If you’re looking to do your own background check or simply snoop through friends and family members criminal records, or even to see if you have a criminal past, the easiest way to begin this process is by looking through public records. Public records are arrest and conviction records for felonies or misdemeanors. A federal, county or city court makes the information “public” by putting those records on the internet, however, there are some courts that don’t even have any internet services, so some courts records are still public, but it is impossible to find them on the internet. You search for a person by first going to the proper state and counties where they have lived and search in the court records by name and date of birth. A good website that has compiled all the online records is http://www.crimcheck.com. They are great because they have all the courts compiled into one place, organized by state. They also have other resources which you can use for free. Some of these include the free public records page, national sexual offender search, corporation searches, incarceration records, state archives, Supreme Court dockets, workers compensation, birth certificate index, consumer product recall list, and FBI’s most wanted list, and much more. They provide anything you might use to search for someone or their criminal history and the best part is it’s entirely free to use. You don’t have to put your credit card information in or anything. Crimcheck.com is a great site in that it provides so many resources for free.