By Bill Whitford

Criminals falsify their personal information in hopes their records won’t be discovered. Recently, a national organization implemented a criminal background check policy. An employee filled out an application and falsified his year of birth. A traditional courthouse check would not have caught this person’s record, due to the incorrect date of birth. However, an instant records check through an online criminal records database with advanced search capabilities uncovered the employee’s record for drug possession.

Criminals are trying to beat the system, but the system is not giving in, thanks to companies that compile public criminal records from across the United States. Online databases are proving the traditional means of researching criminal histories — such as hiring a firm that will send a researcher to a courthouse to manually check the record — often produces incomplete results. Not only do individuals with criminal histories falsify dates of birth, they also falsify address history and names.

No matter which method you use, employers and screening companies must rely on the subject providing accurate personal information. Even when an applicant provides the correct name and date of birth, screeners still struggle with the limitations of traditional courthouse record checks.

For instance, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the most common first names of American men are James, John, Robert, Michael, William, David and Richard — in that order. So, how does a courthouse researcher look up criminal records for applicants who list their names as Jim, Johnny, Bob, Mike, Bill, Dave and Rick?

That’s where criminal record database companies take the guesswork out of record checks. Rapsheets, a criminal records company with more than 120 million records in its database, uses complex database queries to ensure common names are not missed because of spelling differences or aliases.

By automatically cross-referencing the names in a database search, some companies can slash the rate of missed criminal records often associated with traditional courthouse searches. Unlike time-consuming courthouse checks, database results are returned within seconds of submitting a search. Although database searches are often more comprehensive, costs are as low as $3 per search. Courthouse checks can cost as much as $50 per name.

Transposed names and dates pose another problem for courthouse researchers. For example, a criminal record for Edward James could easily be listed as James Edward due to a simple data entry mistake. Again, database users avoid these errors by using advanced search logic, which automatically looks for swapped first and last names with matching dates of birth.

Other high-powered database queries available on sites such as Rapsheets incorporate aliases, middle names and Social Security numbers into broad searches that cull criminal data from all over the country, all at the same time. By linking multiple identifiers to an applicant’s basic personal information, as opposed to a simplified first name, last name, date-ofbirth query, employers drastically improve the accuracy of their background checks.

Database technology can also yield criminal records with incorrect dates of birth, a near impossible task for courthouse researchers. Say an applicant lists a date of birth as 07/30/70. Using a progressive database search, employers can search for criminal records with dates of birth within 10 years higher or lower than the purported birth year. So, the search would ultimately look for an exact name match, and all birth dates beginning with 07/30 between the years 1960 and 1980.

So, just how effective is the database search? At the request of a large customer, Rapsheets used batch processing to compare 56,000 subjects whose records had been searched by courthouse researchers who found no criminal records on any of these. But Rapsheets’ database turned up almost 6,000 criminal records on this “clean” list — all of them felonies.

Rapsheets offers its advanced search logic through a special investigative search (SIS) site for industry professionals and Intranet sites for companies requesting customized interfaces. Server-toserver gateways through XML and HTML languages also are available.

The SIS system immediately assigns a control number to each search that can be tracked back to that search. Management can then use the control number to audit a user’s searches or to reproduce a search at a later date. Reproduced searches include original information input by the user, as well as the matching result detail, which enables users to view previously searched records without being charged again.

Database companies are revamping the employment screening industry. Through database services, such as Rapsheets, employers and screening companies now have an innovative source of comprehensive criminal records literally at their fingertips.

Bill Whitford is chief operating officer of Rapsheets, the nation’s largest online database of criminal records, offering the most advanced search logic to industry professionals. For more information, contact a Rapsheets at (866) 432-7241 or visit www.rapsheets.com.