What is a National Criminal History Check?

CrimTrac provides national criminal history checks for a range of organisations across the country. These services involve checking the criminal history of potential employees on behalf of employers, such as government agencies, and non-government organisations.

A national criminal history check involves identifying and releasing any relevant criminal history information (CHI) subject to relevant spent convictions/non-disclosure legislation and/or information release policies. CrimTrac facilitates about 2.5 million national criminal history checks a year through a decentralised process involving all Australian police services evaluating relevant police records with a view to determining the type and extent of CHI that can be released.

All national criminal history checks must be undertaken with the informed consent of the person being checked, unless the check is mandated by relevant legislation.

The process includes:

• Searching a central index containing names of persons of interest to police;
• Possible match(es) referred to the relevant police services for evaluation against their records; and
• Police issuing either a National Police Certificate for individual checks or providing the results to an accredited agency/third party either directly or through CrimTrac.

Seeking a national criminal history check as:

• An individual
• An organisation with fewer than 500 checks within a 3-year period
• An organisation with 500 or more checks within a 3-year period