One of our customers, whom we’ll call Ronald L. Smith, Jr., contacted us to seek help with a criminal record search in the state of North Carolina. Ron performed two searches on his own name using our huge Premium Criminal Record Database that contains over 400 million records. Neither search produced any results, and as Ron knows that he has criminal convictions on his record, he reached out to us for an explanation. Was the database flawed or incomplete?
As it turned out, it’s neither. The database is complete and the powerful search features offered by the service helped us to locate all of the records Ron was searching for. Here’s what happened…
On the first search he used the Personal Search advanced page. He input the nickname “Ron” to search and checked that he wanted an “Exact” name search. The system then looked only for records that exactly matched the first name “Ron” (and a last name of Smith) and the results came up “no record” because they’re listed in court records under the name of “Ronald Smith.”
If Ron had asked for an exact name search and “Ronald” as the first name, or left the “Exact” name search unchecked, he would have received his records. We provide concise instructions and encourage people to read them before they do a search. It is best to search by full legal name, or do a partial name search if you aren’t sure of the name on record. So do a partial name search on “Ron” and you’ll get “Ron,” “Ronnie,” “Ronald,” etc. Or do a partial name search on “Ric” and you’ll get “Rick,” “Rickie,” “Richard,” “Ricardo,” etc. That way if someone does give a nickname to the court or the police, you stand a better chance of finding the record.
On the second search, Ron searched the same name, and this time unchecked the “Exact Name” box, which is the right thing to do if you’re searching a partial name. But in the second search he added “Jr” after the last name. We strongly advise against inputting information such as Jr., Sr., M.D., etc, into a search field. Right above the search fields we state: “Please fill out the required fields below. Please DO NOT include suffixes such as Jr., Sr., III, M.D., and PhD in the first or last name fields.” The reason we ask that people not to include suffixes is that most courts don’t include suffixes when they list a court record. Electronic databases match the input information to database records. Since the courts didn’t add “Jr.” to the records, the search result came up “no records found.”
We performed a statewide search ourselves in North Carolina and found a number of records for Ronald L. Smith, matching the customer’s birth date, which we forwarded to the customer. Our criminal records database offers powerful search features, but like any sophisticated tool, it demands a bit of respect and study before you use it. For more tips, use our Criminal Records Best Practices Guide. For a listing of the jurisdictions covered in each state, go here.