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What is the difference between a National, County and Federal search?
What is the difference between a National, County and Federal search?
Charlie Cafazza avatar
Written by Charlie Cafazza
Updated over a week ago

National Criminal Search

Searches a collection of nationwide databases for criminal records that may exist. This search is useful to determine if your candidate has committed a crime outside of the consumer's counties of residence.

County-Level Criminal Search

For a more thorough look, search the courthouses where your candidate has lived. These are chosen according to the identified addresses during the SSN trace or through manual selection by our customer. Please be aware these searches sometimes come with surcharges or access fees that will be billed to you once we determine the counties we are searching. These fees are determined by the individual jurisdiction being searched. ClearChecks does not mark these up in any way. By ordering the ClearHire Complete or ClearHire Professional package, you authorize ClearChecks to charge your card for the cost of these surcharges.

For these searches we directly contact the courthouse in that jurisdiction to request any records that may (or may not) exist. Each and every court can have a different process for how records are stored and how these requests are handled. While some have a public kiosk where we can get immediate access, others restrict access and require a clerk of the court to process the request. For these clerk performed searches, turn around times can be impacted by staffing or other factors resulting in a backlog. When this happens the turn around time is normally 3-5 business days.

We understand these reports are time sensitive for you to make hiring decisions. Please be assured we are doing everything within our control to get this information to you as quickly as possible.

Federal Criminal Search

We search across the 94 US District Courts nationwide. Reveal crimes not found in a national criminal or county-level search, and could include drug and firearm charges, terrorism, white-collar crimes, financial fraud and tax-evasion crimes and many more. These crimes typically are tried at the Federal level due to numerous jurisdiction being involved.

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