Getting yourself an arrest warrant is not something that is going to bring you much fun so anything that you can do to avoid it has to be a good thing. Here are some tips to help you to avoid warrants and how to find out if you have any.
Avoid getting arrest warrants if you can and make sure you know when you have one
Not all arrest warrants can be avoided because they are completely out of your control. You can make sure that you find out about them early enough to find a lawyer and deal with it before the police come knocking on your door in the middle of the night to drag you away to jail.
It is possible to avoid some warrants however and you should do everything that you can to make sure that you don't end up with one. You don't want to get arrested for a silly oversight do you?
How to avoid Bench Warrants
Bench warrants are similar to arrest warrants. If you get one then you can expect that the police will eventualy come after you to take you in. The main difference is that a Bench Warrant is issued by a court and an arrest warrant is issued by the police.
If you were told to attend court and you missed the appointment then a Bench warrant can be raised. The court can issue a warrant for you if you don't follow their instructions at any point during or after your court case. If you were given a fine or community service to carry out by the court and you fail to pay or do the work then the court will issue a Bench warrant.
It's easy to avoid getting a Bench warrant. All you have to do is follow instructions. If you turn up in court when you are told to and you accept your punishement,
pay all your fines and do your community service then the court will have no cause to issue a warrant for you.
If you have to do community service as part of your judgement then make sure that the court has been informed when you have completed the work. This is a silly mistake to make and one that's easily made. After all you've paid your debt to society so that should be the end of it right? Wrong, if you do the service but the court aren't informed then they will assume that you haven't done it and guess what? they will issue a Bench Warrant for you.
How to avoid an Arrest Warrant
The best advice I can give you here is to obey the law at all times. Don't steal, don't be violent, don't do drugs, don't drive faster than the speed limit, don't park in places where you should not... Get the picture?
The problem is that you can't allways avoid an arrest warrant because the police can issue one for you at any time. You don't even need to have committed a crime for this to happen. The cops just have to think that you did it. What this means is that you might not even be aware that you have an arrest warrant because you haven't been notified yet and you can't remember breaking the law.
Warrants for arrest might be issued against you for several reasons. You might have driven through a red light and not noticed. You might have been exceeding the speed limit and the letter hasn't got to you yet. You might have committed some serious crime or someone has stolen your identity and committed a crime for you.
It's hard to avoid Criminal identity theft
Criminal identity theft seems to be getting more and more commonplace. Someone pretends to be you and goes off and committs a crime. If they get caught then they give the police your details and skip bail. In this situation an arrest warrant will be issued in your name and the police will come looking for you instead of the criminal who realy committed the offence. This is one of the worst situations to be in because you never know when it's going to happen or in which state the arrest warrant is going to be issued in.
If you have a warrant for your arrest for something that you did not do then the best you can do is to make sure that you find out when a warrant is issued on you. If you are aware of the warrant you can get yourself a lawyer and hand yourself in voluntarily before the cops come and drag you off in handcuffs.
Finding out if you have an Arrest Warrant
If you have an arrest warrant then eventualy you will have to appear in court to answer the charge. You will be in a much better position to argue your case effectively if you have voluntarily given yourself up because this shows the court that you have made an effort to comply with the law. So how do you find out if you have an arrest warrant or not?
The easiest and by far the most convenient way to check for arrest warrants is to use an online public records database. Public records from thousands of different sources can now be accessed from a single website to do background checks and find out information on almost anyone including yourself. Arrest warrant details are included in the information that will be made available to you. These websites very powefull so use them wisely.
