News Services

SCBA is available during regular business hours, Monday – Friday, to furnish SLED criminal history checks at no charge to newsroom staff of member stations. To obtain a SLED check, email SCBA during business hours with the full name and complete date of birth. We cannot run a SLED check without the complete date of birth. We’ll email you the results as quickly as possible. After hours and on weekends, reporters must go to the SLED website and pay the $25 fee. Background checks are for news stories only. For any other type of background check, you must go to the SLED website and pay the fee.

The SLED database only returns criminal record information from South Carolina. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations offers an online Georgia Felon Search. All you need is a name and date of birth. The fee for each search is $15. North Carolina is a closed record state, which means a person’s criminal history background is protected and cannot be disseminated without his or her consent. However, the N.C. Judicial Branch provides court information and is public record. The N.C. Department of Public Safety maintains information about individuals who are serving or have served state prison sentences and those who are, or have been, on probation or parole. And the N.C. State Sex Offender Registry maintains information about registered sex offenders. Here are more details on N.C. background checks.

Occasionally, the SLED database will give an error or special processing message when it returns multiple results for a name and date of birth. Or the name and DOB on the subject’s criminal record could differ from the one provided in the search criteria, such as in the use of aliases, which may result in a false negative or false positive result.