Employee background Checks

Employee background Checks

Checking a potential employee’s criminal record is a tool that more and more employers are using today as a way to ensure the highest levels of ethics in the workplace. Criminal records can help a specific industry locate the personnel they are needing to attract. For example, a medical setting with access to pharmaceuticals needs to be able to research a potential employee for past drug offenses. A criminal record check is most often required on jobs that have a high level of trust required or access to sensitive materials. These checks are often used by employers as a means of objectively evaluating a job candidate’s qualifications and to identify potential hiring risks. There are several types of criminal record searches available to employers, some more accurate and up to date than others. Many websites offer the “instant” background check, which will search a compilation of databases containing public information for a fee. There are also other database-type criminal searches, such as statewide repositories and the national crime file. A commonly used criminal search by employers who outsource is the county criminal search.

While there are many bonuses to prescreening potential employees there also can be some drawbacks. Some states have official “statewide repositories” that contain criminal history information contributed by the various county and municipal courts within the state. These state repositories are usually accurate so long as the state requires and supervises the uploading of data from the local courts. Some states make reporting to the repository voluntary. The information obtained from these repositories can be incomplete and the use of this information has associated risks.

The federal government maintains extensive criminal histories and acts as a central repository for all agencies to report their own data. NCIC (National Crime Information Center) is one such database. Generally, and with a very few exceptions, the records compiled by the federal government are not made available to the private sector. Some private re-sellers claim to offer an NCIC record search. In most cases these claims are fraudulent. Though NCIC records may not be available to private sector companies, they still may hold very accurate criminal records bought from other reporting agencies.

Written by Danny Childs on November 3rd, 2009 with no comments.
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