I know this is a controversial view, but I think employers should not be allowed to run background checks unless important for the role (government work, access to children, etc) and where it is important for the role it should only return the criminal convictions that might be relevant to the role.
If you were arrested for robbery when you were younger perhaps because you had a drug addiction then that person should have a right to serve their time and change their ways later in life without the state holding and distributing that to any potential employer, practically ensuring that individual is unemployable for a mistake they made in their youth.
The reason I think this is not a good assumption to assume that someone will be a bad employee simply because they did something criminal in their past. There are terrible employees out there who don't break the law. If we're so concerned about employers hiring bad employees then state should instead build a centralised database of bad employees and their reason for termination at previous places of work. I'd argue this would be more effective if we're concerned an employer might hire a bad employee.
Secondly, making it difficult for those who have committed crimes to get back into the workforce increases their risk of reoffending. Having a good job and a nice life to lose is a great reason to not commit crimes while having nothing to live for is a great excuse to do whatever feels right in the moment.
Best of luck op. If I was an employer I'd consider you if you had the skills and seemed like you could do the job. I have no idea why your past would be relevant to your ability to work outside of select roles.
The issue with this is that, if you ban employers from getting signal about employees, they will attempt to infer the same information by other means. This inference can often be unfairly biased. See related issues with racial discrimination caused by Ban the Box initiatives: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/upshot/ban-the-box-an-eff...
“show us your linkedin”
When I was involved in hiring I was told we couldn’t do any online research on potential candidates, like LinkedIn or Facebook, as it might give us information on them being part of a protected class. It’s easier to justify not picking someone based on merit when there is no knowledge of those things.
When I was looking for a job a few months ago, every single application required answering multiple questions about whether I'm Hispanic, and if not, which race I am. Additionally, some employers demand to know my sexual identity AND orientation, which I consider ludicrous and obscene. "Before we can consider your application, we must know who you like to have sex with!"
Ostensibly this is for some kind of reporting and statistics, but I feel bad while answering it every time (about 100+ times last year) and wonder if checking the box that says "prefer not to say" automatically disqualifies me.
I've seen so much vitriol from the pronoun army - the ones that don't need them but want to make it inclusive for the people that do need them - that I really wonder if its optional in the organizations/applications that ask
like "oh he didn't write a pronoun at all! he's not a culture fit!" we've decided to move forward with other candidates that more closely align with our qualifications
I find this particularly sad because of how harmful it is to trans people, especially trans people who are not "out". Forcing such people to specify a pronoun is forcing them to choose between "out yourself to everyone" and "disavow your own identity", and feels just awful. Not to mention people in earlier stages of understanding their own gender, who may feel a pointed distaste for the pronouns that they've always used without quite understanding why.
(To clarify tone, I'm not criticizing your comment.)
Therein lies the risk of adopting a fictional identity based on a nonsensical and unrealistic belief system.
Yeah I find it very obscene that they ask so so many obtrusive questions for "statistics"
I believe it’s compulsory or at minimum a way to protect themselves. I always choose the “rather not answer” option to every question that specifies it. The hiring managers rarely get to see the answers.
Oddly enough, I’m a white male and the most protected class “abuses” I’ve ever witnessed is when I’ve been told I wasn’t allowed to hire white males. I’ve actually been told I could not hire any one except a women before. My team was shorthanded for a year. I work in a niche that is probably 90%+ male and probably 70% white.
What’s also weird is, I usually hire through recruiters so when I tell them “only send me female resumes” the search just goes radio silent and I don’t even see what kind of talent I’m missing out on.
My response will be controversial: I am unsympathetic. Find the 9%+ of women. If they don't exist, they hire brilliant new grads and train them.
I go with “prefer not to say” and had no problem getting offers as a straight white cis male.
I’ve been a fairly high level hiring manager at multiple firms and those answers never mattered or were even visible to me; even at the VP level.
I wonder if anyone has gamed this system yet. Accidentally click "gay latino" to get through the HR filters. AFAIK HR won't send that metric down to the interviewers. So if you crush the interview loop then HR's hands may be tied.
