When it comes to criminal records, there are a variety of factors that determine how easy it may be to locate and decipher its information. Criminal records are a means of listing every crime a criminal may commit: all arrests, convictions, and interactions with both law enforcement and court systems are detailed therein. Depending on the nature of the crime, the location of the said offense, how it is reported, and also how it is given sentencing and criminal punishment determines where the information will end up. It is the criminal justice process that we will deal with in this article.
In order to best understand the way criminal information is organized-and where you might best locate criminal records on a potential offender- it is best to first consider how the criminal justice process works in relation to any infraction or offense committed. What does this mean? Basically, in your search to uncover the probable layers of a particular criminal history, you’ll need to know first the location of the offense, but then also the nature of the crime, and how it was dealt with as far as criminal punishment by law enforcement or the court system hearing the case.
The nature of a particular crime or offense lends itself entirely to how the law enforcement and/or court system handling the crime will report the information into the criminal record of the said individual. A criminal may be involved in a minor offense at the local level such as a first time public inebriation charge. Though this is not a virtuous position to be in, the police officer handling the offense, may perhaps decide to detain the individual-as opposed to make him/her go through the entire standard criminal justice process i.e. arrest, court sentencing, and subsequent criminal punishment. On the other hand, a serious crime with probable felonious sentencing-such as arson or murder-would necessitate the same police officer to arrest the individual, bring him/her before the proper jurisdictional court, and be convicted or vindicated from criminal punishment. Thus, the police records of a particular crime dictate the nature of the crime, and therefore, what part of the process the defendant and his/her criminal history will fair in information repositories.
Just as important to how the justice process relates to a particular criminal record is also how it is given punishment by law enforcement and/or the jurisdictional court reviewing the crime. Depending on how the crime is viewed by either and/or both of these parties of authority determines where the vital criminal information that you are seeking will be reported and stored. First, a particular crime or infraction of the law is reviewed by law enforcement (at the local or state level). These officers may decide to arrest the individual committing the offense or have the charges dismissed. If an arrest is made, an arrest record is created and then passed along to the jurisdictional court that will be hearing the case for potential punishment. If the party is found guilty of the offense, they will be convicted with a particular disposition or offender punishment. This also is added to the criminal background record, as a conviction record.
Of course, the details of each step of punishment by law enforcement and court through the criminal justice process is typically a lot more complicated than the black and white nature depicted here, but more specifics on the gray areas will be discussed in Criminal Justice Section. Choose the “Criminal Justice”menu option at the top of the page.