Modern technology has today made it possible to know the past criminal history of anyone you are likely to deal with.
If you have a personal computer and internet connection, you can have access to any type of criminal history records at the comfort of your home or from your office.
In the past to look up someone's criminal background was quite tedious and involved heavy expenses if you planned on doing an instant criminal history background check of someone to ascertain if the person is someone you may not want to deal with.
But today with a little bit of information about the person you can instantly find criminal records, court documents, mug shots etc.
Using online background check services is very simple and beneficial because before making any payment you know whether the information you are looking for has been made available or not.
There are free sites also that claim of providing criminal records access for free but usually you do not get the desired information on these sites.
The paid services usually charge a minimal fee and provide quality and in-depth criminal information about a person.
Alternatively you can visit the local government offices or repository that keep the public records and dig information by yourself.
Here also, you are not sure to get the information that you are seeking as the information related to a person you are searching on may be stored in a different state and you have to spare sufficient time for searching by yourself.