I feel a concentrated program to always check “do not say” would be powerfully useful. There’s no way it doesn’t get seen/noticed. Proof: next time check a box that obviously doesn’t apply and watch if they notice.
Black people commit and are convicted of commiting significantly crime more than white people per capita. Whether this is due to racism, economics, or whatever is irrelevant, but when you can't check specifically for criminal records race becomes an excellent proxy. ~4% of white men will go to jail at some point in their life vs about 28% of black men. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/Llgsfp.pdf
That said, sex is also an excellent proxy since men commit far more crime than women. I wonder if women are more likely to get hired when criminal background checks are forbidden?
the article I quoted looked at high school dropouts and the number was 70% for black men. everyone understands that there are supporting statistics, and are simply trying to get the population to be more productive. there was buyin from the public sector in many cities by the voters, but then the private sector who is worried about who they are working with did not buy in. we are still looking for solution about how to get people productive, not whether it is accurate to assume someone has a conviction and be correct.
Easy. Do they spot a blank in your employment record? Tell them that you took time off to take care of a sick relative (mother is the best really). I have used it so many times. The Rosey and Richard Noseys shut right the fuck up every single time. If you really want to play with their emotions, tell them something awful about the end of life process. "Don't ask questions where you don't want to know the answers!"
I think crimes of violence are relevant to any/all roles.
I don’t want to hire or work with anyone who has ever at any point in their life used violence to attempt to solve problems.
I am fine with a percentage of human beings being blacklisted permanently from access to much of society. Violence has no place in our world.
I won’t even hire former cops. It is, unfortunately, illegal in the US to explicitly avoid hiring ex-military.
I don’t really care about whether or not they have “changed their ways” or “grown as a person” - there are lots of people out there to choose from who have never been violent.
This is an extremely privileged position.
In many environments violence is a part of life and necessary for survival.
One hypothetical scenario of millions:
You live and grow up in a high-crime area. Someone attacks you, a family member, etc. You defend yourself to protect your own life or that of a loved one. A cellphone video records the end of the encounter where you appear to be the aggressor.
You get an assault charge.
You work your ass off, beat a variety of odds, and make something of yourself. Many years later you’re passed over for a position simply because you came from an environment the person doing the hiring can’t possibly fathom. A person who has clearly never been in the position of “it’s me/my wife/my child or them”.
Same for ex-military. Are you aware that the United States military is often considered to be the “only way out” for a substantial portion of the enlisted? That something like 90% of military roles are non-combat related?
I’m not a violent person either but this is an extremely naive, judgmental, and downright discriminatory position.
It is definitionally judgemental and discriminatory. Hiring is the practice of discriminating against undesirable hires by using one’s judgement.
We can discuss whether or not it’s naive, but it’s served me quite well for decades thus far. The rest of your comment seems like a simple emotional appeal.
All hiring is discriminatory; there are more applicants than there are positions. Discrimination is not a bad thing, it’s just discrimination based on built-in traits (race, sex, national origin, etc) that is bad.
Discriminating in hiring based on the adult decisions of a human being is not only in-bounds, it is literally the whole of hiring. Some people studied software, some didn’t. Some dropped out of high school to start companies, some went to university.
This is one of the reasons I think religious discrimination shouldn’t be prohibited in hiring (choice of religion is not a built in trait, but a choice made as an adult). Same with work history - going to work for the armed forces is an unforced choice.
This sort of categorization and discrimination is a great and useful thing and we should do more of it. People are not interchangeable.
You could make the exact same argument against hiring from the ivys versus community colleges, yet I don’t see anyone arguing for blinding of university names on CVs, or hiding the fact of whether or not someone studied at university.
When hiring our job is to find the best possible candidate. It’s not wrong or bad to use all available data to do that. All else being equal, I’d much rather hire someone without a history of violence or history of work in violent industries.
Freedom of association is one of our most powerful tools for shaping the society in which we wish to live.
