Pacific Information Resources, Inc., familiarly known as Search Systems, has released a guide to researching criminal records. The document is viewable online and can also be downloaded as a PDF. Search Systems provides links to commercial and government-operated databases of public record information on the Internet. Most of these are free, but access to the huge collection has a small fee.

The site categorizes links to all imaginable public records that are available on the Internet. Some popular types of public records included are: Births, Marriages and Deaths, Corporations, Court Records, Fictitious Business Names, Professional Licenses, Real Property, Recorded Documents, and Voter Registrations.

The Criminal Records Search Guide addresses the myth of a nationwide criminal records database and lists the different types of criminal records and their agency source. It also identifies non court records of sanctions and enforcement databases. This is a basic tutorial, designed for the casual or non professional researcher.

But the primary emphasis is on the Search Systems collection of criminal records — both the free links, called DirectPass, and the fee-based criminal records database, part of the Premium searches. Premium searches are discounted for DirectPass subscribers, but incur an additional fee.

The Premium criminal records content is from a commercial database but is reformatted by Search Systems, usable as a cut-and-paste text document. The text formatting enhances this product over the html one of the data provider. Search by full or partial first and last name, with an option to limit by date of birth or year of birth. The cost is $7 per state search or $19 for a search of all available jurisdictions, if you are a subscriber to DirectPass.

The most comprehensive search of criminal records will utilize the free government-sponsored sites — those listed in the DirectPass collection and Internet sources that haven’t yet found their way into the Search Systems public records. Also, a comprehensive search for criminal records must include a commercial database — probably 2 to 3 databases, depending on the jurisdiction one is searching. There is no substitute for hand searching court records, whether or not the particular jurisdiction is encompassed in the online records.

Alameda County, California has not been as advanced as other counties making public records available on the Internet. The Alameda County Sheriff joins other Sheriff departments which have created a database of current inmates. Lest public records become too easy to access, identification of inmates requires full first and last name, or PFN. Also unlike Vinelink- which will return all first names starting with the first two letters entered- the Alameda County Inmate Locator only provides names of in-custody inmates. But the record detail provides extensive information on the place of arrest, the arresting agency and report number, criminal charges, upcoming court hearings, personal data (including alias’) and physical description.

The site advises that inmates “in certain circumstances, may not appear on this site based on exemptions provided under Government Code section 6254(f).”

The Albuquerque Police Department has established a registry of gang members who have been convicted of a violation of the Albuquerque Anti-Gang Ordinance. As of yet, there are no convictions, but records will be in an alphabetical directory and include a photo, the full name, the offense committed, the date of conviction and a physical description.

I guess the sex offender registries have been a sufficiently popular idea that states are continuing to create boutique criminal records databases. Baltimore, Maryland recently approved legislation that would create a public Gun Offenders Registry, requiring those convicted of gun related offenses register their name, address, and photograph with the police department. As yet, a Web database is not available.

California could become the first state to have a Domestic Violence Offenders Registry.

Minnesota, Tennessee and Illinois have Methamphetamine Offenders Registries. Montana includes convicted meth manufacturers in its Sexual and Violent Offender Registry. Oklahoma lists the offenses that require registration in its Sex and Violent Crime Offender Registry. Georgia, Kansas Kentucky and Connecticut briefly considered adding a violent offender registry to their roster of convicted criminal databases. Similar legislation is still alive in Hawaii.

The Illinois State Police maintains the Child Murderer and Violent Offender Against Youth Registry.

The flush of interest in drug dealer registration faded in Maine, New Mexico and Illinois last year, but is still alive in New York. New Mexico has a DWI Offender Database.

Find out if a Michigan drivers license is valid or has been suspended or revoked by searching the Repeat Offender Inquiry.

And, on the meth makers theme, the DEA National Clandestine Laboratory Register, “contains addresses of some locations where law enforcement agencies reported they found chemicals or other items that indicated the presence of either clandestine drug laboratories or dumpsites.”

The free real property databases are extending their geographical coverage and the types of features that delight investigators. Zillow has a fly-on-the-cyber-wall feature that will be appreciated by lawyers and investigators: number of total and recent month page views for a particular property. Find it at the bottom of the “Home Facts” detail page. The last sales date and sales price is available on both Zillow and Cyberhomes, but I found the data more often on Zillow. This site will also show a list of all houses on a specified street, with a link to the home details.

Cyberhomes has a more modern look, but if you’re not especially interested in comparables, Zillow probably offers more for an investigator. Cyberhomes does have an easy to find neighborhood snapshot of census-derived demographic data. The comps and photos, available at both sites, give a quick sense of the neighborhood economic profile.

