New criminal record check online service

Te Tāhū o te Ture - the Ministry of Justice (the Ministry) will soon be launching an online, secure and accessible criminal conviction history check service.

The Ministry provides a criminal conviction history check service to individuals and third parties. The service provides a person’s criminal conviction history subject to the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Act 2004.

The annual number of requests processed through the service has increased from 11,000 when the service first began, to now over 500,000. This growth is largely due to the increased use of criminal conviction history checks for pre-employment, training and licensing purposes.

The current service is paper-based and is a time-consuming, manual process. The new online service will mean:

• faster and more consistent timeframes for processing requests
• a simple flat fee replaces the current tier-based fee schedule
• the Ministry can continue to provide a timely and efficient criminal conviction history check service to our customers, now and into the future.

The new online service is scheduled to launch in May 2021.

Service customers will have the following two options:

Request your own criminal record under the Privacy Act

• Individuals can request their own criminal conviction history using the online service or can still choose to use the current paper form.
• Both the online and paper-based service will remain free of charge for individuals.

Request someone else’s criminal record (third party)

• Third parties must use the online service – the paper form option will only be available for individuals.
• To use the online service, third parties who meet the new contract terms can become registered users. Information about the Contract Terms will be provided in our February 2021 communications.

More detailed information about the new online service will be available early February 2021.