The strongest predictor of religios belief, worldwide, is the religion of the parents. If you've believed one thing for the first 18 years of your life, literally all your life up to this point, then it's hard to suddenly snap out of this at 18 and most people don't.
Do you think that all Christians in the US, including almost all of its members of congress, are Christian because it has such a convincing story?
Your examples of "choices made as an adult" (religion and joining the military) are quite commonly not choices, nor made as an adult.
Most kids are introduced to being religious because their parents are, and in those scenarios the child doesn't get to make an informed decision about whether or not the religion is something they want to be a part of (I don't think I need to explain why this is).
Similarily, you can join the military at 16 in North America, before you're legally an adult. People are also involuntarily conscripted into the military in some countries (like South Korea and Switzerland).
If you want to argue that it "doesn't count" when you're a kid or something similar, then you'll have to also explain way a child can change to become less violent or "less religious" and why an adult, for some reason, cannot.
So yes, your opinion is naive. It's missing all of the complexities of human society.
That's crazy. Cops prevent violence. Remember when a few cities tried having 'police free zones'? I think it was Portland that had murders within a week.
Better re-think that one.
Cop are violent on average tho. For example, they have much higher domestic violence rates then general population.
It is party result of them being above the law. And partly result of training that does not teach the de-escalation at all, but focuses on taking control, being dominant at all cost.
[citation required]
"Police violence calls for measures beyond de-escalation training": https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/police-violence-c... — "The police department in Camden, N.J., for example, was disbanded and rebuilt with a new vision in 2013."
"What the data say about police brutality and racial bias — and which reforms might work": https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z
"More Than Half of Police Killings Are Mislabeled, New Study Says": https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/police-killings-underc... — Researchers comparing information from death certificates with data from organizations that track police killings in the United States identified a startling discrepancy
"17,000 Killings by Police Have Gone Uncounted Since 1980": https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-many... — There have been twice as many deaths at the hands of cops than the federal government has reported, top medical journal finds
Search-fu is failing me, but ISTR there are studies with data indicating that when police are called for non-violent situations, there is a high chance (> 50%) of the aggressiveness of the cops making the situation violent, especially if disadvantaged populations (ethnic or gender minorities) are involved. This is especially true for property crimes (there was a rather visible case of someone murdered by a now former police officer — on camera no less — because he was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill for a pack of cigarettes, perhaps you remember it?)
Remember, the police do not exist to prevent violence. Most of the time, they’re not even intended to fully and properly investigate violence perpetrated against others. No, they are there mostly to (poorly) investigate property crimes against the ownership class. That they occasionally manage to perform good investigations doesn't really help with the times that they make things worse, don't do anything, or make cases up from whole cloth (perhaps you’ve heard of the police misconduct in the Central Park 5 case, or do you just believe the cops all the time).
That's not what he means, or maybe he does but I didn't see it that way. A cop or a former field military lives in violence day in and day out. Sometimes they even try to cope with substance abuse. Imagine getting in an argument with somebody like that ; I've been there, thankfully he was family and I don't think could hurt me but still, I've been thinking about that for weeks and lost a decent amount of sleep.
It's unfortunately the case with tough district/city people with criminal record. Once you live in violence for more than a couple weeks, and have to assume physical threat and retaliate, I'm pretty sure it changes you somewhat fundamentally, and unfortunately those people rarely have the proper support to adjust to civil duties.
Ever? A 50-year old who punched a bully when he was cornered at 20 years old, 30 years ago? Not saying that's great behavior, but perhaps understandable after having been cornered.
Or at 15? 10? 5? Somebody who at 3 years old kicked their older brother of 6 with a bunch of legos? Not going to hire that maniac? Do you yourself have a job?
There are many forms of violence against your fellow human beings. Not all of them are physical.
Those people who lawfully risk violence to serve the public are why you get to have your fantasy that a world without violence is possible.
Specifically about violence: people make mistakes, and people change, not everything is black and white.
