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Frequently Inaccurate Background Checks are Detrimental to Job Applicants

5/16/2012

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Earlier this week, the Chicago Sun-Times ran an editorial that is close to my heart.  They were calling for stringent accuracy standards on companies that perform background checks.  As they point out, thousands of job seekers have been denied employment because of mistakes by these background check companies, according to the National Consumer Law Center.

This information comes as no surprise to me.  Often, clients will come to me to find out if they are eligible to expunge or seal and they’ll have with them background checks performed by these private companies.  I always tell them that we can’t know for certain unless we actually pull the case information from the court records because private background check companies are notoriously inaccurate.

While the Sun-Times editorial focused on errors that reported crimes never performed by the applicant, this is only part of the problem.  People can also be harmed by what the background checks don’t show.  Many people will have a background check performed on themselves in order to find out if some old case can still come back to bite them.  They don’t realize that every background check company will have their own processes for research and reporting.  Some will look at a person’s entire criminal history, but for only the last 7 or 10 years.  Others will look into a person’s entire life, but only report convictions.  Others still, just felony charges.  When there is no standardization, there is no telling what criminal offenses the background check companies will find.  Throw in the high rate of errors and these background checks become highly unreliable.

The unreported “missing” cases can hurt people in a couple ways:  (1) Any arrest can affect a person’s eligibility for an expungement or sealing, so it is important to know every single charge a person has ever received.  (2) They can also lull people into a false sense of security that a case is no longer visible so there’s no need to clear it from their record.  Just because it hasn’t appeared on one background check, doesn’t mean that it isn’t coming up on others.

While there are some measures in place to try to prevent employment discrimination against those with criminal records, the Sun-Times properly points out that “…in the real world, job applicants may never know why they weren’t called in for an interview.  The Society for Human Resource Management says 93 percent of employers ran background checks on some applicants in 2010 and 73 percent checked all of them.”  So I applaud the Chicago Sun-Times for bringing to light the injustice that this carelessness can bring.

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Arrests at NATO Summit Protests Likely Clearable

5/14/2012

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With the impending 2012 NATO summit here in Chicago, many are concerned about possible clashes between the Chicago police and NATO protesters.  Indeed, the first set of arrests have already occurred a week before the summit.  But as this is no longer 1968, I don’t imagine we’ll see the level of violence that occurred in Grant Park.  I don’t believe anyone wants to see a repeat of that.

For those protestors that are arrested, most would likely be able to clear their record.  Typical arrests for protestors are for misdemeanor level charges like criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, resisting a peace officer, etc.  Often times these charges are dropped fairly quickly, as the main purpose of the arrest is usually to establish order in the given situation.  If the charges are dropped, then the defendant can expunge the arrest from their record so long as they have no prior convictions.  If the defendant receives court supervision, then she will be able to expunge the case as well, but will have to wait a couple years.  If the defendant has a prior conviction, or is convicted of this charge, then they will be able to seal the charge rather than expunge.

The concern for an arrested protester is to avoid convictions for violent crimes, such as assault or battery.  Convictions for violent crimes are not eligible to expunge or seal.  The only way to clear these from your criminal record is through executive clemency (Governor’s pardon).

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