Louisiana Criminal Records

Louisiana Criminal Records

Every state in the U.S. has several different major repositories of information on criminal records.
Most of these sources of information deal mostly with criminal records that result in convictions.
Some state statutes provide mandates to the state government to keep a database of public
records information and criminal history information. However, not all states are provisioned. One
of these states that are not required by law to keep a central repository of criminal records is the
State of Louisiana.

Since there is no one state database for Louisiana criminal records, you would need to check out
several places where pieces of information are stored. Louisiana criminal records may be found
in a variety of government offices and from a variety of sources. However, as said earlier, these
sources may deal mostly with Louisiana criminal records of convictions.

The Difference between a Conviction and a Record

Louisiana convictions are different from Louisiana criminal records in that not all criminal records
are convictions. Hence, Louisiana criminal records are a broader term used to describe an aspect
of an individual who has been arrested for a crime, tried at court, convicted, and sentenced to
serve. A conviction is when a judgment is handed down from a court indicating that the person in
question was found guilty. A conviction may also be due to the fact that the defendant pleaded
guilty to the crime in question. As we all know, in America and other democratic countries,
everyone is considered innocent until found guilty. This does not mean, however, that people are
less interested in knowing that someone was arrested for rape and acquitted at trial due to lack of
evidence, etc. etc.

Louisiana Criminal Records for Employment Purposes

One of the top reasons why anyone would want to get a hold of copies of Louisiana criminal
records is for employment purposes. Louisiana criminal records check is standard procedure in
pre-employment background checks in Louisiana. This is done in order to minimize the risk of
negligence lawsuits for issues including negligent hiring, supervision, security, training, and
retention.

The Four Levels of Louisiana Criminal Records

There are actually four levels of Louisiana criminal records. The first level is called the Louisiana
criminal records of arrests. These are documents that point out an arrest for a crime committed.
The administrative agency responsible for filing records of arrests is the local sheriff's department
or the local police. After an arrest is made, a report is made to the court where the trial is going to
be heard. The County Clerk of Courts would then create Louisiana criminal records of the court
filing based on the arrest report sent. Depending on the outcome of the trial, the Louisiana
criminal records would either be sent to the Department of Corrections or be kept as a court
record. The Department of Corrections handles all inmate information of a certain county or state.
Thus, if the person in question was proven guilty and sentenced to serve in prison, his records
would be entered into the inmate database of the DOC. All reports, including arrest reports, court
records, and DOC database entries are then stored in the State Police database. This then is
referred to as the state central repository of criminal records.