It's going to be difficult to perform a free criminal records check, and yes, you are absolutely correct, most of the websites advertising a free criminal records check on the search engines are anything but free. They say the search is free but to get the report you have to pay 
... cheeky buggers!
I do understand why some private websites charge for the convenience, this is because a lot of cost and time is involved in collecting, sorting and uploading information to the web.
I perform online criminal records checks frequently (and arrest record checks, divorce records, property records etc.) and I prefer to use the paid searches offered by private companies. This is because they the information they offer is taken from many different government and private sources from all the states throughout the country so my chances of getting complete and accurate information is a lot higher.
If I had to manually search all this myself, it would take many many hours between government buildings, long queues, plus, the likelihood that the info would be incomplete and/or inaccurate would be greater. And most importantly I would be limited to a search of only one state, this is because government departments collect information only for their respective states and not the whole country. There is no One single source free government source that gathers information from all states and allows you to do a countrywide search.
For this reason when searching such important information most people prefer to be sure that they are getting the most accurate and complete info and therefore prefer to pay for an online criminal records check .
From past experiences with many different online criminal records companies I now use Gov criminal records checks , they have one of the largest data bases of information, and supply quick and complete reports.
I hope that helped clear up the free criminal records check debate! :-)
Cheers and good luck with the searches.
