Criminal Searches.com  – provided by PeopleFinder,  is a new web site that offers to do free criminal background searches. Tamara Thompson of PI Buzz, blogged about this at the end of July.
 
I read about this search on other blogs including Laura Orr’s Oregon Legal Research, with a posting she links to from the Oregon Judicial Department warning state residents about using this search as a definitive source for criminal records.

I decided to try my own searches to see how useful this site might be for Washington State. I used searches I had done previously at the free state court case search and found that the search results pretty much missed more often than hit. While in some cases I found a few of the offenses that I knew existed, in other cases nothing showed up at all. It seems that what does appear are offenses that led to state imprisonment, so I have to agree with Tamara that the most records, from our state at least, appear to come “from the states’ Department of Corrections because this is a statewide agency in every state. These are felony convictions only of offenders who have been in the custody of the DOC.”

Other court records do not appear. This means you still have to do a court search, and you need to check with the Washington State Patrol, as they are the official keeper of our state’s criminal records. My conclusion is that Criminalsearches.com may be a place where you can start your search, but you must not rely on this for a complete criminal background search. The search is much too limited for that.