At my church they do a background check for everyone who works there and especially anyone who works with children. The church has the person fill out a consent form, availiable at the sheriff's office, and the church sends it to the sheriff's office. The sheriff's office usually processes background checks for a small fee, but they do it for free for non-profit orginizations. All the church gets back is a list of the people and a pass/fail status. It does not provide why they passed/failed. A guy did talk about a way a citizen could find out about another person in some places, but you would have to know just about all their info (SS number, stuff like that) and he said most agencys frown upon those types of inquerys because the person being checked has no idea. I forget what it's called. Call up your sheriff's office to find out about the rules in your area.