also called criminal record check · background check · certificate of good conduct
An official statement of whether you have a criminal record, required for many long-stay visas.
An official document stating whether you have a criminal record, and long-stay visas commonly ask for one. It has to come from the authorities, often from your home country rather than where you are now. Getting it issued and then apostilled from abroad is slow, so it tends to hold applications up.
Someone applying for residency is told to supply a clearance certificate from their home country, which they left months ago. Requesting it from overseas, waiting for it to be issued and then getting it apostilled drags on for weeks while the rest of their application sits idle.
Obtaining and apostilling one from your home country while abroad can take weeks, delaying applications.
The difference is the whole point, so here is each one in a line.
A police clearance certificate is an official statement of whether you have a criminal record, required for many long-stay visas.
Criminal record check by country is the same document under a different name in each place: an ACRO or DBS check in the UK, an FBI Identity History Summary in the US, and others elsewhere, so knowing the local name is half the task.
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