Searching New York Criminal Records

The best way to get the lowdown on that potential new business partner, tenant, or romantic interest? A New York criminal records search!

But if you want the very best information, you need:

1. A licensed private investigator

While some things are a matter of public record, there are all kinds of specific details that you can’t access without a private investigator’s license. In fact, licensed private investigators can dig through information that’s normally just reserved for law enforcement!

Additionally, licensed private investigators are privy to all of the most recent updates. In New York, the majority of criminal and court records are updated every few weeks. If your search doesn’t include the most recent changes, your person in question may come back clean — even though he is anything but!

Unfortunately, the vast majority of websites that offer New York criminal records searches aren’t run by licensed private investigators. Most of them aren’t run by anyone with ANY kind of investigative background whatsoever! That’s why you’ve got to be picky. Choose the wrong company to work with, and the results of your search may be outdated or even downright inaccurate.

New York Criminal Records Search

2. The right resources

Hiring a licensed private investigator is only the first step. Once you’ve found an investigator, you’ve got to find out exactly what he’s going to dig through. (And, of course, you need to make sure that he’s going to do the work by hand!)

In order to do a proper New York criminal search, your investigator should look at:

– Records from New York’s Department of Corrections, which include specific details about each felon that has served time in a state correctional facility, and was released after 1990. These records will also have an official case number, a description of the offense committed, and details about the sentence.

– New York’s Prison Release Records, which go back a little further. This data includes every offender that has been sentenced to a state correctional facility since 1970. These records also give specific probation details.

– Information from the New York Sex Offender Registry, including each offender’s level status — which the state determines according to how likely he is to re-offend. The Registry also includes data supplied by courts, correctional facilities, parole officers, and probation agencies, in addition to the information that’s supplied by the offender himself.

– An index of prior criminal records searches that have been run in New York, including those that were performed via county, state, and federal requests.

– Records related to certain traffic offenses.

Unfortunately, most of the websites you see out there don’t have access to all of these resources. Because they don’t have a private investigator’s license, they’re forced to buy up old public records — most of which are several years out of date — and upload them to their servers. However, working this way means that the information they give you is not current, and even worse, your odds of getting both false positives and false negatives are very high.

New York Criminal Court Records

3. A little bit of time

Now that you know every resource that a good investigator is going to comb through, it’s easy to see that it would be impossible for him to give you instant results. The websites that offer up search results in a matter of seconds are the ones with pre-loaded information that we just talked about.

While you shouldn’t expect thorough results instantly, you shouldn’t have to wait long for them. Part of a good investigator’s expertise is knowing how to dig through information quickly and efficiently. He’ll know how to streamline his search without cutting any quality corners.

How long should a good New York criminal records search take?

Here at Docusearch, our licensed investigators can run your search and get the results to you within one business day.

4. Fair pricing

As if those unlicensed, inaccurate websites weren’t bad enough, they’ll likely make you pay far more than you were planning on! That’s because these sites love to brag about offering free searches. But in reality, it’s only free to physically type someone’s name into the search box. If you actually want to see the results, you have to crack open your wallet. Some websites will even go a step further and force you into an expensive subscription service before they let you see your search results!

Luckily, a good private investigator will never do business that way. Instead of trying to trick you with the fine print, good investigators make their prices clear and concise. You’ll be asked to pay a one-time fee before your investigator starts working, and when it comes time to get the results or ask questions, you’ll never be asked to pay anything else.

Your perfect New York criminal records search stars with a call to the team of licensed investigators at Docusearch!