I wanted to give you guys a short primer on how our court system works as far as criminal records are concerned. Below is a generalization of all records across the United States, but of course there are exceptions. As always if you have any questions or comments please feel free to email me at crimcheck@gmail.com

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County Court Houses: Most of the time across all states the county court houses store records and hold trials for felonies. When we search for felony records these are the court houses we go to. For instance if someone were to hire an employee and we wanted to check for felony records and we knew the subject lived in Cleveland we would search the Cuyahoga County Court because Cleveland is located in Cuyahoga County. The same goes for any city located within Cuyahoga County. Now let’s say our subject lived in a city that was located in Lorain County we would then check Lorain County Court House for felony records.

City or Municipal Courts: For the most part these are smaller courts and handle misdemeanor trials and records. For instance if a subject committed a misdemeanor offence in Berea, Ohio they would most likely go to Berea Municipal Court. The trial and records would be held there. Same thing goes for just about anywhere in the country.

Federal Courts: Federal records are kept at the United States Federal District Courts. Each state has multiple federal district courts. Federal courts handle federal crimes such as interstate crime, bank robbery, mail fraud, etc. If we were looking for records on a subject that lived in Cleveland we would check the Northern Ohio Federal District Court. If they lived in Cincinnati we would check the Southern Ohio Federal District Court.

Here is where it can get complicated. Most states have what are called criminal record repositories. As in our previous examples Ohio’s repository is kept by BCI or bureau of criminal identification. Most states have something similar and are usually run by the state police or by the state’s attorney generals office. The problem lies in the fact that the court houses and police agencies are supposed to send there records to these state repositories. Many of these agencies just don’t have the manpower or money to keep up with sending the records in and it can cause big gaps in the state databases. The state databases are notoriously inaccurate and out of date.

NCIC or FBI Records: These records are maintained by the U.S. Department of Justice and are supposed to be the most comprehensive available. Unfortunately the problems that plague the state record repositories also happen to the NCIC database. The records are outdated, inaccurate and many times just plain missing. If you were able to get a NCIC record check, be careful as it is most likely inaccurate. You would be better off checking county and city court records.