Criminal record

An official record of a person’s arrests, charges, and criminal convictions, maintained by law-enforcement or court agencies. Its contents and availability vary by jurisdiction.

Arrest: A lawful seizure of a person by authorities, usually to answer an alleged crime. An arrest may appear in a criminal record without resulting in a charge or conviction.
Criminal history record information: Identifying information and records of arrests, charges, and dispositions maintained for criminal-justice purposes. This is the technical category used for many official criminal-history systems.
Employment discrimination: Unlawful or unfair treatment in employment based on protected characteristics or other legally restricted grounds. Criminal-history screening can exclude applicants, subject to jurisdiction-specific protections.
Arrest record: A record documenting a person’s arrest, whether or not prosecution follows. It is narrower than a full criminal record and does not establish guilt.
Criminal charge: A formal accusation that a person committed a crime. Charges document prosecution decisions and may later be dismissed or resolved without conviction.
National Crime Information Center: An FBI-operated database supporting information sharing among U.S. law-enforcement agencies. It illustrates how agencies exchange selected criminal-justice records across jurisdictions.
Ban the Box: Policies delaying questions about criminal history until later in a job application process. These policies aim to reduce early rejection based solely on record disclosure.
Court record: Documents created or maintained by a court about proceedings and decisions. Court files can contain case details beyond entries in criminal-history databases.
Criminal conviction: A legal finding that a person is guilty of a crime, entered by a court or established by a plea. Convictions are a distinct, consequential part of the recorded history.
Fingerprint: A pattern of friction ridges on a fingertip used for identification. Fingerprint matching helps connect records to the correct person.

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