PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
A County Criminal Search Is Not a Statewide Search
A BestHire client recently learned this lesson the hard way.
The client knew that a Georgia employment applicant had a criminal conviction and ordered a county criminal-court search to verify certain details.
The county report came back without the conviction.
Knowing the result did not make sense, the client contacted BestHire. Our review found that the case originated in a Georgia municipal court and was not appearing in the county-court source that had been searched. The conviction information was ultimately located through a Georgia statewide criminal-history source, GCIC.
This is the screening industry’s Catch-22: an employer may know a conviction exists, yet a narrowly scoped county search can still return without finding it.
Georgia law requires courts, prosecutors and other responsible criminal-justice agencies to report qualifying final dispositions to the Georgia Crime Information Center—generally within 30 days. However, reporting delays, coding problems and mismatched records can still occur.
The lesson is straightforward:
A county search examines the selected county source. It does not automatically search every municipal, state and local court source across Georgia.
For broader Georgia coverage, BestHire recommends beginning with an appropriate statewide criminal-history search through GCIC or another properly authorized statewide source. When a possible record is identified, BestHire can then pursue the originating court to verify the disposition and reportable details.
No single database should be treated as infallible. That is why BestHire continually seeds, reviews and tests its sources, evaluates unexpected results and adjusts its search strategies when gaps are identified.
Accuracy requires more than ordering a report. It requires knowing what the report actually searched—and what it may have missed.
BestHire, LLC
Accuracy Before Search™
Protecting Employers Before the First Day of Work℠
Refer: Georgia statute: O.C.G.A. §35-3-36(g)
#BackgroundScreening #EmploymentScreening #GeorgiaEmployers #CriminalBackgroundChecks #RiskManagement #DueDiligence #HiringCompliance #HumanResources #WorkforceVetting #BestHire
Review 26 Aug 2026.