How To Search North Carolina Criminal Records

It doesn’t matter why you’re doing a North Carolina criminal records search. All that matters is doing it correctly!

But you’ll never have a great search if you make any of these 4 crucial mistakes:

1. Not hiring a private investigator

There are tons of resources out there that can tell you everything you need to know about a person’s criminal history, but most of them aren’t available to the general public! If you really want to get the lowdown on someone, you’ve got to pay a private investigator to do your North Carolina criminal records search for you, because their license grants them access to information that you would never see otherwise.

In fact, licensed private investigators are allowed to access data that’s normally just reserved for law enforcement!

Unfortunately, most of the websites offering North Carolina criminal searches aren’t run by licensed professional investigators. That means they can’t give you the full story on someone. Work with them, and you’ll be lucky to get a fraction of the story!

North Carolina Criminal Court Records

2. Not asking where your search results are going to come from

A good licensed investigator will be more than happy to tell you what resources he plans on using for your North Carolina criminal records search. And, he’ll be even happier to tell you that he’s going to dig through all of these resources by hand.

Not sure if your potential investigator will be looking in the right places? Make sure he’s tapping into these resources:

– Records from North Carolina’s Administrative Office of Courts, which detail criminal court cases from every County, District, and Superior Court in the state. This data also includes certain traffic offenses, along with descriptions of the crime committed and the plea filed.

– Records from the North Carolina Department of Corrections, including felony details dating all the way back to the mid-1970’s. These records are updated every month, and they cover anyone who is or who has ever been under the supervision of the state’s Department of Corrections — both in a correctional facility and on parole.

– Records from North Carolina’s Sex Offender Registry, including a description of the crime committed and any confinement and probation details.

– An index of prior criminal records searches done in North Carolina, including those done as part of county, state, and federal investigations.

North Carolina Criminal Records Search

3. Believing that instant results are legitimate

A good investigator is going to dig through a lot to compile the results of your North Carolina criminal records search, so you obviously won’t be getting the results instantly! In fact, the promises that those websites make about providing instant results is a classic example of something being too good to be true.

Why?

In order to give you instant results, all of the information has to be pre-loaded onto the website’s server. Considering you have no way of knowing when the website’s server was last updated, you have no way of knowing how old your information is. Plus, since the vast majority of these websites don’t have access to all of the resources we just talked about, your instant results will very likely be missing a huge piece of the puzzle.

Even worse, there’s no one checking those instant results before they’re passed onto you. For all you know, you’re getting information on someone who has a similar name or birthday to your person in question. Without going over everything by hand — with a trained eye — your odds of getting incorrect information are high.

However, that doesn’t mean that you have to sit around and twiddle your thumbs while you wait for your investigator to do his work. After all, if you’re going to the trouble of running a North Carolina criminal court records search, you need the results as soon as possible. Luckily, good investigators know how to work quickly, without sacrificing the quality of your search. (For example, here at Docusearch, one of our licensed investigators will run your search and get the results to you within one business day.)

4. Falling for the “Free Searches!” sales copy

Many of the websites you see offer another promise that’s too good to be true — free searches. It may be free to type someone’s name into the search box, but actually getting the results is anything BUT free! Sadly, the fancy sales copy usually doesn’t mention that last part.

In some cases, the fees on a “free” search can be very high. You may even be forced into an expensive subscription plan just to get your search results!

But when you work with a reputable licensed investigator, this won’t happen. The good ones make their prices big, bold, and easy to understand. You should only be charged a one-time, upfront fee for your North Carolina criminal records search. And once the results are ready, you should be able to look at all of them and ask your investigator any questions without having to fork over more money.

Want a thorough North Carolina criminal search? You’ll get it from the team at Docusearch!