Police to look at offering criminal record checks online

The Regina police will be hoping to offer the option of getting criminal record checks online in the new year.

The access to information supervisor, Tracy Raison, said it’s more convenient for people who won’t have to worry about spending time waiting at the police station conflicting with their own work schedules.

“Applicants can apply online 24 hours a day as well as pay the fee and the record check can be done online and then mailed back to them,” she said.

She added the police service decided to make the switch to providing record checks online in response to public feedback.

For the most part, Raison said people should be able to complete the criminal record check online. But there are some extra steps for some those who may require an enhanced record check to work with children and other individuals considered to be vulnerable due to their age, circumstance or disability. There are some scenarios that require the police to verify someone’s identity in person or even do fingerprinting.

“Anybody that is requesting a record check dealing with the vulnerable sector, if you get a vulnerable sector hit — what that means is your birth date matches someone’s who’s received a record suspension for a sexual offence —if your birth date matches, it requires us to do fingerprints just to verify you are who you are and not ‘that’ person,” Raison explained.

Raison said the online process will hopefully help alleviate the wait times for people who do choose to come to the police station to complete a record check in person. She added the switch will also help the staff process the record checks more efficiently.

“Instead of having 50 people come through our doors at once, we can process them all throughout the day depending on the highs and the lows of staff coming in,” she said. “By doing it online we can go through them a lot quicker.”

Raison said the goal is to have the option available at some point in 2018.

—With files from 980 CJME’s Britton Gray