Free registration at PropertyShark will get you 6 free lookups a day that return property owner name and last sales price. Unfortunately, the county Assessors’ Web sites often don’t provide the owner name, even though it’s a public record. PropertyShark may not have this for all addresses, so you might want to use the free owner lookup at CourthouseDirect.

View your selected slice of real estate on a map at Live, Google, Yahoo, MapQuest or TerraServer at PropertyShark. There’s also a link to the Department of Justice, National Sex Offender Public Web Site.

A few reminders: Not all regions or addresses are included in any of the free sites, which is true for fee-based databases, as well. Some Web sites are missing large geographical areas or addresses on a street. Also, if you’re searching property records as part of an investigation, utilize multiple sources - free and fee-based - and dig into the Assessor and Recorder supplied records. Check their online and onsite records. There are differences.

I wrote about PropertyShark and did another posting, also in 2006, which generated a number of valuable additions in the comments.

How have you used real property sites in investigations?

It will be easier to find Florida public records through a Google search without having to mine each government database, now that the Florida state government has a cooperative arrangement with Google to index their sites.

Search the name “Villalobos” within Florida government records by formulating this query:

villalobos site:state.fl.us

All of the initial results are for Senator Villalobos at the legislature’s Web site. If he’s not your target, search again, removing that site:

villalobos site:state.fl.us -site:leg.state.fl.us

One set of public records is various state license holders.

Examine the search results to uncover new types of public records. Scroll down to the link to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement document listing a “Villalobos” among those receiving an Intoxilyzer test. If you go to the public records section at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Alcohol Testing Program you’ll see a jumble of files that aren’t searchable here, but content within them can be plumbed at a search engine.

| View | Upload your own

This document image tells you that Villalobos’ arrest took place in Broward County, which is helpful because names in the Florida court case indices won’t come up in a search engine.

I previously wrote about the other state governments - Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia - whose sites Google is also indexing.

Search court trial records statewide for Minnesota, including criminal civil, probate and family law. A search for judgments is also here.

The Ohio Supreme Court has proposed rule changes that will redefine the term “public records” and affect access to court case records [See”Proposed amendments to the Rules of Superintendence for the Courts of Ohio Rules 44-47] Suggested changes include:

(a) Redacting the case information rather than limiting public access to the entire record;

(b) Limiting remote access to either the case record or case information while
maintaining its public access;

(c) Limiting public access to either the case record or case information for a specific period of time;

(d) Using a generic title or description for the case record or case information in a case management system or register of actions;

(e) Using initials or other identifier for the parties’ proper names.

Read the court summary.

The open records advocacy group, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, has released a study of the consequences of restrictive and open adoption laws. The Institute concludes that new adoption laws that have given adoptees and birth parents access to the original birth certificates has advanced the policy debate “from speculation about the appropriateness, wisdom and impact of such legal changes to a more-informed consideration of their personal, practical and social effects on real people’s real lives.”

The Kentucky Courts have implemented a case tracking system in 17 counties in concert with VINELink. Search a case by name in the Kentucky Courts index and select the VINELink icon to view the next court date, listed at the VINELink site. You can then register to receive telephone or email notification when the defendant’s court event status changes.

The VINE Court feature expands the detention status tracking, the primary site feature, to include those offenders who are not incarcerated but whose cases are still active. Also, you can perform a partial, last name only search at the Kentucky Court site, whereas the same search at VINELink requires a full last name and partial first name. Anyway, you can search for a non-custody defendant’s court status only from the Kentucky Court site. If you try to do the search from the VINELink site you’ll get, “No offenders matching your criteria were found!”.

Government agencies seem to have someone dedicated to moving their Web links to new addresses without a redirect link. You can find the Nevada Department of Corrections Offender Search at a new URL. The database includes current inmates but also those on release or no longer supervised.

The San Jose Police Department has begun adding crime incidents within the past month to the crime mapping site CrimeReports. The data is maintained for about 30 days so it’s research value is limited. There appear to be 3 other police departments that are uploading data and their archiving may differ. Washington D.C. police have retained crime activity reports for 2006 and 2007. Search by date or address, with an optional selection of crime type, to see a map with icons of the various reported crimes and their general location. A popup provides a description of the incident.

On the crime theme, VineLink has a new look but the basic features are the same. It still doesn’t list the participating jails and prisons, so you just have to figure that out when you search within a state or county. The opening page has a color coded map of the U.S., designating states that have “statewide VINE” (blue) and those in which some counties participate (kinda red). As in all criminal records matters “statewide” doesn’t mean the whole state. Gee, who would’ve thought! In the case of California, it means about 15 counties and, as all of us here know, it does not include the Department of Corrections.

Go to MapBuilder if you want an easy utility to create your own map themes and plot places, incidents and things. See the variety of maps that users have built and search by map places and other characteristics.