Employee Background Screening
Trusted Aid With County or Criminal & Civil Records Searches
For Hiring Purposes, Law Enforcement Tasks & More
Palm Beach Mobile Notary & Fingerprinting is pleased to work with clients throughout Florida who need to perform criminal or civil records searches about particular individuals, for hiring purposes, law enforcement tasks or otherwise.
Criminal records searches are important for producing information about past felony and misdemeanor convictions, while civil records searches provide a history of civil actions taken against an individual.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these services and why PBN is so well-suited to provide them to our clients.
What Is The Difference Between Civil and Criminal Records Searches?
Civil judgments & criminal judgments differ in several important ways:
- Criminal cases are considered crimes against the state or society, and are brought by the state. They can result in jail time, which can be significant in some felony cases.
- Civil judgments only result in financial penalties, not jail time, and these cases are brought by other people or organizations.
- There is a significantly lower burden of proof in a civil case compared to a criminal case. In a criminal case, the standard is “beyond reasonable doubt,” whereas in a civil case, the plaintiff must simply prove it was “more likely than not” that the defendant committed the alleged act.
There are also differing circumstances in which these records searches are likely to be used.
A criminal records search is important for law enforcement officials looking to gather more information about a subject, or for potential employers performing standard background checks on their applicants to assist in hiring decisions.
A civil records search is most likely to be used in situations such as business conflicts, breach of contract cases, landlord/tenant disputes, civil rights violations, matters involving collections agencies and financial institutions and some personal injury cases—all matters that would be handled in a civil court setting.
Why Palm Beach Mobile Notary & Fingerprinting Is Best Suited to Handle Your Records Searches
At PBN, we are about not just providing as much information as possible to our clients, but providing accurate information that is easily understood and usable. While larger, national background check services will simply dump data on their clients, we actually have dedicated researchers on staff to review the data before we send it to you to make sure you’ve got accurate, ready-to-use information, which is crucial for hiring decisions and law enforcement activities.
Trust in our decades of experience and our ability to develop strong partnerships with our clients to give you the best results possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are just a few examples of some of the questions we frequently receive about our county criminal and civil records search services.
How long does it take to get these records?
Most of these records searches can be completed within a few days to a week, though there are some cases in which there are complicating factors that can lead to a longer amount of time.
Do arrest warrants show up on a background check?
Warrants will typically show up in background checks, but they do take a bit of digging to find. Bench warrants are issued by a court to authorize police to make immediate arrests when a person does not appear in court. These will be likely to show up on background checks.
Criminal warrants, however, are issued by law enforcement. Depending on where the warrant was issued and who is checking the criminal records, they may or may not show up in background checks. In some cases, criminal warrant information is only accessible to law enforcement officials.
Finally, civil warrants are issued by a judge and included in court records, which means you can expect them to appear in background checks.
What shows up on a criminal background check?
The primary purpose of criminal background checks is to seek for records of felony and misdemeanor criminal convictions, as well as any pending criminal cases that may be in the courts or histories of incarceration as an adult.
Criminal background checks may also include information such as arrests pending prosecution, as well as arrests that did not lead to convictions. All of this information can be useful to law enforcement agencies attempting to establish a criminal background of a suspect, or for employers making hiring or promotion decisions.
What is a civil history background check?
People are generally more familiar with the idea of a criminal background check than a civil history background check. Civil cases involve legal disputes between two or more parties involving non-criminal actions. Civil history background checks search for records of these cases, including outcomes such as dispositions or last entries.
A disposition closes a case and features details about any judgments entered as a result, incoming to whom the judgment was awarded and the amount of money it entailed. A last entry indicates the case is still in the court system and judgments are pending. It will include the most recent action in the case, and the next court date. For cases settled out of court, there will be no disposition, and there will likely be a last entry noting the case was settled.
These civil checks seek to verify the identities of parties involved in a civil case, the type of case, when it was filed, the case number, the jurisdiction and any judgments.