In a continuing effort to improve data accuracy and further reduce false positive matches in our instant criminal database, backgroundchecks.com will require the subject's full middle name or middle initial to conduct an instant criminal database search.

Improve data accuracy & further reduce false positive matches

Including the subject's full middle name or middle initial along with the other required elements: First Name, Last Name and Date of Birth; helps to narrow the possible records in the database for review, but does not automatically mean that the record found is the exact person for whom you are searching.

Before relying on any result, you should confirm that the record really matches your subject, including by checking all information in the record and using common sense.

Additional Search Filters

In addition to our latest database search improvements, we will continue to offer the following filtering options to help you further customize your search results:

• Include Dates of Birth within 1, 2, 3 years of entered Date of Birth - This option helps when you are not sure of an exact date of birth. If you are unsure of a subject's exact date of birth, you can use this feature to increase the year range, thus increasing your results.
• Include results that do not have a Date of Birth available - This option can help broaden your search. We receive our instant criminal data from hundreds of sources. Many of those sources do not always include date of birth. By default we exclude these records in your search. While we don't recommend assuming that these are a match for your subject, they can serve as good indicators of counties or states where you might want to perform additional searches.
• Include similar names - This option will return more results because it is less strict. By default, we return only results that contain the exact name. For instance, "Jon" would not return results with the name "Jonathan", or "Jonas". However, you can choose to receive results that are similar name matches, and you would see results that matched "Jonathan" or "Jonas".

In Georgia, the House of State Representatives approved a bill last week that will restrict the access to arrest records by the public, a cause heavily supported by the Georgia Justice Project.  Specifically, the legislation includes a so-called “expungement” provision to make it easier and faster to remove records from the public view for people that have been cleared of criminal charges.

The bill would remove such records from public view if the case was never referred for further prosecution by the arresting agency or if the case was referred but later dismissed. Other reasons why the record might get restricted access is a situation where a grand jury not once but twice refused to indict the case. And finally, the arrest records would be sealed too if the person was acquitted of all charges.

Previously, people who had been arrested, but not convicted, were too easily denied certain jobs, because sometimes their background checks showed arrests even though they had not committed any crimes.  In one case, a mother who had been accused of child abuse was cleared after they proved that the child had suffered from an allergic reaction.  In another case, a woman was charged with theft, which also turned out to not be true. The house is hoping this will open up jobs to people who deserve them, instead of wrongfully blocking good citizens from good jobs.

If organizations were using backgroundchecks.com though, they would never find arrest records using criminal record searches of our instant database. The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has consistently held that the use of arrest records as an absolute bar to employment discriminates against some protected groups.  Because we want to protect our employer customers, who generally do not have the resources to carry out such an investigation, backgroundchecks.com has decided not to store arrest records in our real-time database we use for instant searches.

However, if your intent is to verify or find out if somebody that got arrested was also charged and or convicted, you can run a search through backgroundchecks.com for that information and use it for employment decisions. We do include records in our database that may indicate that somebody appeared before a judge and was indicted, charged, tried, and sentenced.

But backgroundchecks.com also believes that removing more expunged criminal records from our industry’s databases will proactively assist people trying to rehabilitate from their criminal pasts. Because of that backgroundchecks.com has been working for over a year with various industry leading criminal record database companies on an expungement clearinghouse, which ensures that more expunged records are removed from their private criminal databases.

This new effort is aimed at assisting job seekers to remove records that may no longer be publicly available but which are still present in private databases. At the launch of the Expungement Clearinghouse, slated for mid-spring, over 800 criminal background check companies will benefit from the information exchange provided by the Expungement Clearinghouse through its members.

About backgroundchecks.com -

backgroundchecks.com - a founding member of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS®) - serves thousands of customers nationwide, from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies by providing comprehensive screening services.  Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with an Eastern Operations Center in Chapin, S.C., backgroundchecks.com is home to one of the largest online criminal conviction databases in the industry. For more information about backgroundchecks’ offerings, please visit www.backgroundchecks.com.

Source: http://savannahnow.com/news/2012-03-25/sentencing-reform-bill-provision-would-restrict-arrest-records-access#.T3_xMPttqSo

If you have applied for a job, certain licenses or applied to rent a home or apartment, you have probably had to go through a background check. Depending on the nature of the request, a background check will search everything from civil and criminal records, verifications of licenses, a check of your credit score, motor vehicle history and even call and check references you have provided for yourself. With so much competition in the job market and so many people going for the same positions, employers are using background checks more than they ever did before. They can afford to be selective at this time as they are often faced with tens if not hundreds of candidates to choose from. By doing these comprehensive background checks, they can ensure that they are only getting the best employees.

As a job seeker, arming yourself with the same information that an employer will have when determining if you are a good match for an open job position, can be crucial to landing the job. When you are forewarned with the information that employers can see, when they run a background check on you, you are in a better position to take care of any negative or incorrect information in your history before an employer is ever seeing it. For instance, it is very possible that there may be some incorrect information out there that has been attached to your name or social security number.  Just like you should check your credit report annually, you should make sure your criminal background record is correct as well.

If you have to go through a background check, and you probably will since 3 out of 4 employers are currently doing them on potential employees, it will be in your best interest to have a self background check completed. This is a very simple and fast process and by using companies like backgroundchecks.com, you can do this all from the comfort of your home for one small fee. You will get access to criminal database records an employer might search, such as a national and state criminal background check and even driving record information. You can all of the previous mentioned information in one comprehensive job application check package from backgroundchecks.com.  Arming yourself with this information and fixing incorrect information before going into the interview can help you land the job.

About backgroundchecks.com -

backgroundchecks.com - a founding member of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS®) - serves thousands of customers nationwide, from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies by providing comprehensive screening services.  Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with an Eastern Operations Center in Chapin, S.C., backgroundchecks.com is home to one of the largest online criminal conviction databases in the industry. For more information about backgroundchecks’ offerings, please visit www.backgroundchecks.com.

Source: http://www.jdsupra.com/post/documentViewer.aspx?fid=bd79c035-f265-47bc-a839-cd48e5545322