The Catholic Church is no stranger to controversy, especially when it comes to background screening.  For years the public demanded better screening of Priests and other congregant workers.   These demands and other public pressures is likely why they adopted a policy a few years back.  However, as we can see here, when Ms. Collins was hired in June 2003, background checks were not common practice in the church.  Like we always say, money is easy(ier) to recover than ones reputation.   Careless oversight and lack screening policies have led them to where they are today.  As you will read later in the article, a simple criminal records check on Ms. Collins would have revealed a past recrod; According to court records, Ms. Collins was arrested in June 1999, and charged with stealing at least $46,000 over 16 months from AccuStaff, a Manhattan temporary employment agency where she worked as a payroll manager.

In Million-Dollar Theft Case, Church Worker With a Secret Past

Last month, the AP published an article titled, “When Your Criminal Past Isn’t Yours”, which ruffled the feathers of many in the background screening industry because they questioned the practices of the entire industry rather than the few that caused this issue they highlighted. And while the industry as a whole should not be cast in a negative light, the practices of a few continue to drag many of us down.

That said, I sent an email to both authors acknowledging that while the practices of some screening companies have led to events such as these, that the industry is not to blame, but rather the few who operate recklessly.  Below, is a copy of that email sent to authors Michael Liedtke from the Associated Press and Jordan Robertson, now from Bloomberg News.

Dear Michael/Jordan,

I appreciated your recent article, “When Your Criminal Past Isn’t Yours,” and I wanted to offer some additional information for your consideration.  Your article was very thorough and I largely agree with you — except in one respect: all background screening companies are not the same. There are companies committed to accountability and performing to the highest standards of professionalism.

Your article calls out a few background check companies for reporting  incorrect, and unverified information to employers, who then may use these inaccurate reports to deny people jobs, hurting innocent  people simply looking for work.  This is a problem.  There are companies that are careless and quick to pass along outdated or inaccurate information, that use only databases and don’t research actual court records and that simply scrape data off of court websites without checking it for accuracy. It’s these companies that give us all a bad name, pushing the idea that screening is a commodity.

There are reasons for this.  Conducting background checks is a complicated business. Employers are generally unaware of the nuances of local, county, state, and federal laws, their processes, problems or regulations. And that’s not their fault; it’s not their business.  But without this knowledge, and with all companies claiming to do the same thing, it’s easy to discount claims of service and accuracy and simply look at price and whiz-bang technology systems.  On the other side, these screening companies know this and their use of terms like “criminal search,” “instant,” and “national background check,” combined with a bells and whistles software allows them to perpetuate a higher degree of accuracy than their processes actually provide.

There is no doubt that both individuals and employers are harmed by careless background checks and companies that operate either on the fringe or outside the parameters of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

It’s because of all this that EmployeeScreenIQ takes a “no shortcuts” approach to screening.  It is the foundation for how we operate our business and is employed at every level of our organization in order to advance informed hiring decisions. One of the worst things one can do in the background screening process is to make a hiring decision based on inaccurate data. Rather than just reporting raw, unconfirmed information, EmployeeScreenIQ takes the necessary steps to ensure the results are reliable, accurate and up to date.

Before reporting criminal records, our Public Records department actually confirms that the information we’ve found belongs to the applicant. They also actually consult our 50 state compliance guide to ensure that the record is legally reportable. The same methods apply to verifying other pieces of adverse information such as employment and education verifications. We are willing to point out our dispute rate — only .017% of all county criminal checks we complete are disputed.

EmployeeScreenIQ has successfully achieved compliance with the National Association of Professional Background Screeners accreditation program and is formally recognized as Background Screening Credentialing Council Accredited.  This recognition affirms our commitment to excellence, accountability, high professional standards and continued institutional improvement. Less than 2% of employment screening companies have earned this distinction and we are pleased to share such a small stage.

Accreditation is an important seal of approval that all companies should look for when choosing a provider as it is the only program in our field that proves their procedures are compliant with industry best practices. It also affirms security protocols, industry knowledge and expertise.

I would be happy to discuss any of this with you at your convenience, answer any questions you may have and be a resource to you for future stories. Thank you again for keeping this issue in the public eye and I look forward to reading more of your work.

I just read a great, albeit long article in my current edition of Fortune Magazine about fraudster Barry Minkow.  This story has it all: from love, crime, betrayal, corporate greed, personal greed and rags to riches, to prison stripes!   A simple blog posting will not do this story  justice. Fortune did a great job, Kudos to the author, Roger Parloff.

