There are a wide, wide variety of crimes and offenses that a person may be able to locate on a particular individual; with some being available to the public, others be available only to law enforcement and criminal justice agencies, and still others, not being available at all. It is according to a large handful of main variables that criminal records access is determined, to include: jurisdiction, nature of the crime, history of the criminal, due process of the law, and the underlying specifics of the particular case being charged. For the purposes of this discussion, we will examine much more closely, traffic violations and driving records; to understand how they are classified, which driving records are available to the public and which aren’t, why driving records might not be accessible, and how this relates to criminal records information.
Traffic violations are one of the main types of records affected by federal restriction of information. Traffic violations are categorized according to the severity of possible moving-or driving- and non-moving violations committed by driving motorists. These driving categorizations are: misdemeanors, felonies, and infractions. While misdemeanor and felony traffic and driving violations are considered criminal activity, subject to due process of the law and, in most cases, publicly-available criminal histories; driving and non-driving infractions, on the other hand, are not accessible according to a federal statute passed in 1981 by the U.S. Legislature. This law announced that all minor driving and non-driving offenses listed in driving records, otherwise known as traffic infractions, will no longer be considered criminal activity, and therefore unavailable to the general public as a part of criminal records.
You may be wondering why these records of driving offenses became restricted all of a sudden: what exactly was the purpose of limiting these driving records from public view? The reason the federal government chose to enact this law on driving records was to expedite the processes of the criminal justice system, by taking any criminal court focus off minor driving offenses in exchange for more attention to the more serious of criminal driving and non-driving offenses. This would make the courts overburdened with cases to review less so, by having driving and non-driving infractions from driving records processed instead, in civil courts, if at all.
So, if you are seeking background information on a particular individual; what does this law mean to your search efforts? Basically, that unless you get the express and written consent from the subject of your search to have access to their driving record from the state DMV, you will never be privy to that information. While this may seem disheartening to anyone seeking a comprehensive review of an individual’s criminal history, it should not; as the offenses listed on a driving record that are not accessible, are minor offenses. Unless your purposes are specific to the driving industry, the types of driving and non-driving offenses denoted by the infraction category, to include: running a red light, parking in an unauthorized zone, minor speeding, and burnt out tail lights; are minor, and not typically evocative of the individual’s character. This is not to say that these offenses should not be punishable by the law, and this is why, in fact, they are punished with fines and other minor penalties. The point being made here; however, is that the crimes probably most important to your criminal information search, will be available to you; while the other less significant offenses, might not.