A criminal record is a record of a person criminal history as compiled by the relevant law enforcement agency. These are generally made use of by the relevant people such as potential employers and lenders to make an assessment of whether a particular individual is trustworthy. Criminal records contain the non-expunged criminal offenses and these include actual convictions where an individual was found guilty of a crime. This means that the individual either confessed to a crime or was found guilty of it by a court of law. Arrests, dismissed charges, pending charges and even crimes where the individual was acquitted are all found in the record.
Criminal records are usually compiled by the relevant investigative or law enforcement bodies. In the U.S., this is usually the job of the law enforcement agencies of the various jurisdictions; local, state or federal. These records are compiled and updated where necessary with the goal of presenting a comprehensive criminal history of an individual. This may serve useful in case of future problems. The main purposes of these records include background checks for employment, clearance at security checkpoints, immigration/international travel/visa, adoption and licensing.
Criminal records are also essential in the police work because they help in the development of the possible suspect in criminal investigation. Through criminal records, it is possible to establish patterns of behavior which may help police in determining the most likely people to have committed the crime. This is because in many countries, many crimes are committed by repeat offenders that is previously incarcerated individuals.
Since the early 90's, finger prints have become an essential part of criminal investigations owing to their non-repetitive nature. For this reason, fingerprints are the most essential part of a criminal record. Fingerprints are taken from all arrests by the police and some are also submitted by general public. In the U.S., through the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System if a crime has been committed by a repeat offender, it is possible to identify him within minutes should there be any fingerprints left in the crime scene.
Another item that is common place in records is DNA records. These are in the criminal records of convicted people. These have also proven essential in modern day investigations and can be used to identify perpetrators from blood, semen and even hair samples found in crime scenes.
Access to criminal records differs in many countries. In most, it is limited only to people in law enforcement but in others such as the United States, criminal records are freely accessed by any member of the public. Records of sexual offenders are the most readily available and in certain states, the information may be readily distributed to people living around the sex offender. In some cases, a criminal record may be expunged. This is where all records of the crime are removed from the public database. If a record of a crime is expunged then the criminal may legally deny ever having been arrested for that particular crime.
Tags: criminal record criminal history criminal investigation
© Copyright 2012, Inc. All rights reserved.