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Posted by
Hayden Langhorn 
There are three official departments in Australia who maintain Criminal History Information. The Courts, the Police and Crimtrac.
The Police
The Police services in Australia currently maintain criminal history records. Each separate state in Australia and other police jurisdictions, have their own processes for capturing details of court convictions and storing this information in its police system. Each of these systems format and components of a criminal history record vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
The Courts
Like in the USA, Australia courts also maintain records of cases heard before them and the associated outcomes, including convictions and sentences. These records do identify convicted offenders and members of the public are able to search these records for a fee. The process and fees to search court records vary from state to state.
However, court records are generally held in a format that is suited towards legal research and are not consolidated for individual offenders. It is difficult to derive court appearances and criminal convictions for a single individual from court records, as they provide limited data for identification of individuals.
Crimtrac
Crimtrac is an Australia Government agency with the responsibility of maintaining a central index of personal information held by the police services. The index is used simply as an indicator to identify whether any such individual is recorded in the relevant police records of any jurisdiction, as a person of interest. If it is established that a person has been identified as a person of interest the index will indicate which juristriction/s the individual’s record is held in.
Please note that Crimtrac does not hold criminal history information, but instead its role is to maintain an index that stores enough sufficient information, in order to provide an acceptable standard of identity matching.
Third Party Criminal Databases
There are also known to be some commercial organisations that claim to keep databases of Australian criminal records and for a fee will allow anyone to access these. However these types of databases are not updated regularly and do not include every person convicted of a crime in Australia. Additionally some of the companies that maintain these are actually foreign owed with their data base servers maintained outside of Australia.
Using such databases for employment screening could open up companies to legal liabilities, because if companies explicitly use such a data base, there is a high chance that a criminal record has been omitted or is completely inaccurate.
Article by Hayden Langhorn – Employment Screening Manager at InterCheck Australia. For more information go to www.intercheck.com.au or www.policecheckexpress.com.au
The Police
The Police services in Australia currently maintain criminal history records. Each separate state in Australia and other police jurisdictions, have their own processes for capturing details of court convictions and storing this information in its police system. Each of these systems format and components of a criminal history record vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
The Courts
Like in the USA, Australia courts also maintain records of cases heard before them and the associated outcomes, including convictions and sentences. These records do identify convicted offenders and members of the public are able to search these records for a fee. The process and fees to search court records vary from state to state.
However, court records are generally held in a format that is suited towards legal research and are not consolidated for individual offenders. It is difficult to derive court appearances and criminal convictions for a single individual from court records, as they provide limited data for identification of individuals.
Crimtrac
Crimtrac is an Australia Government agency with the responsibility of maintaining a central index of personal information held by the police services. The index is used simply as an indicator to identify whether any such individual is recorded in the relevant police records of any jurisdiction, as a person of interest. If it is established that a person has been identified as a person of interest the index will indicate which juristriction/s the individual’s record is held in.
Please note that Crimtrac does not hold criminal history information, but instead its role is to maintain an index that stores enough sufficient information, in order to provide an acceptable standard of identity matching.
Third Party Criminal Databases
There are also known to be some commercial organisations that claim to keep databases of Australian criminal records and for a fee will allow anyone to access these. However these types of databases are not updated regularly and do not include every person convicted of a crime in Australia. Additionally some of the companies that maintain these are actually foreign owed with their data base servers maintained outside of Australia.
Using such databases for employment screening could open up companies to legal liabilities, because if companies explicitly use such a data base, there is a high chance that a criminal record has been omitted or is completely inaccurate.
Article by Hayden Langhorn – Employment Screening Manager at InterCheck Australia. For more information go to www.intercheck.com.au or www.policecheckexpress.com.au
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Who maintains Criminal history information in Australia?on Feb 14 2012 07:28 AM
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