How to do a Public Record Search Online the Easy Way
Criminal Law

How to do a Public Record Search Online the Easy Way

There are a lot of things in this world that many people would find useful. An avid skier might find it useful to survey the area that they’re planning to ski in before they make their way down the mountain. A mechanic’s job is a lot easier when they have the right sized sockets. One thing that many people overlook that may make their lives easier is using a public record search online to get any sort of publicly available information they may need for whatever task they have at hand.

How Using a Public Record Search can Help You

Public record searches are nothing new, and people have been using the internet to find public records almost as long as the internet has existed. There is a multitude of reasons why someone might want to find this information. Maybe they’re looking into information about schools in a neighborhood they’ve had their eyes on, or maybe they just want to look into some declassified military documents as a hobby in their off time. 

There is another major reason why so many people enjoy using public records searches, and that is to get more information about the people in their lives. If you know where to look, you can get things like arrest records, criminal records, and even driving records. That kind of information is incredibly important to a lot of people for a number of reasons. For instance, if someone has children and they want to be sure that they can trust someone to drive them around, they may first check that person’s driving records to make sure that it’s a safe idea. 

These are just a few reasons why someone might seek out this kind of information. Really, the reasons why people might try to find this kind of information vary just as much as the amount of information there is available on the public record. Many people simply feel that it makes their life easier, while also making safe choices regarding themselves or their loved ones is a no-brainer. 

What Can One Expect From a Public Records Search?

Because there are a lot of different documents and citations that can be considered public records, this is a kind of tricky question to answer. You can generally expect to find a whole lot of information, but it really depends on what you’re looking for. For instance, if you need to find property records, you could expect to find a treasure trove of information quite easily. 

On the other hand, if you’re looking for arrest records you may run into some dead ends pretty easily. Many counties do make this information incredibly easy to locate, and in those counties, all you need to do is check on the county Sheriff’s Department website and you’ll be able to locate that information. In some cases, you may need to check the County Court’s website. It can vary from county to county, so it could be worth checking both websites.

With that being said, not every county provides this information. If you need to find arrest records in a county that doesn’t provide that information, you may have a tricky time. There are a lot of reasons why a county might not provide this kind of information. Because there is no law requiring any county to make this information easily accessible to the public, no county is required to provide this information. That means that whether they don’t have the budget to make it happen or they simply don’t want to make this information easily accessible, they’re allowed to. 

How to do a Public Record Search Online

The act of doing a public record search online can be relatively easy. In a lot of cases, all you really need is an understanding of how to surf the internet. Just hop on your favorite search engine, many people prefer Google and search for the records you’re looking for. For instance, if you wanted to get building permit records all you’d need to do is search for them on Google and find the right website for your county. 

Some types of records may require you to mail in a request and wait for a response, and other records may actually require you to walk into the department’s office to make the request in person. Many of the ways that journalists get their information actually require them to mail in a request and wait for a response, and this can take years in some cases. 

We touched on the difficulty of getting things like arrest records directly through the government, but there is a better way. In fact, millions of people already utilize this method and couldn’t be happier with it. It’s really simple, all you need to do is use a personal background check service.

Personal background check services are your best friend if you need to find background information on anyone. All you need to do is find a good personal background check service, enter the required information, and hit enter. The service will do the heavy lifting for you, and that can save you a good deal of time. 

When using a personal background check service you can expect to find a great deal of information. Arrest records, driving records, criminal records, active warrants, court records, phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses, and a lot more can regularly be found by using this kind of service.

Personal background check services are able to get all of this information because of the way that their systems are set up. Their systems check your search against public records all over the country and provide you with all of the relevant information instantly. That means that you can do this kind of search while you’re getting ready for work in the morning and still not be late, and many people find that level of convenience hard to pass up when they’re looking into someone else’s background. 

Want that FOIA request filled in Michigan? You might have to wait awhile |  Michigan Radio

How is any of This Possible?

It can be a little confusing to try and understand how and why any of this information is so easily available to anyone that goes looking. It can be easy to assume that it’s just the nature of the internet, but others may wonder why the government would readily provide any of this information to the public. They don’t have to, do they?

The answer to that question, in short, is that they actually do have to. Public records laws have been passed in all fifty states as well as on a federal level, meaning that there is some level of transparency expected of the government. For the most part, what is actually required to be provided to the public varies from state to state. There are a few things that are universal from state to state, but for the most part, every state government has been in charge of drafting its own laws. 

This becomes incredibly apparent if you actually start researching the laws of every state. Florida, for instance, is well known for its Sunshine Laws that make just about everything that happens in that state public record. That’s actually why you see so many news stories come out of Florida about ridiculous crimes being committed. 

How The Internet Made Public Record Searches Easier

The internet has made a whole lot of things easier. Right after finishing this article, you could order a thousand bottles of mountain dew and have them delivered directly to your doorstep if you wanted to, and you wouldn’t even have to talk to anyone to make it happen. 

The government noticed that the internet was a powerful tool and quickly took advantage of that. For instance, storing files that don’t need to be physical on a database saves a lot of space. Making certain pieces of information that the public might want to find easily available online means that government employees can spend a little less time processing certain requests and spend more time doing more critical tasks around the office. From the viewpoint of the government, integrating the internet into their daily activities is a win-win.

Don’t Stress About Finding the Information You Need

There’s almost always a way to find the public records you need. Of course, in some cases, the process can be long and arduous, but the information is out there. Fortunately, there are also a lot of public records that you can find with little effort, and that’s very valuable for your search. Whether you’re house hunting and looking for more information about the area you might want to move to or you’re a concerned parent trying to find out how many sex offenders are in your area, you can do so easily if you just know where to look. 

***SpyFly provides consumers affordable, immediate access to public record information. Federal laws prohibit businesses from using SpyFly’s service to make decisions about employment, insurance, consumer credit, tenant screening, or for any other purpose subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 USC 1681 et seq.***