Why am I writing about it and what does it have to do with background screening, employment checks, criminal searches, credit reports or anything to do with background checks? One sentence, captured me to read on and think about our industry and the current debate of criminal recidivism.  That sentence; “His story is hard to read without pondering the question; Is Character Destiny?”  Is it?  I don’t know, I don’t think it is overall.(Character being your destiny) I mean it’s a strong general statement and could unintentionally stereotype some ex-criminals.  Is Character Destiny? It really begs the question; if you have a previous record and you just have the type of character that says, “Let’s make a quick buck. Do it the easy way and break the law,” do you have any chance at redemption?  It plays into what many of us in the industry argue all the time; there are just some bad people out there, period.

I promise, I will get to the link.  One more thing that caught my eye and that definitely ties him to the employment screening industry was one of his past side businesses.  In 2008, Minkow created a business that would comb through databases looking for inflated educational credentials on the part of corporate officers.  Great idea, right?  Sounds like he could have been a pioneer in the screening industry, one of us, one of the good guys!!  Well, he took this a step further.  When he found a discrepancy he would short the stock, leak the story to a reporter and when the priced dipped, make a nice profit.  He exposed resume embellishments at more than a dozen companies, including MGM Mirage, Broadcom and EchoStar.   Yeah, not one of us, not one of the good guys….not so much!

Okay, as promised, Click here to read the full story!

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Shawshank Redemption starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman.  For those of you living under a rock, it’s a story about a man named Dufresne who is sentenced to prison for a murder he didn’t commit.  Andy was a highly educated man and when the prison warden caught wind of this, he used him as an accountant for the illegal business he was running through the penitentiary.

If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it.  You won’t be disappointed.  It’s one of those films that you could watch over and over again and never get tired of it.  Well, clearly some folks at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) think so.  Check out the Chicago Tribune story below.

Your tax return practitioner, certified under a new U.S. Internal Revenue Service registration program, could be a jail bird.

The background check requirement is still “under study,” and the IRS has no timeframe for announcing a decision, an agency spokesperson said on Thursday.

The truth is that these people might be very good a preparing tax returns, but let’s think about the exposure here: Social Security Numbers just waiting to get stolen, people’s home addresses along with a full understanding of their financial situation, birth dates, etc.

I cannot begin to tell you how much money companies like ours have spent complying with government regulations on data privacy, and in truth, I don’t begrudge it.  It keeps all of us safe.  But how can the same government allow this to happen?  What type of background check do you think these people would have to undergo for this type of job if they weren’t in prison?

By Jason Morris, President & Kevin Bachman, VP of Quality Service.

We have made a conscious effort over the years to NOT make our blog a self-promotional site.  In fact, it’s with great care that we let you draw your own conclusions from the information that we put out.

On Sunday a story hit the AP wire that has made its way around our industry.  The article, points a wicked finger at the screening industry as dangerous, lazy and careless.  The article calls out a few background check companies, also known as Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRA’s) for reporting incorrect, and un-verified information to employers. Employers use these inaccurate reports to deny people jobs, hurting innocent people simply looking for work.

We love to take strong positions against inaccurate reporting. We find no more pleasure than calling out news that is wrong, looking smarter than some reporter looking to make his bones by writing a careless expose… WE CAN’T DO THAT HERE.  The reporter was right in all aspects except one; WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME!

Are there companies that are careless and quick to pass along outdated or inaccurate information? YES. Are there companies that use only databases and don’t research actual court records? YES. Are there companies that simply scrape data off of court websites and don’t check it for accuracy? You guessed it, YES AGAIN.  It’s these companies that give us all a bad name; pushing onto employers the idea that screening is a commodity then sell the cheapest product possible to fit neatly into the world they’ve just created.

There are reasons for this.  Conducting background checks is a complicated business. The employers are generally unaware of the nuances of local, county, state, and federal laws, their processes, problems or regulations. And that’s not their fault. It’s not their business.  But without this knowledge, and with all companies claiming to do the same thing, it’s easy to discount claims of service and accuracy and simply look at price and whiz-bang technology systems.  On the other side, these screening companies know this; and their use of terms like “criminal search”, “instant” and “national background check,” combined with bells and whistles software allows them to perpetuate a higher degree of accuracy than their processes actually provide.

Last week we wrote about our experience at the Criminal Records and Employment Conference at Cornell ILR Law School in NY.  We wrote about the civil rights activists that were upset about all things screening.  We still stand tall and disagree with many of their positions; however, it’s stories like this that help us realize why they are so upset!  People are getting hurt everyday by these careless background checks and companies hiding behind loopholes in the Fair Credit Reporting Act rather than taking personal responsibility for their actions.

Its because of all this that EmployeeScreenIQ takes a “No Shortcuts” approach to all things screening.  “No Shortcuts” is more than just a tagline or fancy marketing campaign. It is the foundation for how we operate our business. This mantra is employed at every level of our organization so that you can make informed hiring decisions. One of the worst things you can do in your background screening process is to make a hiring decision based on inaccurate data. Rather than just reporting raw, unconfirmed information, EmployeeScreenIQ takes the necessary steps to ensure the results are reliable, accurate and up to date. Three fundamental principles of the Federal law WE choose to follow.

