Do you want to know the background of a new neighbor, potential employee, babysitter, or anybody else that could pose a threat to you or your family? You need to know what you are getting yourself into, especially when you might have children that could be at risk. There are many ways to perform a criminal record background check.

This will help you ensure that your family is safe and free from harm. Plus it is the peace of mind that you need to make sure you can sleep at night. Here are just a few ways to do criminal background checks.

1. Free Background Checks

There are ways to get free criminal records checks done if you don’t want to spend any money. You will have to go through each individual state’s prison records and public records to get a full criminal background check for free. There are also public interest sites that will help if you might be dealing with a registered sex offender.

With anything that is free, though, there is a trade off and here it is your time. Doing a free background check can consume a lot of your time and this can cost you money. The accuracy is not always that great either and you will spend nearly a full time month getting one check done.

2. You can pay the police department for a background check

Within some counties you can pay the sheriffs office to do a background check for you. These run around $50 to $100 each, which is not cheap. You are going to need a social security number, birth date, and a name to get the check done.

Plus you will probably have to get a signed approval from the person. Legally you will have to share the information you find with them. This is a good options, but a bit expensive and not always that convenient either.

3. Online for a small fee

If you want to save time and get your check rather quickly you can use one of the many online background check services. They will give you a full report and they are very affordable. They usually include monthly or yearly options for doing unlimited checks if you know you are going to need to do a lot of background checks.

You can choose between a few different sites, but there really are only a couple that are very good. This will not take very long and you will have your report pretty quickly. It is a fair trade off to spend a little bit of money and a short amount of time to make sure you, your family, and your assets are protected.