White collar crime/theft and the indirect killing of people through occupational risks (ex black lung from mining), class traitorism (ex being a cop) is a much greater kind of bad than someone who got in a fight or something.
This shouldn't be controversial at all and I think your take is 100% correct wrt exceptions (gov work, access to children etc). The very "Once a felon always a felon" thing going on in the united states is a secret life long sentence that completely defeats the idea of redemption.
It's not controversial, because we've twisted freedom of association, in places people aren't allowed to even have a "Ladies Night" at the bar, chose who the rent to, etc etc etc. Barry Goldwater absolutely and unequivocally warned us of this.
Now because that freedom of association, freedom to chose who you do business with does not exist, we think this is reasonable.
However, it is not. I own a business. I should not be required to hire anyone I do not want to. Full stop!
And it doesn't have to be a race card thing, Say I hate the Iraq war. Say I would like to never hire any veteran who contributed to the deaths of over 1 million Iraqi Citizens. Or say I worked with Iraq war veterans in the past and I hate their military attitude. I am not allowed to do so. If I bought a company, I would want to fire all veterans. No, you are not allowed to do so.
I get that, but in this specific case it kinda sucks for you. We shouldn’t be making a system that penalizes offenders for life without explicit sentencing for such. Whether that information is useful to your business is relatively irrelevant to me because denying people proper employment does a lot more harm to them than the harm done to the people in businesses like yours by not penalizing them.
But you don't get it. you think the government is required to play God in every aspect of the economy, clearly.
So true, that really is exactly what I’m saying by saying you shouldn’t be allowed to dig up whether someone has been convicted of a crime in the past when hiring them. If that‘s playing god, then slap a robe on me and call me father buddy. I mean the state is the one providing you with all that juicy hiring information in the first place. Perhaps this gives you an unfair advantage in the free market, and I’m just a concerned libertarian.
that's right! Time to auction off Yosemite and put a roller coaster over Old Faithful
s/Yosemite/Yellowstone
Hell yeah we gotta get that bitch workin for us! The hell did nature ever do for america?
An assault charge is likely relevant for most positions.
If I hire a convicted felon with a track record of assault and they end up assaulting another employee or customer, I’d feel responsible.
The victim would probably hold me legally responsible.
I’d feel more comfortable hiring someone with a 100% track record of never having been convicted of assault.
If you disagree, is there any number of assault convictions that would change your mind? Or do you mentally wipe the slate clean no matter what?
Based on your response you most likely are not using Assault in the legal sense but in the Common Sense, but given the topic is legal in nature we should be using legal definitions.
Assault act of causing someone to reasonably fear imminent harm, what most people think of Assault they actually mean what the law calls battery which is actually causing physical harm.
Further I am not sure why we are focusing on Assault or battery, the OP said that was not the charge they were convicted of, and a Felony by definition is any crime punishable by more than 1 year of imprisonment which given the "Tough on crime" provision starting in the 90 makes a HUGE number if non-violent offenses felonies, as something a simple a playing your music too loud could be in some circumstances classified as a felony (often charged as " Nuisances" which is many states is a low level felony)
Most people have "felon" associated with violent crime, or serious crime, but unfortunately in our over criminalized society most people commit as many as 3 felonies a day not even knowing it.
The OP is inconsistent with their information as they write that they were literally released on assault charges:
Legal definition of both assault as well as battery is state dependent.
I think it really depends. Someone who had an a assault conviction at say 18 and is now 40, is a different situation from someone who very recently assaulted someone (but also how could you expect someone to change if they're never given a chance).
There's also the negative case of someone who has assaulted someone but was never caught, you can't safely eliminate that because there's no record of it.
Assault is also not always what you might imagine. It doesn't require physical harm or even contact. Just putting someone in fear of harm can be assault. E.g. a disagreement getting heated and someone saying "I'm going to kick your ass" is technically assault. As is brandishing a weapon or making other threatening gestures even without physical contact or harm.
Technically, sure. But you're not going to sit in prison for years such "technical" cases. So, somebody who did sit must supposedly have done more than that.
