) must be investigated at the county level before reports can be delivered to the client, causing the turnaround time of 1 hour to be delayed. This can be due to the county not reporting complete information such as full disposition (adjudicated guilt versus dismissed) information, etc.

Federal felony criminal record reports include 7-year district wide federal criminal background checks. These differ from the nationwide criminal record reports in that they search 1 individual federal district court (e.g. Eastern District of Texas) only. Turnaround times for federal court records vary according to the individual district's response times.

International criminal background checks are also available through AAA Credit Screening and covers one country or province and the turn around time is around 5-10 business days. Some countries (e.g. Lebanon, Syria) take longer than others such as (e.g. Canada, Puerto Rico)

Criminal record checks are only a small part of the complete background check scope that can be used for employment background checks and tenant screening. More extensive reports including credit checks, driving records, reference checks and more are also available. Have a look at our pricelist for available packages.

Click on the image to the right to see a sample of what a AAACSS criminal record report looks like.

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