Suppose you apply for a job-and they require a background check. are they likely to see a traffic violation 30+ years ago?
I don’t think a criminal check will find a traffic violation from any time. If you didn’t pay the ticket, it would find that, but that’s really a contempt violation, not a traffic violation. To get your traffic tickets, they’ll have to run a driving record check. Whole 'nuther thing.
Criminal checks, other than for federal crimes, are done by state and county. An application may ask for your addresses over the last, say, 10 years.
They will run a check in those locations on and almost everything from speeding tickets to DWI to B&E will be returned. AFAIK, there is no cut off date. If you are 40 years old and got busted for being a minor in possession of alcohol, as long as a search is done in the county where the arrest was made, it will show up. Some times the same information can be returned from 2 counties, particularly if they are right next to each other.
The information also gives the outcome - jail, fine, probation or if the charges were dropped.
I should point out that my current job is doing background checks - so I see this stuff all the time.
Why does the event show up if the charges were dropped? Doesn’t “dropped charges” mean the same thing as “we made a mistake picking up this guy”?
I don’t know for sure. I would think that it has to do with deals made with the prosecution.
They also show up often if the case was supposedly expunged. I see that a lot with FBI fingerprints coming back. And the employee brings in the certified paperwork, which in turn is turned over to the powers that be to “really” expunged from the records. I always thought if you where found not guilty, expunged, charges dropped, etc it wouldn’t come back in a criminal background check, thats changed since I started my current job, all that somehow usually shows up.
It doesn’t mean that anymore than “Not Guilty” means “Innocent”.
The fact that the charges were dropped means that for whatever (unknown) reason, the prosecutor chose to not attempt to convict you. It could mean that he felt you were innocent, did have enough evidence, or simply decided to cut you a break…
It depends what kind of background check. In a previous life I had a Department of Energy Top Secret security clearance; the background check I had to undergo to obtain that was astounding. Everything back to the date of my birth was uncovered. Even some details of my parents’ background was looked into.
Ed