There are a number of ways to perform a criminal background check on the Internet - by using free and paid resources.
The fact that most people don't know about these lookups is the way in which many people don't know what criminal records actually are - these are basically a set of public records that are stored for someone, and talk about their past "brushes with the law" - including the likes of court records, Sheriff's office reports, prison information and other details.
Contrary to popular belief, all criminal records can be found somewhere on the Internet - you just need to know where to look and what you're looking for exactly.
It might come as a surprise to you to learn that the government offers the ability to find criminal records for free online.
 All the US states now have a series of websites dedicated to the likes of their court system, lawyer network, driving offence system and a host of other legal procedures.
By locating the state-run websites for the area of residence of your "target", then you should be able to find the records about them that are stored by the government.
A good way to do this is to first locate the state's official "homepage" and then look for the various resources it will give you.
Most state websites are extremely helpful...
but there's a problem.
Even though finding criminal records are freely available on numerous state websites, the fact is that it's very difficult to perform a proper background check just using these resources.
The problem is that there are so many different sites out there that you could literally spend days trying to search through all of them, and still not be sure that you have the details you require for someone.
This is a massive issue, as it means that most people who try and find free criminal records fail to come to any sort of conclusion about their findings.
  The best way to perform an instant criminal records background check is to use what's known as a "professional" lookup website.
There are a lot of these websites available online, which are now becoming increasingly popular thanks to the way they are able to produce a complete background check for someone in a few seconds.
These sites basically buy all the information they can get from a variety of government agencies - and then compact all the information into a single database.
They then allow you to search this database from their homepage, which will bring up all the details you require about someone in a single search.
These sites are much more effective than government run ones, as they are more reliable and easy to use.
It's recommended you use one of these professional sites if you don't get any results from looking at the government-run sites, or are not that Internet savvy.