Second, I rather not have colleagues who are making threatening gestures or threaten to kick someones ass. I'm slightly appalled by the normalization of this kind of behavior.
Criminals who don't reoffend (even for things like assault) within 5 years are almost always statistically a better risk than the public at large.
I won't say that it's almost tautological, but it's pretty close.
If you can surpass conviction and probation, you are remarkably self-disciplined. Probation conditions are much more problematic than an actual job, and the penalty for failure is going back to jail.
A person who can pass that kind of environment is absolutely the kind of person you want working for you.
The elephant in the room is legal liability. If something happens with a criminal employee then the question is raised "what precautions did you take from letting this dangerous person into your workplace".
Does that really cause legal liability, though? The state/federal entity that released them from prison is essentially saying 'okay, we think this person has paid their dues and has a good chance at being a productive member of society.'
You have a lot of faith in public opinion. What would your family and friends think if they found out a teacher at your child’s high school had done 20 years?
Who cares what they think; would a judge consider me liable because I hired the ex felon? If so, aren't they admitting that the criminal system shouldn't be trusted?
You’re talking about the criminal system, I’m talking about civil suits.
I get the sentiment, and there is due diligence such as background checks required for many public trust positions for that reason, but is there really legal liability created immediately at the time of hiring someone because of their record- or does it just satisfy the models more when you hire someone that got convicted versus someone that has not?
And the hypothetical employer's answer to that question, in the model proposed by GP commenter, would be "I did all that was permitted by law, which of course did not include my right to access information on fully served criminal sentences", and thus the employer be rightfully exempt from liability.
If, as I understand is the case in the USA, employers are allowed to retrieve the potential criminal record of prospective employees after they have served their sentence, that's where one could argue the employer could be criminally liable for future wrongdoing by their employee.
It should be like a credit report. If it's been at least 7 years since your last public criminal record, they should then just fall off your "report," and no longer be visible except to the courts.
It used to be that you could pay your debt, and unless your crime was infamous, the "memory" of it would fade from society rather quickly. The internet and private databases have definitely hampered this facility and perhaps it should just be regulated with the same forthrightness we apply to credit decisions.
Many companies handle background checks in exactly this manner; it’s common for seven years to be a cutoff where they stop caring.
Which is excellent, and should make it easy to codify that into law.
Think again. Historically, codifying workers' rights into law requires either a material benefit to powerful employers or decades of brutal sacrifice from working people who risk their lives in mass strikes.
Soft on criminals is not usually a vote winner.
FYI: As I understand, Japan is five years. After which, you can safely answer that you have no criminal record. Also, except for public media, it is basically impossible to run a criminal background check in Japan. There are few exceptions for things like C-suite level jobs and certain gov't jobs.
Depends what the crime is.
I have a relative who spent time in prison because she tried to kill her mother with an insulin injection who got out and got a job as a nurse working at a nursing home. She lied on her job application about felony convictions but only got found out when her mentally retarded sister showed up at the emergency room with an insulin overdose. It said in the paper she was stealing meds from the controlled substance locker and I believe it because she was stealing her grandson’s ADHD meds too.
I believe we should give felons a chance but the above case is one where not doing a background check looks like malpractice.
I'm mostly on board with your proposal as I've seen a felony speeding conviction stop a friend from getting tech jobs over 5 years after it happened. His situation would have been totally different if he was caught 2 weeks before, it wouldn't have been a felony but the state arbitrarily changed the law. He didn't wreck, cause a wreck, or wasn't participating in street racing.
In a case like that it may be worth the cost of the legal fight to get it expunged.
That is presuming they could afford that cost. The effective purposes of the system are to keep the lucrative private prison industry flush and to maintain what Karl Marx called an "army of surplus labor" to keep wages low.
Wow, a felony? I know in a number of states you can get a misdemeanor for bad speeding, but a felony without harm, or endangering or dui or anything likd that sohnds extremely heavy. Which state is that?
was it speeding plus reckless or evading an officer? If not, what state will press felony charges for straight up speeding?
