For many years, background screening services have been utilized to round out hiring processes, and determine an applicant or current employee’s employment eligibility. As time and technology have advanced, however, the screening methods available to employers have increased and improved drastically – creating better searches and more accurate results on which employers can rely.

One of the most beneficial and recommended of those searches is the National Criminal Locator Database Search, or NATCRIM for short. NATCRIM is a highly-beneficial service and resource for employers, especially those screening candidates/employees within or from the United States. The general purpose of any NATCRIM search is to broaden the scope of a background screen to include records from jurisdictions outside of a candidate’s current and previous residences.

Records found in the NATCRIM come from a variety of public sources such as state and county criminal record repositories, state law enforcement agencies, state courts, traffic courts, corrections departments, prison release and parole files, probation departments, and other state agency records.

The inclusion of these additional records is important because employers often base background searches on areas in which a candidate/employee has lived, worked, or gone to school; without taking into consideration a record might exist in a jurisdiction elsewhere, where he/she may have been temporarily. These records are also important because they pinpoint where, specifically, a particular record can be found, which lends itself to providing additional insight into a candidate’s background.

For FCRA compliance, criminal records found through NATCRIM should be verified at the source. Best practices in background screening cite that NATCRIM should not be used as a standalone service, and recommend it as an added security net for county criminal searches.

A-Check Global employs these and other best practices to provide the most accurate and compliant results to clients. Additionally, A-Check Global’s NATCRIM contains over 500 million criminal records from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. Territories – making it one of the most comprehensive database searches available to employers.

For more information on NATCRIM and/or incorporating this search into your company’s background screening program, watch A-Check Global’s NATCRIM video located in our Resource Library under Informational Videos. You may also contact A-Check Global through our contact page, or by phone at 877-345-2021.