1. You never
want to enter a suffix to the last name such as Jr, Sr.II, III etc.
This will rarely pull a record
even if the applicant has one.
In addition we
should never use middle names when performing a state level criminal history
as it reduces the chance of getting a match.
People are rarely arrested /
booked with their First, Middle and Last name.
Even
if we can think of several that have, the chances of the county or state not
collecting or storing the middle name information, or better
yet messing up
a middle initial such as I instead of l (this is an i in upper case and an L in lower
case but looks the same, are very good.
By putting a middle initial we
literally take out one third of all of our data - it is even worse when we
use the entire middle name as a search
parameter.
2. When
"Jr." or "Sr." are used it gets worse still.
3. The cardinal sin is the
hyphen or dash.
If you enter Jones-Brown in as
the last name and even though we know this person has a very lengthy record
we will not see it.
People generally try to
hyphenate names when searching for criminal records because they are unsure
which name to use to get any results
(if any exist).
In reality the above example
should be separated into two searches.
One with Jones and one with
Brown.
These are technically AKAs'
(also known as) or Aliases
4.
Always use the date of birth.
Arrest records always use the
date of birth as a reference.
This is the
only way to get good results and certainly reduces the employers liability
because they are acting in a "Prudent Manner" rather than
just jumping
through a liability hoop.
