Overview
Live Scan is electronic fingerprint capture. A person places their fingers on a scanner rather than being rolled in ink, and the images are transmitted directly to a government agency, which uses them to retrieve that person’s criminal history record.
It is the only component of a background check that identifies someone biometrically rather than by name, and that single difference gives it a profile unlike every other search. It is extremely precise about who a record belongs to, and it is not available to most employers.
A Method, Not a Search
Live Scan is how fingerprints are captured and submitted, not the background check itself. The check is a fingerprint based criminal history search run by a state agency, often forwarded to the FBI for a national record. Live Scan is the front door to that process, and the terms get used interchangeably even though they describe different things.
The distinction matters because the quality of the result has nothing to do with the scanner. What comes back depends entirely on which agency was queried and how complete that agency’s records are.
What Fingerprints Solve
Every other criminal search in a background check begins with a name, and a name identifies nobody with certainty. Common names attract records belonging to other people. Records filed under a former name are missed. Courts that publish limited identifiers make confirmation slow and sometimes impossible.
Fingerprints remove that problem almost entirely. A match is to a person, not to a string of characters, and it does not matter what name the record was filed under or what name the applicant uses now.
This is why fingerprint based checks are required for the positions where a misidentification would be most consequential, and why they are the standard for licensing and for work with dependent populations.
What Fingerprints Do Not Solve
A fingerprint check is more precise than a name search. It is not automatically more complete, and assuming otherwise is the most common error people make about this component.
A criminal history record held by a state or federal agency is built from what agencies submitted to it. Fingerprints are usually taken at arrest and submitted at that point. The disposition, meaning what the court ultimately decided, has to be reported separately, and a substantial share of records in federal criminal history files lack that final outcome.
The practical result is that a fingerprint check can return an arrest with no visible resolution, in a case that ended in dismissal or acquittal years earlier. The record is accurate about the arrest and silent about the conclusion.
A county criminal search has the opposite profile. It reads the court’s own file, which contains the disposition by definition, but it can only look where an address history points it.
Neither method dominates. Fingerprints answer who with confidence, court records answer what happened with confidence, and the two gaps are different.
Who Is Allowed to Run One
Fingerprint based criminal history checks are not open to employers generally. Access is restricted to purposes authorized by law, and an employer cannot obtain one simply by deciding it would be useful.
Authorization comes from a statute, either federal or state, that permits fingerprint screening for a defined category of work. Common categories include:
- Education and childcare
- Healthcare and residential or long term care
- Work with older adults and vulnerable populations, including many volunteer roles
- Law enforcement, public safety, and government positions
- Licensed occupations, where the licensing body requires it
- Certain financial and security roles where a statute or regulator requires it
Each authorized purpose carries an agency identifier that must accompany the submission. That code tells the receiving agency which statute permits the check and what may be released, so the submission cannot be made without it.
Because eligibility is set by statute, the answer differs by state and by role. Our State Laws Overview covers how state requirements differ.
How the Process Works
| 1. The request form | The employer, agency, or licensing body provides a form carrying the agency identifier and the reason for the check. Without it, no site can process the request. |
| 2. The appointment | The individual attends an authorized location, which may be a law enforcement agency, a licensing office, or a private site approved to capture prints. Government issued photo identification is required. |
| 3. Capture | Fingerprints are scanned electronically. No ink, and the images are checked for quality at the time, which reduces rejections. |
| 4. Transmission | The images and the request information are sent to the state agency that holds criminal history records. |
| 5. Search | The state searches its own records and, where the authorization extends that far, forwards the prints to the FBI for a national search. |
| 6. Response | Results are returned to the authorized recipient named on the request. |
Turnaround is typically days rather than weeks, and a state only check can return faster than one that includes a national search. Fees are set by the agencies involved and by the site that captures the prints.
Where the Results Go
Results are returned to the entity named as the authorized recipient, which is frequently a licensing board, a school district, a state agency, or a designated official rather than the hiring manager.
What that recipient receives is often a determination rather than the record itself. Many programs report whether the individual is cleared or disqualified under the applicable standard, without disclosing the underlying criminal history. The employer learns the outcome and not the detail.
This is a meaningful difference from an ordinary background check, where the employer receives the report and evaluates it. Under a fingerprint program, the evaluation is frequently made by the agency against criteria the statute sets.
Where a screening company is involved in submitting prints or delivering results, additional obligations can apply to that arrangement. The rules governing fingerprint programs come from the authorizing statute and the administering agency, and they sit alongside the federal consumer reporting requirements described in our FCRA Overview rather than replacing them.
Ongoing Arrest Notification
Because a fingerprint is on file after an initial check, some programs offer continuing notification. If the individual is arrested later and fingerprinted, the agency notifies the enrolled employer or licensing body.
This is common in education, healthcare, childcare, and licensed occupations, where the concern is not only who a person was at hire but whether something changes afterward. Availability, enrollment requirements, and what triggers a notification are set by each program.
Commercial services offer a similar capability without fingerprints, working from monitored record sources instead. Our page on Continuous Monitoring covers how those work and how they differ.
Correcting an Error
An individual can obtain a copy of their own FBI criminal history record and challenge information in it. The process runs through the FBI directly and, where the disputed information originated with a state, through that state’s agency.
The most frequent correction is not a wrong record but an incomplete one, specifically an arrest showing no disposition. Supplying court documentation showing the outcome is how that gap gets closed, and doing it before applying for a position that requires fingerprint screening avoids the delay of doing it under pressure.
Where a determination is made by an agency rather than an employer, that program usually provides its own route to contest the result, separate from the process for correcting the underlying record.
How It Relates to the Other Searches
| Live Scan | Biometric identification, restricted access, records complete on arrests and often incomplete on outcomes. |
| County | Name based, open access, complete case detail, limited to the counties searched. |
| Statewide | Name or fingerprint based depending on the state, broader than a county, dependent on local reporting. |
| National database | Name based, commercial, broadest reach, least authoritative. |
Where a role requires fingerprint screening, that requirement generally comes from a statute and is not a matter of employer preference. Employers subject to one commonly run a standard background check as well, since the 2 cover different ground and a fingerprint program often reports a determination rather than the information an employer needs to evaluate a position on its own terms.
Where the results of any check contribute to a decision not to hire, the applicable notice requirements apply. See The Adverse Action Process.