3 Must-Follow Tips for Your South Carolina Criminal Records Search

No matter why you need to do a South Carolina criminal records search, it’s important that the job gets done right. The only way to get quality results is to follow these 3 tips:

1. Go directly to a licensed private investigator

If you Google the phrase “South Carolina criminal records search“, you’ll see a ton of websites pop up, and all of them will offer to do a great search at an even better price. However, the vast majority of these websites aren’t run by licensed private investigators — or anyone with any kind of investigative background — and that’s a big problem.

Licensed private investigators have access to resources that most people don’t. In fact, their license gives them the authority to dig through information that’s normally reserved just for law enforcement. And in addition to special databases, licensed private investigators are also privy to all of the latest updates. That means you’ll be able to get the newest, most comprehensive data available.

South Carolina Criminal Court Records

2. Make sure your investigator is looking in all the right places

Just because a licensed investigator has access to all of the necessary information doesn’t mean he’s actually going to look at all of it. A good investigator will take the time to comb through everything that’s available — and he’ll do it all by hand. Otherwise, your search results could end up tainted by a false positive. Working by hand gives your investigator a chance to spot red flags or inaccuracies.

Specifically, you need to make sure that your investigator digs through:

– Records that are held and maintained by the county courts, including Summary Courts, General Sessions Courts, Traffic Courts, Municipal Courts, Magistrate Courts, and District Courts. Virtually all of the criminal court records are updated by the individual counties once a month. In them, your investigator will be able to see official case numbers, a description of the crime committed, sentencing details, and specific probation details.

– Records from the South Carolina Department of Corrections, which contain specific details about everyone who has been sentenced to a state correctional facility since 1986. These records also include information about probation and parole statuses.

– Records from South Carolina’s Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services, which include every criminal that is currently on probation or parole. These records also have details about juvenile criminals who are on Youthful Offender Release.

– Information from the South Carolina Sex Offender Registry, which has specific details about offenders who have been convicted, pled guilty, or pled nolo contendere to sex crimes. The Registry also includes a description of each crime committed by every offender.

– Indexes of previous criminal and court records done throughout South Carolina, including those done as part of a county, state, or federal investigation.

Most of these records are updated every month, so it’s crucial to have access to the newest information. Otherwise, your person in question could come up clean — even if he’s really not!

South Carolina Criminal Search

3. Drop the word “instant” from your vocabulary

It can be tempting to pay for instant search results. After all, a person’s criminal history is something you need to know about as soon as possible.

However, those instant results aren’t nearly as accurate as the ones that a licensed private investigator can give you!

We’ve just gone over all of the resources that a licensed investigator can tap into, and we’ve talked about how the good ones do all of their research by hand. Obviously, this isn’t the kind of work that can be done in a few seconds!

In order for a website to churn out instant search results, all of the information already has to exist on their server. Since you’re tapping into a specific website’s database — instead of the official databases that the state maintains — you’re not going to get the most recent updates.

Another big problem? The people who run these websites don’t have access to the resources we’ve talked about, so even if they were constantly updating their servers, you still would be missing huge pieces of the puzzle.

Luckily, you don’t have to wait too long for a licensed investigator to give you the results of your South Carolina criminal records search. The good ones know how to run an efficient search that’s also thorough, meaning that you’ll get the results very quickly. (For example, here at Docusearch, our investigators can run your search and get the results to you within one business day.)

Want to do the very best South Carolina criminal records search? Let the team of licensed private investigators at Docusearch handle it!