Imagine your daughter or son has just brought home their new boyfriend or girlfriend. They are absolutely ga-ga over them but something rubs you the wrong way and little red flags start popping up.

Being the good parent you are, worrisome questions start entering your mind. Is this person a criminal? Have they been arrested before? Will they hurt my daughter/son? Will they get them to unknowingly help commit a crime? Does this person do drugs? Do they deal drugs?

What do you do? How can you get these questions answered?

Once you embark on a criminal records check on someone, you might start to get curious. You may see a lot of names, and wonder how there are so many in the world that have records. With the vast amount of them, you might even wonder how high the error rate might be. If you think about those who have problems because of their past, you have to think about the ones who have problems from someone else’s past.

How often do you flip the news on, hoping to catch the weather report, only to hear about another story on “real life crime?” It seems that everywhere we look nowadays, from the television to the newspaper to the radio; we are subjected to these tales of horror. Except, unlike an engrossing book we can’t put down, these stories are happening all around us. From world headlines on down to our very own community, we are being victimized by criminals in every way imaginable.