Background Check News

We often get asked “what kind of things do you find when conducting pre-employment screening?” This is usually followed up by “how many of the employees that you screen actually have criminal records?”

Simply put, most employees and potential hires are not criminals and usually the amount of criminal records we locate depends on the employer we are working for and the industry the employee is in.

A quick sample of the last 100 or so employees that we screened shows a variety of charges that are pretty consistent with what we have seen over the many years we have been doing this. Charges of drunk driving, driving while license suspended, drug offenses, assault and retail theft are almost always the most common. These are usually followed by domestic violence, larceny, check fraud and burglary.

It is almost impossible to put an overall percentage on the amount of applicants and employees have criminal records because of the variety of the jobs these people apply for and geographic location where they live. For a particular client who supplies workers for manual labor jobs, it is not untypical to have 25%-30% percent of their applicants turn out to have some type of crime on their record. It should be noted that most of these crimes are misdemeanors.

It is however unfortunate that we rarely see people with more serious offenses applying for jobs. Those with sex offenses and violent crimes on their records are not often seen, which is scary to think because they are becoming employed, which means that they are working for companies who do not conduct background investigations at all. A lot of the time, these individuals seek out these companies because they don’t have to fear the background screening process in order to become employed.

After years of telling children, “Don’t talk to strangers� we all too often essentially invite “strangers� into our homes to watch our children without really finding out who they are.  With horrifying headlines like, “Babysitter Convicted of Child Abuse�, “Babysitter Molested Child in Park�, “Babysitter Convicted of Murdering Child� and “Babysitter Arrested, Accused of Running Molestation Ring� no parent should feel that their neighborhood or home is immune to such a tragedy, but should know that by taking the time to look into not only the past but present criminal and social status of their potential sitter they can help protect their child.  The dangers associated with allowing a stranger into their house were all too real for the couple of a two year old girl in Minnesota, who posted an ad seeking a babysitter on Craigslist and hired respondent twenty three year old Aaron Jay Lemon.  While the parents were out Lemon assaulted the child and produced a pornographic video of the incident, to which he ultimately plead guilty in Federal Court to coercing a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct.

Should the sitter be watching the child at their own residence, the screening of the home’s occupants and its neighbors are just as important.  While the sitter themselves may not have arise any concerns, learning that their spouse, child or neighbor may be a registered sex offender or have a criminal background would be a red flag to say the least.  Tragically this was the case for at least twelve young children, ranging from fifteen years old to infancy, who were under the care of Coretta Jackson at her in home babysitting service in Pennsylvania when she knowingly allowed her live in boyfriend John Worman, who had a lengthy criminal history, to molest and rape them over a period of nine years, which he documented in over 1,100 pornographic images and videos.

Investing the time and resources into having professional investigators not only perform criminal background checks but through independent reference screening you can turn up information which would otherwise have gone unknown.  While your potential sitter may not have criminal convictions, arrests which are not referred for prosecution or have been expunged, are still available through court and police records, and could alert you to potentially alarming information, all of which experienced investigators have to knowledge needed to obtain.

The Christmas season is fast approaching and malls are beginning to hire seasonal workers; including Santa and his Elves. While some malls are taking the cautious approach by hiring Santa from companies who specialize in Santa placement, others are hiring off the street. Although Santa placement companies do exist, they are not the norm. These companies claim and probably do conduct detailed background investigations and drug tests on each of their Santas. What about the mall that you take your children to? Was Santa hired through a reputable company or does he fall into one of the more likely categories: a volunteer, a hire off the street or a friend of a mall employee who “does this type of work for fun around the holidays”. How can you be certain that the man your children are sitting on isn’t a criminal, or worse, a violent child predator? Although it would be difficult to obtain Santas name and run your own background check on him, you can contact the mall to see where Santa came from and if he was pre-screened for the job.

Hopefully, Santa was hired by the mall and run through a rigorous background investigation and drug panel. Despite this, thousands of unscreened Santas will be working at malls near you.

Another case of stolen social security numbers. A New Hampshire insurance provider may have had thousands of health care provider’s social security numbers stolen. This is the latest in cases where large quantities of social security number were stolen. It is scary to think that now doctors and health care works are at risk from the same technology that is supposed to protect them and their patients.

The use for these numbers may include identity theft and any number of additional fraudulent uses. Many of these numbers could be sold to illegal immigrants or organizations outside of the United States. Often times, stolen social security numbers are used by individuals who do not have the legal right to work in the United States or have criminal convictions that would be located had they used their actual numbers.

The cause of most of these thefts is likely human error; usually a stolen or misplaced computer or a failure to secure data.

In this high tech, high speed world, computers and software technology are replacing much of what trained human beings have done for years. Pre-employment screening and pre-employment background checks are no different in this regard. Many software companies and date brokers have found that through the use of complex software programs they are able to search multiple sources of publically available, online information at once. These sources of data often include state incarceration records, online court information, public government databases and annually purchased “batch information� from various information vendors. The searches that are then offered by these Data Brokers are usually labeled as “National Criminal History Searches� or “National Criminal Database�. The problem is that these “National Searches� only include limited information from select states, counties and cities. There is no guarantee that the county, city or even state that your applicant resides in was searches. On top of the drawbacks of not knowing what sources were actually searched; applicants and employees with common names often fall victim to false positive criminal records. This is also the result of having computers do the thinking for you.

With private investigators on the other hand, applicants are screened by qualified, trained and experienced private investigators. The information that is searched is “direct source� information, meaning that is comes directly from the court, city or state where the data originated. This minimizes the chances that there are data entry errors and also cuts down on processing time and costs. Additional benefits include the ability to feel certain that an experienced investigator has personally conducted the searches and reviewed the incoming information. During this process, we are able to catch false positives and make certain that the results that are being reported are accurate and pertain to your applicant and not someone else.