Even if you are highly intelligent and wise, you can not just look at a person and judge him or her because your judgment will not be fool-proof without doing criminal background checks.
You are not a loner in thinking that this world is a safe place to live and no harm can physically reach you.
But you will be reddened to know, or may be, you already know but fail to acknowledge, that things like murder, kidnapping and stealing are being resorted to by neurotic, antisocial and ill-motivated people all around the world.
It is always better to know your neighbors.
You may have equated friendship with them but it does not mean that you know them well.
Sometimes, you may have a close shave with some sketchy episode that may happen in your neighborhood.
The advice is while you can not worry about the "non-existent" people who suddenly strike, you can be cautious about people whom you come across or whom you wish to hire as a baby-sitter, a nanny, a driver, a gardener or a cook.
You may decide to leave your child in a day care center while you are away at your work place.
You should not be insensitive not to verify the background of the day care center.
The child is left in the center for a long duration during the day and it is your bounden duty as a parent to protect your child from potential dangers that may emanate from sex offenders, kidnappers, etc.
It is not necessary that you should be a celebrity or a successful person to undertake such criminal background checks of people with whom you are involved.
Even if you are a nobody, you should do it.
Criminal background checks used to be arduous a few years back.
It used to be done manually and was, in general, conducted by the police personnel of the county.
You need to visit the police station several times, wait for your turn and at last, when the report reaches you, your need for the check itself would not be there any more.
Apart from that, the report provided to you by the police personnel will be highly subjective and may not always reflect the true findings.
But in the present scenario, the information explosion is making everything available to you at the cozy ambiance of your home.
You have to just log in a few details about the person about whom you want to conduct the check.
The website will give you all the details.
There are many such websites that help you in this.
You should choose the best.
You can use such free background check for finding out not only the criminal records of people but for knowing the past of your future life-partner also.
Such a check is also useful in knowing the tax records, credit records and marriage records also.
Governments also undertake such a check for knowing if the tax records of a person are clean or if the person has done any tax evasion, depriving the exchequer of genuine revenues by way of tax payments.
The government also owns websites that may provide such details free of cost.
But it is a fact that private agencies that offer such free services can not be depended upon because they do not have the money or muscle to update their records frequently.
Hence you should be prepared to spend reasonably and obtain accurate information from a paid site.
You should not rely on free sites that do criminal background checks because the details that are provided by them are totally undependable.