Criminal History

At ERS, criminal history investigations are performed by experienced, knowledgeable court record researchers across the United States. We have worked to build a strong network of qualified researchers we know we can trust, and we continually test them for accuracy and thoroughness.

District and magistrate courts are responsible for adjucitating all non-federal felonies and misdemeanors. This includes misdemeanor and felony charges such as driving under the influence, assault, theft, issuing worthless checks, drug possession or distribution, breaking and entering, larceny, armed robbery, drug trafficking, sexual offenses and other crimes.

Federal courts are responsible for adjucitating all federal criminal and civil cases. Criminal and civil cases are adjucitated in separate courts. Federal criminal cases include postal fraud, crimes on federal lands, crimes involving federally regulated institutions including banks, and interstate crimes.

Normally, those accused of criminal activies appear before the county, parish, or federal district court within which the crime was committed. These courts are responsible for maintaining of records for these ciminal adjucitations. (Changes of venu are also recorded with these courts.) Therefore, the most timely source of records for these ciminal adjucitations are maintained by the court of original jurisdiction. In addition, some states, including New Mexico, provide excellent sources for records on a state-wide basis. ERS goes directly to these courts and state-wide record databases in our searches for criminal activity.

ERS has found through years of experince that other methods for finding criminal history patterns inferior for employee purposes. Police arrest records do not contain dispsition information and therefore cannot be used in the hiring process. Nation wide criminal records databases are not available to the general public.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act limits the information that reporting agencies such as ERS may provide. You may click here to read the Fair Credit Reporting Act as it pertains to Criminal History reporting. Contact us for more information.