How often do you check to find out if you have any active arrest warrants?Do you even give it a thought?

I know that I didn't until recently when the police came to my house early one morning to arrest me. It wasn't a pleasant experience at all. I lost time from work, it cost me more money than it should have done and it was such an embarrasing situation to be in. So now I check regularly to make sure that I know if there is a warrant and so that I can do something about it before the cops come around. I'm going to give you 3 ways that you can check yourself for arrest warrants and avoid the problems that I had.

Do you know what an arrest warrant is?

It's so easy to get an arrest warrant nowadays and that's the worst part - not knowing - If you could always be certain that you didn't have a warrant then you could sleep easy at night but it isn't that easy is it? Here are some ways that you might get a warrant:

• You forgot to pay a parking fine
• You forgot to pay a fine for a traffic offence
• You failed to do some community service
• You did your community service but the court was never informed of the fact
• You've had your identity stolen and the thief has committed a crime in your name

I bet that you can think of a lot more reasons than that why you might have a warrant but perhaps the most worrying one on the list is the identity theft problem. Identity theft seems to be getting more and more common and every increasing use of technology seems to make it more and more easy for the thieves to steal your details. If the thief then commits a crime they simply give the police your details and bam - you've got a warrant. Scary isn't it?

Once you accept the sad fact that there is nothing that you can do to avoid arrest warrants completely the next best thing to do is make sure that you minimize the effect that a court order will have on your life. When you get a warrant you must immediately contact a lawyer and make appropriate arrangements to hand yourself in to the police in the correct way that your lawyer will advise.


Find your arrest warrants and deal with them


If you do this then the court will see that you've done everything you can to cooperate and that you voluntarily handed yourself in. This goes down so much better with the court than if the police have dragged you in instead. This is all common sense of course but if you want to make sure that you are in a position to do this then you must find out about any warrants for your arrest before the police decide to come looking for you.

The first method is not recommended but I include it just to warn you. The second method can be done for free but isn't very reliable and will consume a lot of your time. The third one is just about the best you're going to get. It's quick, easy and convenient.

1. Ask a police officer - This one is not recommended

Unless you want to get yourself arrested that is. Just find a police officer and ask him or her to check to see if there are any warrants out on you. The cop will do it for you quite happily but will also be quite happy to arrest you on the spot if a warrant is found. This is precisely what you don't want to happen because you've just lost your opportunity to prepare for and hand yourself in voluntarily.

2. Visit your courthouse - Not very reliable

This will work ok if you know the area where you might have picked up an arrest warrant. Make a visit to the courthouse and ask. They will tell you if there are any warrants outstanding and it's unlikely that you'll get arrested for it. But what if there is a warrant for you in a different state? It could happen, especialy if someone has stolen your identity and committed a crime in your name.

3. Search for arrest warrants in an online public records database - The best it gets

This is by far the easiest and most convenient way of staying ahead of the cops. Find out about your arrest warrants while watching tv at home in the evening.

Go online and subscribe to a public records database like this one. Once you've done that you'll be able to search for your arrest warrants whenever you want and as often as you want. You can also search to see if your family and friends have any warrants too.

Websites like this bring together all the publicly available records in thousands of databases both online and offline and make them all available to you in one place just waiting for you to search. It's easy to do, convenient because you can do it whenever you are browsing the Internet and it's confidential so there is no chance that you'll get arrested when you search and find that you do have a warrant.

Don't delay, get yourself a lawyer as soon as you find out about your warrant and arrange to deal with it before the cops come to get you.




Check out about your warrants for arrest