Platform
How jurisdiction selection actually works
Criminal court records in the United States are maintained by thousands of independent jurisdictions, each with its own structure, coverage and access rules. Deciding which courts to search is the whole problem, and it is the problem Personnelgraph was built to solve.
The four ways a search misses a record
Standard screening fails for a structural reason: criminal record data in this country is fragmented and jurisdiction-dependent. Here is what that looks like in practice, and what the search does about it.
- 01
The address they didn’t list
The applicant lives in Arizona and carries an Arizona license. A check run there alone comes back clean. What it cannot see is that the same person also lived in California and Kansas, and listed neither. A check normally searches only the places an applicant says they have lived, so an address left off the application is a state nobody opens and a record nobody finds. Here the record sat in Los Angeles County and in Johnson County, Kansas, and neither was searched. It is the simplest gap in the system, and it needs no deception at all: people forget addresses, and a move from ten years ago is easy to leave off.
- Maricopa County, AZdisclosed, and searched
- Los Angeles County, CAnot disclosed, never searched
- Johnson County, KSnot disclosed, never searched
What CourtScopeAI does
It assesses the disclosed residence history for gaps and inconsistencies rather than accepting the disclosed list as the search scope.
- 02
The statewide search that skips counties
This one is not a disclosure failure. The applicant moved from Michigan to Florida and did list the Michigan address. The screener ran a county search in Florida, which is the right step there, and for Michigan ran a statewide query. That sounds thorough and it is not always complete. Michigan keeps misdemeanors in city and township district courts and felonies in circuit courts, and a statewide name-based system is not assembled on those lines, so records fall outside it. The Michigan query came back clean while the record existed, and no employer can be expected to know the record-keeping of all fifty states.
- Michigan statewidenothing on file
- The court holding the recordnot covered by the statewide system
What CourtScopeAI does
It recognizes where statewide coverage is insufficient and routes the search to the specific courts that actually hold the records.
- 03
The offense was somewhere else
People do not always offend where they live. Here the applicant lived in Kern County, California, and the offenses were in Los Angeles County, which they had never lived in and so never listed. There was no obvious reason for anyone to search there, and the check ran in Kern County alone and came back clean. California is the clearest example of why this keeps happening: it holds no statewide criminal case index, so a California search is an assembly of county pulls by construction, and a county with no address in the file is one nobody pulls.
- Kern County, CAwhere they lived, nothing on file
- Los Angeles County, CAno address there, never searched
What CourtScopeAI does
It draws on historical offense patterns to identify additional jurisdictions that a residence-based search would not include.
- 04
The right court is rarely the nearest one
New York is a county-by-county state, so a New York search is a list of counties somebody has to choose, and the list normally starts with the address. Here the applicant lived in Columbia County, and the check covered that county and its neighbors. That is a reasonable set of places to look, and it is still a guess: the offenses had not happened in any of them. The record sat in Erie County, at the far western end of the state, where no address in the file pointed and nothing in the application gave a reason to look.
- Columbia County, NYwhere they lived, nothing on file
- The neighboring countiesnothing on file
- Erie County, NYno address there, never searched
What CourtScopeAI does
It applies structured jurisdiction logic in place of manual judgment, so the county set is determined consistently rather than by whoever happens to be running the check.
Put together, an applicant who has moved between states, lives where statewide searches are weak, and has a record across a county line can pass a check easily. That is a structural consequence of how criminal records are organized here, and it is common.
What CourtScopeAI does, and what it doesn’t
A search can only return what the courts it was pointed at actually hold, release, and release in time. That limit is worth stating plainly.
It does
- Assess applicant-provided location information and apply jurisdiction logic to identify potentially relevant court sources.
- Produce consistent jurisdiction decisions across every case, regardless of who initiates it.
It does not
- Guarantee the availability or completeness of records. The courts control both.
- Change what a court holds or how quickly it releases it. Court systems vary widely on both.
How the platform works
Step two is the product, and everything either side of it is table stakes.
Choosing which courts to search sounds like a lookup. It is not. Criminal records sit with state, county, municipal and federal courts, each with its own structure, its own coverage and its own rules about who may see what, and no single register covers them all. Workforce mobility is what turns that into a problem: people change states, work remotely and hold addresses in several places within a few years, so a residence history is routinely a list rather than a place. Assembling a search scope from that list by hand is a judgment call, and a judgment call repeated on every case drifts.
CourtScopeAI is Personnelgraph’s own AI algorithm, built and maintained in-house rather than licensed from anyone. It applies one set of jurisdiction logic to every case, so the courts that get searched are decided the same way each time rather than depending on who opened the file.
- 1
Authorization
A digital disclosure and authorization request goes to the applicant, the signature comes back electronically, and the signed document is stored against the case. Nothing is searched before it is on file. Applicant information is held within one centralized system rather than passed between tools.
- 2
Jurisdiction selection
CourtScopeAI reads the residence information the applicant provided, along with jurisdiction reliability and historical offense patterns, and determines which courts have to be searched. That covers two systems: the federal district courts that reach the addresses on file, and the state and county courts where a record would sit. Where a statewide search is not sufficient, it says so rather than leaving the gap unmarked.
- 3
CourtRequest
Each court the scope named is searched directly through its own access route, rather than through a third-party database that may not carry it. Every request holds its own status against the case, so a court that has not answered is visible without opening the file.
- 4
One report
Results come back consolidated into one report, with each court’s outcome recorded against the court rather than flattened into a single pass or fail. Cases are reported as Clear, Alert or Awaiting Info, so an outstanding court is never read as a clean one.
The case list, drawn from the platform. Each search carries its own status, so a case that needs attention is visible without being opened.
Built for FCRA-compliant workflows
Employers can send digital authorization requests to applicants, collect electronic signatures, and store completed authorizations against the case. Personnelgraph guides users through the required steps, including obtaining authorization before any screening request is initiated.
The federal requirements are set out in full on the FCRA article, including the parts that belong to the employer rather than to us.
This page describes a product, not a legal standard. Nothing on it is legal advice. See the terms of use.