The familiar law called the Freedom of Information Act likely applies to the right of every citizen in the US to request for criminal records.
There are actually more specific laws that have been enacted to address the various technical concerns pertaining to the retrieval of these reports.
These laws should be obeyed; otherwise individuals will be denied access to these legal documents.
As a democratic country, everyone is entitled to gain freedom and security from all sorts of crimes in the society.
Thus, residents are given permission to request on criminal reports when the need is highly advised for protection purposes.
However, only those requests with valid grounds will be granted.
Any law enforcing agencies will be reviewing the application and meticulously check as to whether or not it has substantial reasons for obtaining the records.
Now, let's remember that criminal records are supposedly confidential records but if the application does pass the reviewing body, the requesting party will absolutely get the information they want.
These agencies could be the FBI, police authorities at the State or local level, court and if there are other designated agencies which the President of the United States creates in line with the execution of these criminal laws.
As a central database for criminal reports, FBI keeps the important bits of information including the finger-print records that go along with the arrest, naturalization and the federal employment.
Later on, the government has authorized the State law enforcement units to initiate on having their own repository for criminal documents.
By doing so, the local-based residents will no longer have to take a trip all the way to the main records office just to try to retrieve the said files.
Today, counties are now also involved in the collection of this criminal information so that they too can provide such data to the individuals that live within their area.
This would mean that they can obtain the results when they perform a background check on someone even much faster than the traditional way.
The steps are hassle-free to execute as long as your intention is ethical and legitimate for the criminal information to be divulged.
The FBI has a website where one can print-out a copy of the background check request form.
Make sure to fill-out every detail being required on the form to ensure 100% completeness of the data being requested for.
Nowadays, this kind of service is offered to each county from all the States in America.
The way to start the search is now coursed through the Internet which ultimately makes a big difference for the benefit of everyone.
Thus, the key to owning a copy of a criminal record is based on the legitimacy of the request.
The reason or reasons for claiming a copy of it must be justifiable enough in order to earn the approval of wherever agencies you are placing the application from.
These days, aside from the offline records services, criminal reports are also obtainable over the web either for free or for a corresponding service charge.
The later has been tested to provide more accurate results though as they are researched by the experts and the professionals.