Doing a Warrant Search in Illinois
Warrant searches are important to a lot of people. This information can make your life a lot easier, or even a lot more stressful depending on what the results are. If you live in the state of Illinois and you want to find out if someone has a warrant, you’ll want to learn how to do Illinois warrant searches. This process is pretty simple once you know how to do it, which means that the bar to entry is pretty low. Knowing how to do these kinds of searches and having some basic information to go along with that knowledge is all you need.
But this information isn’t as useful if you don’t understand the background of warrants in the United States. For example, what is a warrant? What does it mean if someone has a warrant out for their arrest? Not knowing the answer to these questions effectively renders any search results that you find all but useless. That’s not good if you’re on a search for the truth. Not being able to see the entire picture can skew the information that you get and can paint the person in question in a light that’s entirely unfair to them as a person.
What is a Warrant?
The term “warrant” can mean different things in different countries, and we have no intention of covering what warrants are in different countries. If we did that would make this article much longer than we have time for, and that would lead our target audience to leave the article to instead find a source that only covers information about the United States Criminal Justice System. With that in mind, let’s get down to the brass tacks about what warrants are here in the United States of America.
As you’re probably aware, here in the states we have a document called the constitution that outlines basic rights and protections that American citizens have. For example, free speech, the right to bear arms, protection from having to house soldiers against your will, and protection from unreasonable search or seizure. These are the first four amendments of our constitution in the correct order, and the one that’s important to understand for today’s article is the fourth amendment. Warrants are the only way that our law enforcement officers are able to get much of anything done because of this amendment.
On the other side of things, without this amendment police officers would essentially have unfettered authority to do whatever they want. The amendment was specifically added to the constitution to outlaw the use of general warrants, as they were used in early America. No one wants to worry about their loved ones being targeted by a law enforcement officer who has the broad sweeping authority of a general warrant behind them. It’s important that we have a balance so that law enforcement can do their jobs while also ensuring that innocent people are as unlikely as possible to be imprisoned for no reason.
How Warrants Work in Illinois
Warrants have specific protocols and procedures that need to be followed in order for them to be considered valid. Each state is in charge of making its own standard operating procedure, but they all must follow the 4th amendment. That means that warrants need to be for specific people for specific crimes in order for them to be considered legal warrants. Some states are more strict than others about what’s required to appear on a warrant, and some states even go so far as to throw warrants out entirely if they’re filled out incorrectly.
In the state of Illinois, there has to be reasonable suspicion that the suspect has committed a crime in order for a warrant to be issued. That can mean a lot of things, depending on what kind of evidence is available. If there’s video evidence, DNA evidence, and maybe some other hard evidence like the suspect’s photo I.D. being found at the crime scene, odds are a warrant will be issued with ease. Sometimes all that is needed is eyewitness testimony, but there are a lot of factors involved to determine if that alone is going to be enough.
All warrants, no matter what state, are signed and issued by a judge or a magistrate. These people are the only people that have the proper authority to determine if a warrant would be considered reasonable, and it was set up this way to ensure that our criminal justice system had the proper checks and balances that it needs to protect citizens while still allowing law enforcement to get dangerous individuals off of the streets. This balance is incredibly important if we want to be sure that the police can’t just arrest people for being somewhat suspicious. Of course, it’s not a perfect system and people still get wrongfully arrested for crimes all the time but that’s a topic for someone else to cover.
As well as the signature, every warrant needs to have the name of the suspect if that information is available. If that information is not available, they have to include a reasonable description of the suspect. The warrant must also contain the crimes that are believed to have been perpetrated by the suspect, the county where the warrant was issued, the date the warrant was issued, and the name of the office where the warrant came from.
All of this information is needed to get the warrant out into police hands and be considered valid. Warrants are regularly thrown out if they’re filled out incorrectly, meaning that judges and magistrates need to be real careful about filling out these forms. A small clerical error can cause a lot of issues in a case, even allowing for the suspect to walk out of court without so much as a slap on the wrist. Fortunately, most judges and magistrates are aware of this and make sure to have one of their assistants look over the warrants before they’re sent out to double-check for errors.
Finding Warrants in Illinois
Finding warrants in Illinois doesn’t have to be hard. To quote Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith of The A-Team, “we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” You may be surprised to learn that this process can actually be boiled down to such an iconic quote from a critically acclaimed 80’s TV show, but it really can. There are two ways that you can go about this search and, as you may have gathered, one of them is the easy way and one of them is the hard way.
Let’s start with the hard way so we can end this article on a positive note. This may also come as a surprise, but the hard way to do this search is often considered to be using police databases to get this information. This method can be incredibly spotty by nature because some counties make this information incredibly easy to find and keep their databases super up-to-date and accurate. On the other hand, some counties either don’t provide this information upfront at all or they don’t update their databases regularly. This can cause a lot of problems for people that are looking to get this information.
Many people seek out an easier way, and if you were wondering if there was an easier way for yourself we have good news for you. There is a much easier method that you can use that is sure to lead you to a lot more information than you would get the other way. This method involves using a warrant lookup service. These services are highly specialized tools that can get you all of the information you need from anywhere and everywhere in Illinois in a matter of seconds. This method is already highly popular, but let’s go a bit more into detail.
Warrant lookup services have systems that are coded to take your search query and put it through thousands of public records databases. Once their system has completed its search, the website gives you the results all on the next page making it incredibly easy and quick. You could even do this kind of search while you’re getting ready to go to work, on a short break, or even just while you’re watching an ad on YouTube waiting for the video to be ready to watch. With convenience and efficiency all in one, it’s no wonder why this method is so popular.
Get the Information You Need, When You Need It
Warrant information might feel like something that’s incredibly elusive, but it doesn’t have to be. The internet has made it a lot easier for you to get all of the information that you need incredibly easily without having to worry about going through a long process. Warrant information is no exception to this, and it can be incredibly easy to get this information if you know the right places to look for it. Don’t waste your time looking for warrants the wrong way.