Before reporting criminal records to you, our Public Records department actually confirms that the information we’ve found belongs to your applicant. They also actually consult our 50 state compliance guide to ensure that the record is legally reportable. Believe it or not, the same methods apply to verifying other pieces of adverse information such as employment and education verifications. We’re all for streamlining the process and reducing turnaround time, but it should NEVER come at the expense of a quality product. Want proof that our methods work? Only .017% of all county criminal checks we complete are disputed.  (A dispute rate that this article points out screening companies are unwilling to publish!!!)

The proof is in the pudding.  EmployeeScreenIQ has successfully achieved compliance with the National Association of Professional Background Screeners accreditation program and is formally recognized as Background Screening Credentialing Council Accredited.  This recognition affirms EmployeeScreenIQ’s commitment to excellence, accountability, high professional standards and continued institutional improvement. Less than 2% of employment screening companies have earned this distinction and we are pleased to share such a small stage.

Accreditation is an important seal of approval that all companies should look for when choosing a provider as it is the only program in our field that proves their procedures are compliant with industry best practices. It also affirms security protocols, industry knowledge and expertise.

AP IMPACT: When your criminal past isn’t yours

This week I had the pleasure of going to New York City for the Richard Netter Conference on Criminal Records and Employment at the Cornell University ILR  School.  I had heard about the conference a few months back and was happy to join other representatives from the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS).  In what I anticipated being a complete hatchet job on the screening industry, it turned out that we agree on many more points than we disagree; and that’s a great start! The focus of the conference was a to have a better understanding of and a meeting of the minds on issues such as civil rights of former offenders, right to work, and other societal issues of the day related to criminal activity in the U.S..  The good news is there was a lot of broad range of topics discussed in this nine hour conference. The bad news is it has given me a lot to write about and Nick, even more to edit!

I anticipate that several posts will come out of this experience.  The first will be a general recap of the sessions and the questions raised.  I intend to drill down further on each of these issues and panels in future posts.

The keynote speaker was Cornell William Brooks, Esq.  Cornell is the President and CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.  Mr. Brooks is a civil rights advocate and frequent speaker on criminal reentry into the workplace.  Brooks gave an excellent speech, set the stage for the issues that would be discussed and touched on many of the topics that face minorities today when trying to re-enter society.

The first panel was, “What are the issues of uniformity/inaccuracy in the reporting of criminal records? How do Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRA’s) operate?” In addition to Montserrat Miller, the lobbyist for NAPBS, the panel also included scholars and a non NAPBS member screening company.  In my opinion this panel proved the importance of NAPBS membership, specifically because of the standards our members strive to achieve.  Professor Shawn Bushway, a frequent speaker and author of studies on criminal recidivism gave an overview of his research and, what I believe to be, some conclusions based on very old data.  For instance, in his research he shows criminal repositories to have more accurate dispositions than actual county court records.  Those of us in the screening industry and many HR professionals know this couldn’t be further from the truth.  Admittedly he says the data is older and needs updating.

The second panel, “Title VII, Adverse impact and criminal records as a selection device matrix approaches, and the uniform selection guidelines” was well received.  The panelists were mostly attorneys on both sides of the issues.  I felt the most impactful was P. David Lopez, General Counsel of the EEOC.  He raised many controversial issues, such as the EEOC not being convinced that negligent hiring suits are not as important as perceived discrimination of ex-offenders in the workplace.  Mr. Lopez made an assumption that negligent hiring lawsuits have been on the decline. Personally I believe that begs the question; are they on the decline because more companies are doing background checks?

After our lunch address we had our third panel, “What do employers need to know when using criminal records? What is relevant to hiring? Employer’s fear of negligent hiring suits.”  I was really interested in this panel mainly because a true industry perspective would be on the panel, a member of the NAPBS Board of Directors., he was also joined by Alfred Blumstein and Kiminoi Nakamura, authors of a oft-cited controversial study focusing on criminal recidivism.  This study followed 88,000 first time offenders from 1980 in the state of New York.  The study showed a very low rate of recidivism for these “first time offenders”, however the conclusion derived from the research is full of holes due to a number of scenarios that we not considered.  The study only covered first time offenders, it does not track crimes outside of New York, and recidivism assumes that the person has actually been caught. We have covered this study a few times in the past.

