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Criminal background checks, as an API call

One call with a name and identifiers; one decision-ready answer across county, state and federal criminal records. Live now, on the same key that already runs our registry check.

Registry screening remains our primary product — the sex offender registry check, 58 US registries, continuously updated.

Read the API reference

The flows this is being built for

Hiring

A candidate accepts an offer and your ATS needs an answer inside its own flow — not a login to a third-party portal and a PDF three days later. It sits behind exactly that call.

Tenancy

An application arrives with a name, a date of birth and yesterday as the deadline. A check belongs in the same screen the application is already on, with a result you can keep on file.

Marketplaces & platforms

Drivers, sitters, contractors, sellers: platform trust teams screen at signup and re-screen on a schedule. That is an API-shaped problem, and batch-shaped at renewal time.

Why a check needs all three layers

A background check that reads one layer is a check with a hole in it. Most criminal cases are county matters; a state repository may lag or omit them; a federal case — fraud, interstate offenses — appears in neither. The criminal search is being designed so one call reads across all three and tells you, per record, exactly which court it came from.

One person in, one consistent, cited answer out
County, state and federal layers in a single call
Batch screening for re-checks and renewals
A dashboard for the teams who never want to write code

Screening today? The registry check is live, and the criminal reference shows the shape it follows.

Monitoring API

Keep watching after the check

A check answers today. A monitor keeps answering: POST /v1/monitors creates a recurring watch on a person by name and date of birth, evaluated every morning against our continuously updated data, and emails an alert when a matching criminal record appears or changes. Person monitoring is $3/mo.

Criminal and sex offender person monitors are billed separately, and criminal-record location monitoring is coming soon. Full reference: the Monitoring API docs. Monitoring is not a consumer report and must not be used for FCRA-governed hiring, tenancy, or credit decisions.

POST /v1/monitors
{
  "product": "criminal",
  "type": "person",
  "person": { "name": "Jordan Rivera", "dob": "1988-04-12" },
  "channels": { "email": ["alerts@example.com"] }
}

Background check API FAQ

Is the criminal background check API available today?

Yes. It is live and callable, reaching more than a thousand county, state and federal jurisdictions. The sex offender registry check — 58 US registries, continuously updated — remains our primary product and runs on the same key, callable from the API or without code from the dashboard.

How does a check differ from a records search?

A records search answers "what exists about this name". A check is that answer shaped for a decision: one person, their identifiers, the matching records across county, state and federal layers, each one cited to where it came from — in a schema your system can act on.

Will it be FCRA-compliant out of the box?

No API is, by itself. Offendersearch is not a consumer reporting agency and results are not a consumer report; FCRA-covered decisions need appropriate process on your side regardless of the data vendor.

Can I screen against the sex offender registry today?

Yes, and it remains our primary product: 58 US registries behind one search, with photographs, aliases and the official record citation. The criminal layers run alongside it on the same key.

What does it cost to try?

There is a free trial on the same account as the registry search, and pricing is published before you are asked to commit to anything.