To thoroughly understand the process of conducting “real”
criminal records background checks it is necessary to have a
rudimentary understanding of the structure of the court system
in the state where the search is conducted, especially with
respect to consolidated courts and how criminal records
are kept and dispersed.
The very simple definition (by me) of a consolidated court
is one where the Superior or District or Circuit court clerk’s
office keeps and disperses records of that court and all related
courts in that county (and only that county or district). What
this means is that, for the purposes of searching for criminal
records, one has to search in only one place per county.
Prior to consolidation of the courts if someone wanted to search
for criminal records of a person and they did not know where
specifically to search, the researcher would have to search all
lesser or outlying courts in a particular county or judicial
district for those records.
For example: By my count, Los Angeles County has 40+
courts
from Catalina Island to Pomona and from Santa Clarita to Long
Beach. Prior to court consolidation you could get felony
case information at the superior court in downtown Los Angeles,
but if you wanted misdemeanor or infraction information you had
to either guess which lower court to check or check them all,
and that would involve physically going to each court to conduct
the search. As you can imagine very few misdemeanor and
infraction records are discovered in a system such as that.
However, since the courts were consolidated in 2000 a court
researcher looking for criminal records has to look in only one
place; LA Superior Court in downtown LA, not 40 different
locations in the same county. In fact, a court researcher can go
to any of the 40+ courts and access the records of all of the
courts and get all of the criminal information including
infractions like traffic tickets, misdemeanors and felonies.
Some states are not consolidated. In several
states, such as Mississippi, Massachusetts, Montana and Wyoming
the courts are not consolidated. The result is that
searching for records one is, in most cases, only going to
retrieve information on felony cases only because the search is
being conducted at the highest level court in the county and the
records are for that court only. Most lesser crimes such as
traffic infractions and misdemeanors are adjudicated in the
lower courts. These Municipal, Justice or Chancellery courts
also handle things like small claims and other minor civil court
cases.
Remember the following regarding records searching:
- In states where records are searched
by county and not statewide (such as California) each county
Superior Court has records of that county only. The
subject of your investigation could be an axe murderer from
the adjoining county, but your county court would not have a
record of it.
- Some states Like New York have
statewide conviction only criminal history databases.
- Other states like Georgia and Michigan
have and even more restrictive felony convictions only
databases. (This is the kind of info you get in those
“Instant Nationwide” database checks).
- Different states have different names
for their main county courts. In most states it is
called Superior Court. In some remote areas of the
country a Circuit Court may be the highest court in a
district that may encompass more than one county. The name
is a holdover from the days when a judge travelled on
horseback to courts in each territory.
Kit Fremin is the owner and
founder of Background Check International. Since 1994 BCI
has served clients as varied as: the LA Times, Department of
Defense, Mars, Inc., the UN, the NTSB and Calvary Chapels
nationwide. His website is:
www.bcint.com and he can be e-mailed at
kit@bcint.com.
