Running a criminal report on a prospective tenant can be a valuable tool in assessing a tenant's candidacy for your rental property. If a tenant has a criminal record, you may want to consider the specific nature of the tenant's criminal history before deciding whether or not to offer the tenant a lease on the rental. Criminal Reports are generally regarded to be accurate; however it is possible for inaccurate data to appear on a tenant's criminal report. Criminal Reports use the tenant's name, state of residence and birth date to ascertain the tenant's identity; however, if another individual had the same name, birthday and lived in the same state, it's possible that the Criminal Report could return data for both individuals rather than just on your prospective tenant