The background check on a national level combines checks on different records such as the federal criminal record, bankruptcy record, federal civil records and the federal inmate search. In all states, these checks are being made on a state-wise basis. To do this background check, one should know the first name and last name of the person being searched. The state where the person lives is also essential. If you have other pertinent information like the person's middle name, the name of the city, and the social security number, the search will yield more accurate results. Meanwhile, background checks on the state level include checking Corrections Records, the Criminal Records Repository, the Sex offender list, and the Warrant and Wanted information.

Usually, national background checks will give you more information. However, background checks made on a state level saves more time. Usually, if a person has a common name, it is more tedious to track details about his personality. Thus, it is easier to do state background checks because the people with the same name from the other states are no longer being considered. Thus, the search has been limited because the lis has been cut down drastically. More than that, criminal records are commonly divided by state. Thus, it is much easier to have a search in the state websites. In fact, the national database is still divided according to state.

Information that is placed in the state-wide criminal records is not being allowed to be accessed by the public. Several states though allow online access. The others states require the people seeking information to request for a permission first before they will provide access to their data. Then, forms asking details about the person being checked will have to filled up. The information that is kept on the state however may be incomplete because. There are limits in terms of date ranges as well as with the number of criminal courts. Usually, only individuals which served their sentence in the state prison are only the ones that appear in searches about “offenders” and “inmates”. The State Offender Registries are usually made accessible by many states to the public for free. However, only information is available in this registry.

When a criminal record is being checked, it usually includes information about how many times an individual had been arrested and convicted. When someone checks on the child abuse registry of a certain state, one could see whether a person has been reported to have committed child abuse. However, not all states allow checks on their registries or some of their registries. But what is good when you access one registry is that you could use information gathered from it to gain other information in other registries.

The federal court district is the one to be searched if you are looking for criminal records that involves cases which were federal government-instituted. Some of the cases involved here are bank robbery, kidnapping and counterfeiting. These federal crimes would not appear when you search records in the state or in the county.