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What to Look For:
-In Brief-
-In Brief-
But thanks to the Internet, there are countless websites out there that all promise to search through Florida’s criminal and court records instantly and cheaply. If you don’t know the ins and outs of how one of these searches actually works, you can wind up trusting the wrong service — and making your decision off of the wrong information!
Florida Criminal Court Records
If you want your criminal search to fetch the very best results, you need to follow this advice:
– Enlist the help of a licensed private investigator
A private investigator’s license allows him to gain access to information that’s usually only available to law enforcement. Sure, some details are a matter of public record, but there is plenty of important information out there that isn’t available to the general public. Unless you have a licensed professional working on your behalf, you’ll never know what’s lurking out there!
When it comes to a Florida criminal search, your private investigator will be able to look a variety of records, including:
– Criminal convictions and guilty pleas for the 1.6 million people who are (or have been) under the control of the Department of Corrections. These records contain information about people who were sentenced to prison and/or community service, along with people who are on probation, who received a suspended sentence, and who served their time at a state facility.
– The Florida Sex Offender Registry, including details about people who were classified as a sexual predator and/or were convicted of certain crimes against children.
– Details related to felony convictions, including the date of arrest, an explanation of the charges, an official case number, and a final court disposition. In most of Florida’s biggest counties — including Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Orange, Duval, Monroe, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee, Sarasota, Escambia, Citrus, Alachua, Marion, St. Lucie, St. Johns, Charlotte, Sumter, Suwannee, Clay, Seminole, Santa Rosa, DeSoto, Flagler, Hernando, Lake, Highlands, Indian River, Martin, Nassau, Okaloosa, and Putnam — these records are updated every month.
– Details related to certain traffic offenses
– Don’t trust websites who have to buy records
Florida Criminal Search
Because most of the online offers you see for Florida criminal records searches are from websites that aren’t run by licensed private investigators, these websites don’t have access to everything we just talked about. Instead, they have to settle for buying whatever records they can. Not only does this mean that they can’t give you all of the details that a licensed investigator can, but it also means that their records are hopelessly out of date.
In fact, most of the records that are purchased this way haven’t been updated in several years. Work with one of these websites, and you run the risk of someone coming up with a clean criminal history simply because they were convicted after those records were updated!
– Never put your faith in instant results
Now that you know exactly what kind of information a licensed private investigator can comb through, it’s easy to see why you can’t get legitimate search results instantly. Those instant websites — the same ones that have the outdated records we just talked about — simply take all of the data and upload it to their server. That way, it can spit out information as soon as you click your mouse.
The problem? No one’s checking to make sure the information is actually accurate! These websites do everything automatically, without anyone overseeing anything. You could end up with completely incorrect information and never know it!
Luckily, a good investigator will search through everything by hand — meaning you won’t run the risk of falling victim to a false positive. Even better, he’ll also know how to work efficiently. That means you’ll get accurate, up-to-the-minute search results relatively quickly. (For example, here at Docusearch, we can get your search results to you within one business day.)
– Don’t fall for the “free search” sales copy
Many of these data aggregators say that you can search their records for free. While this is technically true, what they don’t mention is that you’ll have to pay if you actually want to see the search results! In the end, you could end up spending a ton of money or even get forced into a costly subscription service that you don’t need.
A licensed private investigator will never act this way. You’ll be charged a one-time fee, and you’ll never be asked to spend anything more.
Make your Florida criminal court records search a good one… Let the team of licensed professionals at Docusearch handle it for you!