There are criminal records available at the federal level that are not available at county and state levels. These records include crimes relating to drugs, immigration, fraud, and weapons charges. We can access these records within 24 hours. The federal court system is an entirely separate court system from the state court system, but there is a great deal of overlapping between these two court systems.

In the USA, there is a good source of all these federal criminal compiled records at the national level called the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) whose reports are prepared by the FBI or legitimate law enforcement officials. The NCIC is the computerized index of criminal justice information that is available to all criminal justice agencies. The purpose of the NCIC system is to provide a computerized database for ready access by criminal justice agencies for making an inquiry about an individual and for prompt disclosure of information in the system from other criminal justice agencies about crimes and criminals. The NCIC is operational 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. The data contained in NCIC system is provided by all the federal, state, local, and foreign criminal justice agencies and other authorized courts. The public records provider has no accessibility of the records provided by NCIC.

Usually, private citizens and firms may not have any access to federal criminal records. Most US District Courts provide access to criminal records via online federal court docket system, but the information included is limited. The online docket system does not contain identification information of defendants. Therefore additional online search is needed for having the full spectrum of the record.

Before appointing new employees, every firm conducts a criminal check about them either through online or offline sources. Most companies are concerned about the records maintained by state level courts. However depending upon the position involved, employers may also want to have a federal criminal check on the potential candidates. For this purpose firms will mostly depend on the Internet for a comprehensive criminal check.