Our fourth and final panel had the most impact on the audience.  “Restoration Issues: What employment models work? Is ban the box an answer to refusal to hire?”  The final speaker on this panel was an ex-convict who spent 19 years in prison for a 1992 manslaughter conviction.  Still out on parole, Anthony Cardenales is now a supply chain manager at a well known recycling company. Mr. Cardenales is a poster child for giving someone a second chance and he gave an excellent speech to support it.  The owner of his company, WeRecycle, was also in attendance and gave a glowing recommendation for other employers to follow suit and give a chance to ex-offenders.  The tone was that background checks weed out possible good employees and employers should look beyond what is on a rap sheet.  I posed the question to him, “do you still conduct background checks?”  His indicated that he does.  He said that they are worried about theft and do their best to identify those with significant theft records.  I still struggle with giving a chance to someone who clearly killed another human being over someone who took property from another, but everyone is entitled to take their own risks in business.  The most troubling speaker was an attorney that made the claim that our industry uses extreme examples of sex offenders trying to work with children.  She made it look like folklore, like a boogey man that doesn’t exist.  Perhaps she has not been following the recent events at Penn State and Syracuse.  With over 700,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, all looking for work at some point, I hardly identify this as extreme.  Putting these types of offenders aside, she must have no understanding for the other violent, dishonest and non qualified people that might be trying to work for someone’s company.  We have always stated that there is a job for everyone, however, there is sometimes just too much risk when there is no protection to an employer, their employees or their customers .

There will be more to come on this conference in the coming weeks!

I, Jason B. Morris, PhD (From a diploma mill) recently came across an interesting article in today’s New York Times.  It appears that based on a recent court case in Texas, unaccredited schools are legal and are likely there to stay!  Tyndale Theological Seminary & Biblical Institute, a private Bible based learning institution with only religious course offerings recently won the right after a case allowing them to grant degrees.  In HEB Ministries Inc. Vs. Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Texas Supreme Court allowed these degrees to be granted.

Christopher Cone, the president of Tyndale called “a key victory for Christian education in Texas.”  But critics of the decision say it may have opened the door to turning Texas into a breeding ground for unregulated diploma mills, with institutions allowed to grant degrees without approval from the state or a recognized accrediting body.

According to the New York Times;  Mr. Cone said such fears were unfounded. “What you saw rise up immediately after the decision was not diploma mills,” he said, “but Bible institutes that had been struggling and were suddenly able to put themselves out there.”

Including a degree or education verification as a standard part of your organizations employment screening program is now more important than ever.  Any thorough background check should always include searches to weed fake diploma mills, this decision just makes this process that much more difficult, unless of course you use a professional screening firm to help!

For more on this story, click here!

We just published The Verifier XXIV, Fall 2011 Edition, a publication intended as an educational tool and information resource for human resource professionals or anyone interested in keeping abreast of recent employment screening and background check industry developments.

Highlights of this issue include the following:

Articles:

• Time to Streamline Your Background Screening Process? Check Out Our Latest Video
• No Shortcuts. Smarter Screening Equals Intelligent Hiring.
• Top Commercial Airline Flies High With EmployeeScreenIQ
• 2011 Background Check Turkey Awards
• Background Checks Gone Wild Hurt Us All

Announcements and Legislative Updates

• EmployeeScreenIQ Rated Top 5 Screening Firm in U.S.
• California Governor Bans Use of Employment Credit Reports
• EmployeeScreenIQ Announces Integration with Taleo Business Edition
• EmployeeScreenIQ Recognized as Fastest Growing Company

Check it out!

Over the past few years we have written countless posts about the EEOC and various State governments seeking to be progressive and give those with criminal records a second chance.  Their intentions are always good, however, we all know how this story ends.  I certainly don’t argue the merits of their ambition to make good for all in the world, but….the old adage; screw me once, shame on you, do it twice shame on me, seems to fit nicely here.

The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) has now come under scrutiny because they hired two men with previous criminal records.  Again, a valiant effort to progressively make the world a better place, but, as we have always said, not everyone is suited for every position.  Should these men have been placed in this particular job? Should they have been given a second chance? Not our call to make, however, I think the EEOC will have a position or argument if they make future decisions based on this situation.  Time will tell!

According to WPRI.com Eyewitness News; RIPTA hired two ex-convicts as drivers for their RIde program, which serves the elderly and disabled. The men had lengthy criminal records and had served time at the ACI. They said the men profiled in the piece are no longer behind the wheel of a RiDe bus, but it is unclear if they were given job placement elsewhere within the agency.

The entire story reminds me of an old quote by Albert Camus;
“The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”

RIPTA puts brakes on hiring people with criminal records

The head of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority has come under fire after the agency hired two men with criminal records to drive buses transporting the elderly and disabled.

Chief Executive Charles Odimgbe described it as a pilot program that has been discontinued. He said it reintegrated former criminals into society.

Thomas Deller, chairman of the agency’s board, praised the program. But board member Maureen Martin told Odimgbe that hiring men with criminal records raises passenger safety issues.

The Amalgamated Transit Union accuses Odimgbe of undermining bus service through attempted cost-savings.

The board on Monday did not discuss the hirings, first reported by WPRI. Deller says the board will take up the question another time.

The Senate Committee on Housing will investigate.