National Police Check Reference

Detects Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Check (National Police Check) certificate and application reference numbers issued through the ACIC National Police Checking Service. Matches a police check phrase near a reference / certificate / receipt value that identifies a specific check.

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: Medium confidence: the ACIC National Police Checking Service does not publish a fixed reference-number format, so detection anchors on a police-check phrase plus a labelled reference value and requires corroborating criminal-history / ACIC keywords for precision.
Jurisdictions: au
Regulations: AML/CTF Act (Cth), NDB Scheme (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)
Frameworks: ISO 27001, ISO 27701
Data categories: pii, government-id
Scope: narrow
Risk rating: 5
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?i)\b(?:nationally\s+coordinated\s+criminal\s+history\s+check|national\s+police\s+(?:check|certificate|clearance)|criminal\s+history\s+check|police\s+check)\b[\s\S]{0,60}?\b(?:reference|ref|certificate|application|receipt)\s*(?:no|number|id|#)?\s*[:#-]?\s*[A-Z]{0,5}[-/]?\d{3,14}(?:[-/][A-Z0-9]{2,12}){0,4}\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Check, National Police Check, National Police Certificate, ACIC, NPC, criminal history, police clearance, disclosable court outcome, accredited body, National Police Checking Service, criminal record, background check, spent convictions, Victoria Police

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Check reference number NPC-2025-4837291 attached — Medium-tier probe - check reference with record context but no issuing authority
National Police Certificate reference: 20259988771 issued by Victoria Police for the role — High-tier probe - certificate reference with authority and record context
Please quote police check receipt no ACIC5578420 when following up on the application — Medium-tier probe - receipt reference with follow-up context
Criminal history check certificate CHC-2025-000318 confirms no disclosable court outcomes — Medium-tier probe - certificate reference with outcome context
Police check reference NPC-4837291 — Low-tier probe - labelled reference without independent authority or record context

Should not match

The applicant provided a valid national police check last month for the position — Police check phrase with no reference value nearby
Please complete the criminal history declaration form and sign it before submitting — Criminal history declaration, not a criminal history check reference
Police officers attended the scene at 3pm to take statements from witnesses — Generic police prose with no check reference
Onboarding example: National Police Certificate reference 20259988771 issued by Victoria Police — Structurally complete but explicitly framed example

Known false positives

A police-check phrase near an unrelated reference number could match without being a certificate reference. Mitigation: Require corroborating ACIC / criminal-history keywords within the proximity window.
Sample certificate references in HR or onboarding templates may match the labelled form. Mitigation: The high and medium tiers apply the template-exclusion NOT-group to suppress sample and template content.