Q: What’s the difference between the federal criminal history search and national criminal database search?
A: While they may sound the same, these two types of searches are distinct.
- Federal criminal searches report information from federal district courts and contain only specific high-level, white-collar crimes and crimes that cross state lines.
- The National Criminal Database compiles information from thousands of sources at the county, state and federal levels.
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Q. What is the difference between a county criminal and federal criminal search?
A. Federal crimes are tried at the highest level of the government for the commission or omission of an act defined by Federal statute or regulation having legislative authority with Congress. County criminal searches identify crimes against local laws, which include more common criminal offenses.
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Q. What are white-collar crimes? Why are they prosecuted in a different court?
A. White-collar crimes include cases involving capital punishments, fraud and embezzlement. Crimes such as tax evasion, robbery, kidnapping, illegal sale of firearms, pornographic exploitation of children, and intrastate crimes are also classified as white collar. These types of crimes are typically found only in a federal criminal search.