Oh, the state of Illinois. There’s a lot to know about this wonderful state, and one of those things is knowing how to do an Illinois warrant search. You can ascertain a whole lot of warrant information if you know what you’re doing and where to look for it.
In fact, there might be a whole lot more information available for your reading pleasure than you realize. The internet is a vast place, and we do live in the age of information, as they say. But why exactly is this information available?
That’s just one of many questions that are brought up whenever we discuss this topic, and we discuss this topic a lot. It’s only natural that people would have a lot of questions, there’s a lot here to not understand and even more to learn about this particular subject.
It’s exactly as the old saying goes. “There are things you know, things you know that you don’t know, and things that you don’t know that you don’t know.” That last group makes up the vast majority of knowledge in this world, and it’s perfectly understandable to not know everything.
There isn’t a single person among us that is omniscient, and there are millions of books filled with information without even beginning to talk about the internet. So, let’s work together to illuminate some of these pieces of information so we can all have a better idea about finding warrant information.
Public Information and You
The reason why you’re able to find warrant information in the first place is that it is considered to be public information. Public information is an interesting phenomenon in our society, and it makes a world of difference so let’s explore it before getting to the other questions.
Public information is legally defined as any document, no matter the medium, that has been declared declassified by the United States government. The “no matter the medium” part of that sentence does a lot of heavy lifting, and it means:
- Physical documents.
- Audio recordings.
- Video recordings.
- Photographs.
- Computer files.
- Drawings (especially courtroom drawings)
- Literally anything else.
Those are a lot of different mediums that can be considered public record, but you might be surprised to learn all the different things that are considered public record. Things from most parts of the government can be considered public record, for instance:
- Declassified military and CIA documents
- Property records
- Warrant information
- Meeting minutes.
- The title of this one is a bit of a misnomer, meeting minutes are a summary of what is spoken at in town hall meetings.
- Laws
- Business records, so long as the business is publicly owned.
- Marriage records
- Death certificates
- Any record older than 75 years old.
There is a lot more than just what we listed, but keep in mind that even the highest classified level only keeps any particular document classified for 75 years with very few exceptions. Of course, there’s nothing stopping certain branches from destroying certain documents before that window closes, but legally speaking everything that happens today will come to light in 75 years.
Why Public Records are Public
Now that you understand what exactly public records are and how they help you with your warrant search, there’s a chance that you’re curious about why this kind of information exists in the first place. It’s been years in the making, but let’s try to summarize it for you.
Way back when, over half a century ago, many people were losing their faith in the government. There was a common sentiment among the citizens of the United States that they shouldn’t be expected to trust in a government that does all of its doings in the shadows.
This wasn’t some fringe belief either. This was a very common sentiment, and it affected everyone from the average Joe to the president. Government officials realized that this is a huge deal. The government’s ability to rule entirely relies on the trust of its constituents.
Enter government transparency laws, also known as Sunshine Laws. We bet that you’ll never be able to guess which state was the first to pass its own sunshine laws. If you guessed Florida, you’d be right and you probably already know about Florida’s love of transparency.
Florida is by far the most transparent state in the United States with all sorts of records easily and readily available to the public. Shortly after Florida passed its Sunshine laws, the federal government got to work on passing its own.
The first even federal government transparency law was known as FOIA, or the Freedom of information Act. This was just the beginning of the government transparency laws that would be passed over the next few decades, and to date, there are many more of these laws on the books.
Every state has its own Sunshine laws, and each state is in charge of deciding what in its own borders is considered public information and what is not, as well as how much effort is required to get the information.
That being said, there are some ways to get a lot of information from a lot of states, depending on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for property records, for example, you definitely have to look through each county individually to find the information that you’re looking for.
Warrant information is generally the same. Depending on how you do it, you’ll have to check through each individual county in order to get all of the information you’re looking for. However, there is a workaround that can be used for warrant information.
How to Find All State Warrants
The vast majority of people that are looking for warrant information want two major things out of their search:
- Accurate information.
- Speedy access to said information.
It can be difficult to make sure that you’re getting both of these things out of a warrant search. It doesn’t matter if you’re searching for warrants in Illinois, Alaska, Maine, or anywhere else. These two qualities can be exceedingly difficult to find in a warrant search.
You could try using the resources that your local sheriff’s department provides. In fact, it’s not entirely uncommon for county sheriff’s departments to provide warrant information on a database that can be found right on their website.
This method can work well if you’re among the fortunate that happen to live in counties that make this kind of information easily available to the public. When that’s the case you just have to get to the website, do your search, and review the results from said search.
However, if you aren’t so lucky to only need to check in one county or to live in a county that makes this search easy for you, you can run into a laundry list of issues. In fact, many people that do this kind of search by using law enforcement resources find nothing but problems.
The first and most common wall is when a county doesn’t provide this kind of database. When that happens the county will typically request that you email them with a picture of your I.D. and they’ll tell you if you have a warrant.
That simply doesn’t work for a lot of people, especially if you’re searching for someone else. That’s far from the only issue that people face. Many counties have inaccurate or even out-of-date information in their databases, and that kind of information can kill your whole search.
If you want to get this information and you want to be sure that you can get accurate information quickly, you have two really good options. Those are personal background check services and warrant search services. Both of these can find all of the warrant information you need from all over the country, making everything a lot easier for you.
These services operate by scrubbing thousands and thousands of public records databases all over the country, checking them against your search query, and then instantly providing you with the information that matches your search parameters. It doesn’t get much more efficient than that.
You can search through the entire state of Illinois for warrants if you want, or you can search through the entire country. Either way, you’ll be able to finish this entire process from beginning to end in mere minutes, making this method the best and fastest way to go about getting warrant information right when you need it.
Don’t Waste Time on Your Warrant Search
Most people that do warrant searches are discouraged by the difficulty associated with finding information from all over an entire state. It only makes sense. You could spend hours on this just to find a county that doesn’t want to give you this information.
Fortunately, there are other ways you can go about getting this information in a fraction of the time it takes otherwise. Whether you’re looking into your next date or just want to make sure that your friend isn’t getting into trouble, you can do so with ease.