Was he endangering the lives of others? Was it his first time?
The funny part about your third paragraph, is that if someone took you up on this "bad employee database," it would look a lot like China's Social Credit System. Which is probably not desirable. (And maybe the other funny part would be just how many of the public employees who would otherwise be in charge of administering this database, would end up being in it!)
Nonetheless I agree with the point you seem to be making rhetorically, which is that the reason this is a failure is because one thing (criminal record) is being used as a proxy to measure another (job qualification).
And perhaps a larger point, given that things are the way they are, would be that our society cares only about punishment, not rehabilitation of individuals and not even (surprisingly) helping business.
Even funnier is that there is no Social Credit System in China, not the way you think there is. There is no record of small offences by the billion and a half Chinese, we're barely even able to maintain proper records in general, let alone useless fluff like a score for each citizen.
I invite you to read this: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/15/china-social-credit-sys...
I quote: "Contrary to common belief, the cities mainly target companies, not individuals. Nonetheless, legal representatives of a violating company are also included in the blacklists to prevent reoffending elsewhere or under a different company. Nationally, about 75 percent of entities targeted by the system end up on blacklists because of court orders they have ignored—the so-called judgment defaulters. The remaining companies are typically collared for severe marketplace violations—for instance, for food safety infringements, environmental damage, or wage arrears. But much of these cities’ day-to-day use of the SCS is banal thanks to the system’s fragmentation and inflation of results."
The gist of it is that it was a grading system for businesses, to distinguish the bad payers, often bankrupts people restarting business over and over. This is ofc not great because we would need a "start over" mindset like in the US, but stop reading buzzfeed-like news about this thing, it's a bit cringe.
We are oppressed maybe, but not THAT good at it. Most of the censorship in China is self inflicted and networked, from the bottom, think "shhh don't say that you'll be in trouble" or "I prefer not to answer that question, wink wink". No need for complicated expensive systems diverting taxpayer money away from the pockets of our dear leaders, when a simple 2-hour interview of one person at the police station can silence an entire social graph of hundreds of people for months :)
My understanding was that financial info was the primary thrust of it these days, i.e. what we call plain old credit scores, without the "social." But I remember 15 or 20 years ago when they announced their ambitions for it, and I just realized, that announcement, and every panicky headline back then, right down to even the soberest Wikipedia article now, all tend to speak of the system in terms of its ambitions. So that's a good perspective, thanks.
Why would government work automatically allow for a background check? If anything, government should be more neutral than private employers who should be allowed to use their own discretion when spending their money. Government procurement is so focused on appearances. I'd definitely support government not discriminating based on crimes for which someone had paid their debt to society.
I agree with the previous persons point, which you just flat out disagree with but for some reason veil in some private vs public wording.
Many government functions handle data that the private sector probably shouldn't, and you can't easily choose other govenment providers.
Many private sector companies handle data that the general public probably shouldn’t. Extending special protections to the state that are not allowed to private employers is ridiculous and unsafe.
Companies like credit bureaus or banks or the telcos or airlines or hospitals are effectively arms of the state at this point. You don’t get to opt out of the oligarchy with consumer choice.
It should be up to the employer. If one company thinks that a past conviction is irrelevant while other companies think a past conviction is disqualifying, then the former may get the employee at a better rate, the company will thrive depending on whether they were right, they'll have more resources to hire ex-cons, and other companies will follow suit.
A blanket law that forces all companies to hire employees without considering information they think is important is really inefficient. Just recently, governments and people were complaining that rideshare companies weren't being exclusive enough! If you think new laws will find the optimal policy for all companies, you are incorrect!
It's also overreaching. Freedom of association is important. The owner of a Jewish deli shouldn't be compelled to hire a formerly convicted neo-Nazi.
Who cares if they were convicted? That detail is shoehorned in here to make it sound like a good example when it isn't. Neo-nazis are not a protected class, and so the deli owner would be entirely within their rights to not hire someone on that basis, with or without a conviction on their criminal record.
