The Skinny On Employment Criminal Background Checks

Employment criminal background checks are a common feature of the applicant screening processes used by many employers today. Though many of us may submit to such searches without a second thought, it would not hurt you to know what happens when employment criminal background checks are made. Also quite interesting is why these background checks are being made in the first place and how they have become so common today.

When employment criminal background checks are conducted, requests are made by the employer or a contractor working on behalf of the employer to the pertinent law enforcement agencies. In industrialized countries laws that allow for public review of official records and with high adoption rates for computer and internet technology, this is usually not much of a problem as all that would be needed would be access to the database of a law enforcement body in a specific locality. In some countries, there are even repositories and databases linked to each other that would make searching the official criminal records of an applicant in all jurisdictions nationwide possible. Sometimes, criminal record databases of different countries are linked to each other, such as in the cases of the United States and Canada, and the many of the member countries of the European Union. This allows a criminal background check to be truly international and to transcend borders; a person convicted of a crime in one country may have his record readily available in other countries where he seeks employment.

Back before computers and computer networks became widely used, and even today in some places that have yet to adopt digital encoding of criminal records, running checks on anyone was a slow process that took up massive amounts of time and effort, so much so that only law enforcement bodies routinely did such and the private sector only ran or required employment criminal background checks for jobs that were especially sensitive. Computers networks have now made routine background checks on anyone feasible.

The reasons for firms conducting employment criminal background checks basically boil down to trust and acceptable risk, and prudence. Employment criminal background checks can allow employers to screen applicants that may have been convicted of theft, violent crime, or some activity that might be indicative of tendencies or behavior that may prove deleterious not only to the effectiveness and efficiency of the company, but also the safety and morale of employees already working for the company at present. However sometimes an employer may choose to accept applicants even with prior criminal records if they are willing to accept the risks associated with such a record, or if they do not consider the criminal acts in the record to hold any current relevance. An example of such a case might be a two-decade old conviction for minor crimes.

Employment criminal background checks are almost mandatory in some professions such as those that require the handling of large sums of money or contact with children. An employer for example would not want to hire a convicted embezzler for a job of the former kind or a registered sex offender for a job of the latter sort. In other words, this kind of background check can help determine overall suitability for certain jobs.

Lastly, employers use employment criminal background checks to prevent accusations of negligence in case of unpleasant workplace incidents between employees. When an employee with a history of violent crime on whom there has been no background check conducted for instance, commits assault against another employee, the company that hired the employee that committed the assault might be held liable due to its negligence.

Consequently, due to the now low cost of conducting background checks and a culture where people quick to bring others to court, employment criminal background checks have now become very commonplace.

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