I just received the name of a inmate in the California prison system. I always like to check out what a potential pen pals is serving time for before writing which is very easy for some states like Oregon. This has saved me from writing some real sickos in the past by checking into them first.
How do I find out this type of information for a CA inmate? Are there any companies that do background checks?
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Just Google their name. If it happened any time in the last 20 years there will be an article in the news about what they did.
Frankie, yes and no. There were no news articles about what my CA pal did. I had to dig through the court system and tailor my google search to that to come up with an appeals opinion on his case. It took a lot of searching.
I had an unsolicited letter from a CA inmate and I couldn’t find anything on him.
Thanks, I've never had something I can't find in Google that I would pay for which was my primary concern (paying for publically available information). Now perhaps in your case a lot of that information was surprised or it wasn't deemed a very relevant case by the media. I don't know… I’ve never really had the trouble of finding enough information to satisfy my needs and it saves a lot of money in learning to search. Asking for criminal records can get quite expensive especially for someone you may not to write to.
I ususally have luck finding info online as long as the crime didn't occur before 2000, after that it gets tougher. You might have to get inventive and creative when searching.
Clerk of Courts is often a good place to search if you're coming up empty on Google
I too have been unable to find anything on my Cali girl (Cali guy yes, but his offence date was very recent, hers was in 1999). I've googled her name just out of curiosity, I knew generally what she did but I just wanted to see if there were any other news articles on the subject, and there wasn't. What she did must've been very bad, or it must've been her third strike, because she has a life sentence. There are articles on all of my penpals crimes except hers. I don't google out of suspicion though, by the time I do that I have a general idea of what they're in for already, so I just do it to see what is available.
I like to have some sort of idea as there is some people I simply can't bring myself to write to some people. The one I write to currently doesn't have a lot actually, but most of what I found corresponds with what she said and I trust her anyway...