Criminal Records check vs. internal Government sanction lists

BestHire Position Paper. As an employer, the federal "Fair Credit Reporting Act" requires a procedure to be followed that allows an applicant to receive copies of all reports used when make a hiring decision. As well as the right to dispute an inaccurate report. As a standard, our industry association, National Association of Professional Background Screeners recommends background checks whichinclude criminal records from were the applicant has lived. Therefore, our industry will process the applicant to determine where they have lived as an adult. Internal government sanction lists do not allow for accuracy based on identifiers such as name changes and matches based on other physical descriptors. An internal Governent sanction list may indicate a potential match nor does it indicate if a party was found guilty in a court of law. Therefore, a sanction maybe a department regulation but not necessarily a conviction in a court of law. Our results deal with state and federal records of conviction. Also due diligence is processed as an private industry standard to ensure the applicant does not have a conviction under another name and or in another state as well. US citizens are very transicient and therefore other state venues must be checked as well. The US National Sex Offender registry today shows 237 names found under "John Smith". Better than 30% of those found have more than one alias as well. There is also 155 offenders found today using the alias name of "John Doe" when arrested. For these 2 main reasons, the private industry must be diligent to protect all parties involved. An good example of harmony is the US Federal Office of Inspector General. The OIG requires any applicant applying for employment or contract work through a company that bills MediCare and or MediCaid shall process that applicant against the OIG sanction list. BUT does not stop their nor limit that to be the only or last check being made. Carl Slicer, www.BestHire.com