by Jed Elaine
The US is number 1 again. But this time, it’s notoriously so. Latest statistics on incarceration rate bode very badly for us. Greater than 1 in 10 American adults are behind bars, and they will get out someday, just like their predecessors. Being Creatures of habit that people are, there is likelihood that they will return to crimes. Records have proven that a good percentage of those who are caught on the wrong side of the law are repeat offenders. To be sure, many also get rehabilitated but those are obviously of less concern to the populace.
It is apparent that no effort would have been spared in this area of public welfare but the problem is it gets invariably overshadowed by more pressing big-picture issues such as terrorism, war, economy, unemployment, politics and so forth. Fortunately, it’s not difficult to incorporate your individual measure of safeguard against potentially bad elements if you know how to capitalize on some of the sound existing public resources. One good example is police records which are good as gold and you can actually obtain them free of charge from Uncle Sam.
Police are known to be excellent record keepers. Every interaction with the police will trigger the generation of a report that goes on official record. It can be anything from armed robbery to traffic violation, gun permit to address change and so forth, they have it all on file. They are hence very useful in providing information about someone especially if they are a threat to other people.
Police records are public records. That makes it a right for anyone who wishes to retrieve and view anybody’s police records. They are generally provided free of charge and is normally nominal even when an administrative fee is charged as with certain police departments. One thing to note about free public police records is that while they are technically public records, they are often subject to legal restriction in accessibility and use. This varies from state to state but is stringently enforced once it’s legislated in the interest of privacy protection on certain sensitive information for individuals.
Like other things, free public police records are greatly facilitated by technology these days. What used to be a cumbersome and tedious process is now practically a breeze as a result of office automation and the internet. And it gets even more effortless for those who employ paid version of public police records from commercial record providers. Even so, it’s still only a fraction of the cost of such endeavors used to be in the old days.