New Search Engine for Criminal Records

Want to vet a baby sitter? Need to peek into the background of a prospective employee? Curious about the past of a potential date?Last month, PeopleFinders, a 20-year-old company based in California, introduced CriminalSearches.com, a free service to satisfy those common impulses. The site, which is supported by advertising, lets people search by name through criminal archives of all 50 states and 3,500 counties in the United States.

In the process, it just might upset a sensitive social balance once preserved by the difficulty of obtaining public documents like criminal records.