Peter Turecek, of the security firm Kroll Associates, says that with basic information-a person's name, his birth date, his social-security number and address history-there is a good chance you can determine whether your potential employee has a police record. Courthouse checks-performed at the county courthouse-allow you to read someone's local arrest record. "Sometimes there's a court fee," Turecek says, "but normally it's very nominal." For a wider scope, use private websites that search at the state and federal levels-or, for ten states, use the official and readily available state search engines.

That's exactly what we did for Richard Ricci, the handyman who worked in Elizabeth Smart's home. We entered his name in a website called rapsheets.com and in a matter of minutes-for a $6 fee-we found his criminal record going back almost 30 years. For Larry Parks, who stabbed Sherry-Ann Brannon and her two daughters to death in 1999 while doing excavation work at their home, we went directly to the state of Florida's website. For a fee of $23, we easily found out that Parks had a lengthy criminal background.