There are many reasons that police background checks are conducted – landlords and housing authorities, employers, banks and lending agencies, and even insurance companies all investigate the financial and criminal backgrounds of those they conduct business with. They do this for a variety of reasons, but most of the time it is to ensure that there is only a limited amount of risk in working with the individual in question. You can also perform police background check to get instant PDF online reports.

Conducting police background checks actually involves a few different levels of law enforcement information however, and this is when any delays in receiving the data can occur. Consider that there are local, state, and federal agencies that can all have information about a person that will appear in police background checks.

All of these various agencies do not share computer equipment or records, and some don't even maintain electronic files that can be quickly delivered to an agency that requests the information. What this all means is that anyone who wants to conduct police background checks should also be realistic and patient about receiving the data.

Currently, many states make information available quickly to authorized agencies, and if the records require further documentation or time to acquire, they can usually help to get the quickest turnaround times possible.

There are also some states now limiting the data that can be released through police background checks, and this is simply to thwart the massive amounts of identity theft that are occurring. This data is usually irrelevant to those who conduct the research because they usually already have such data as social security numbers and birth dates in the first place.