Criminal Background Checks

Criminal background checks are a common measure taken because people don’t want to be around or deal with criminals for fear of their safety. You will probably have to undergo a criminal background check if you’re applying for housing or seeking employment. This is why you want to have a clean record early on, so that you won’t experience such personal and professional obstacles. If you misbehave, it can go on your record permanently, and you’ll likely pay for it then and then continue to pay for it in the rest of your life.

When landlords or employers perform criminal background checks, they will go through most of your personal information such as your address and former residences, birth date, criminal record, marriages/divorces, property ownership, court records and other information such as whether you have an alias or if you’ve been convicted as a sex offender. Often they will also perform a credit check. They may also ask you to provide references such as relatives, associates and friends who can vouch for your character. This can be done informally over the phone but in some cases references may have to speak in person with an interviewer. Some of the questions are normal and mundane, such as how they met the applicant to the more serious and sometimes bizarre questions such as whether the applicant is involved in communism. It depends on what you’re applying for, so usually you won’t have to worry about those kinds of questions, and if you do it’s good for a laugh.

Criminal background checks usually don’t have to be so serious if you have nothing to hide, but it’s very important not to give false information even if it’s unintentional. If any of your info doesn’t check out, it’ll reflect badly on you and you probably won’t get the house or job you’re applying for. It’s also detrimental during criminal background checks to have bad credit or even no credit, because obviously a landlord or employer would prefer an applicant with credit they could verify.

So the moral is to abide the law, get your facts straight and build up good credit. It might seem like an annoyance or a waste of time, and sometimes it is, but put yourself in your landlord’s or employer’s shoes and ask yourself if you’d accept an applicant without knowing anything of their history. It’s worth the extra time to be better safe than sorry.