And honestly how often do they get convicted of say, a hate crime, that might show up on a background check compared to the number of neo-nazis in the country with clean records, or who get acquitted, etc.?
That would create a complex regulations where everyone if fighting over what is "required for the role"
The better, faster and easier solution is a path to quick expungement, this also has the added bonus of offering people an incentive to no re-offend.
IMO once you have completed all active punishment (ie you are no longer on parole or probation) your record should be sealed.
That would actually be illegal under most state laws as most State's have Anti-Black List laws to prohibit such lists from being created.
Um, that "incentive" is called not going to jail. Or more generally, behaving like a moral citizen. Just like for everybody else, ex-convict or not.
Just because you've been convicted before doesn't mean morals don't apply to you and you need extra candy to behave well. These kinds of arguments are making the case weaker to hire fellons, not stronger.
While I agree that people deserve an opportunity to move on from their past, I still want to know who I’m employing. It’s not just about crimes that may be relevant to the role. Who decides what’s relevant?
A crime completely unrelated to my business may be very relevant to someone I already employ. I have a small business where people are working in relatively close quarters. I don’t want to put a rapist, stalker or some other kind of predator in there with the young woman I just hired. If there was ever a problem that would be on my conscience.
There are all sorts of others I don’t want to deal with either. This is a place where the people I bring in will be around my family, my employees and my customers. I have a responsibility to look out for each of them.
All that said, I wouldn’t hesitate to hire someone with a criminal background if the crime is irrelevant or I assess the risk is low. I don’t care if someone got busted with weed or that they got a DUI 10 years ago. I don’t care if it’s a one time crime related to a very specific set of circumstances that’s unlikely to ever repeat. Or a bar fight, drag racing or dozens of other dumb lapses in judgment that can result in serious charges. But I do care that I’m able to make an informed decision.
The problem exist for corporations as well. A teenage girl, who was a former classmate and friend of my daughter, was murdered at work because she turned down a man's advances. She made formal complaints, but the bureaucratic corporate processes made it difficult to protect her or sufficiently separate her from the harasser/murderer. Even if the state is an at-will state, corporate policies and mismanagement often handcuff those involved to rectify situations before they get out of hand.
You’d be surprised at how many jobs felons can’t have.
Most jobs that need licensing (e.g.,electrician, plumber, even bartender, and many more).
As well as security, jobs which relate to firearms and many more.
EDIT: for clarity, legally - there are many jobs felons are prohibited from being employed as. So employers have the burden to ensure they only hire legally eligible employees (not hire a felon when not allowed). As such, background checks are how they ensure this.
How is that relevant?
Unfortunately, in America, a history of race and class discrimination in employment has created a culture that requires there be some way to summarily dismiss undesirables. Background checks are part of the toolset for routing around anti-discrimination laws. Without them, the system of nepotism and intra-group favor-trading that recruitment is characterized by breaks down; you'd have to actually hire people based on their qualifications. Qué horror.
We hired a guy who later billed for critical services through a shadow company. He used someone else’s name, resume and identity.
He was out of prison for a similar thing.
Guess what? There was no background check for the hire nor any vetting of the company.
Guess who found him out?
I mostly agree with that, but I think it should be more along the lines of standardization WRT job responsibilities. I.e. any job would be categorized similarly to how you put it, with categories like "handles money" or "access to children" or whatever.
Then, to do a background check, you just input those job categories and an applicants ID info and get back a "no adverse events" result, or otherwise get back info on only crimes relevant to the categories specified. My understanding is that is basically how some EU countries do it.
I think companies would welcome this sort of standardization (including how many years it would take for different adverse events to fall off your record) as it would help insulate them from claims of bias.
Out of curiosity, have you ever been responsible for hiring and managing a team?
I say this because my experience of hiring and employing people really shifted my opinion in favor of maximum diligence unfortunately.
it is not controversial, that's how it works in France at least: only you or authorized employers can access your criminal records. I guess it must be common in other european countries.