Relying upon self-disclosure to uncover Criminal Records is a risky proposition
Turnaround time for Criminal Record Checks can often be a point of frustration for organizations looking to screen their hires. Whether in the United States, Canada, Britain or elsewhere, these delays have forced employers to be creative in finding methods to onboard new staff quickly to avoid losing the best candidate.
While employers are faced with a predicament of taking on staff without appropriate screening, Girl Guides and local sports organizations are forced to cancel events or proceed without screening because there are not enough volunteers with checks in hand.
Unfortunately, desperate times have called for desperate measures, and some of these creative solutions are harmful shortcuts that jeopardize the safety and security of people and property.
Recently, it was uncovered that a nurse in Minnesota with a criminal record slipped through the cracks because they rely upon a self-disclosure model of screening. It seems the Minnesota Nursing Board doesn’t do a separate background check to verify the answers are truthful. When asked for an estimate of how many people may lie on the application, Shirley Brekken, the Executive Director of the state’s Nursing Board said, “I’d only speculate about that.”
Minnesota’s nurses are not alone however. There have been many recent examples of organizations relying upon the honesty of criminals.
A man in Britain recently won £1million on a new game show, even after revelations that he was a woman beater. ITV producers had let him on the show without proper background checks. Forced later to admit a conviction for assault, he claimed it was for an attack on a love rival who had been threatening him. In reality, he had been put behind bars for beating up a former girlfriend after they split up.
An Oklahoma man was hired as a school bus driver for five months while awaiting the results of his Criminal Record Check. Unfortunately, he was a convicted sex offender. According to Oklahoma law, an employer can hire an employee temporarily for up to 60 days pending the results of their background check. If it comes back clean, an employer can offer them a permanent position. Unfortunately, a background check that used to be completed in one to three working days can now take up to six weeks or longer to process.
Perhaps the most frightening example is that of some school boards in Canada that developed a new policy to combat increased turnaround times for screening.
Due to the delays, it was decided that volunteers in the schools could now sign a form with a Commissioner of Oaths verifying that a check is being done and then begin working right away.
“We tried to work from understanding the needs of the community in terms of safety for the school and the procedures with the Regina Police Service and what they need to do with what we need to still have volunteers in our schools,” said Brian Lach, assistant superintendent education services for RCS, noting that long wait times could mean volunteers weren’t available when needed.”
These examples demonstrate that the problem is not confined to one country, but the last example may be the most frightening.
Granted, most people do not have a criminal record and are not a threat to children, but let’s be honest – some people do pose a risk, and some people want to work with children for that very purpose. Why then do we rely upon the honesty of these people?
Oklahoma’s policy of issuing a conditional offer of employment pending the result of the search is one thing, but asking you to simply promise you are obtaining a check? Do they even ask if you have a Criminal Record? How do they follow up?
Well, Regina Catholic Schools added a second form that volunteers can sign from year to year to swear that there has been no change to their criminal record.
Are convicted criminals going to self-disclose new offenses and effectively turn themselves in to his or her employer and forfeit their employment?
Thankfully, their public school counterpart has it right. At Regina Public Schools, record checks must be submitted before volunteers and employees can start working with children.
Attempts to increase security, privacy and accuracy may have a negative impact on convenience, price and turnaround time, but employers need to find more effective and creative ways of screening staff. Recent history has proven that society can no longer operate on the honour system. In fact, pre-employment screening exists because relying upon the honesty of criminals is not the best policy.
“We were finding that a lot of our applicants weren’t being truthful,” said Mary Blubaugh, nursing board director in Kansas.
Even after the criminal record checks became standard operating procedure, the Kansas Nursing Board found a huge number of applicants were still lying about their past.
“Twenty-nine percent had a criminal history that was not disclosed on their initial application,” added Blubaugh.
Right now, Minnesota is one of only 14 states that doesn’t mandate criminal history checks before handing out a nursing license. Brekken said the Minnesota state nursing board doesn’t have the resources to do those criminal checks, but the board does recognize that’s something that needs to change.
Hopefully they change soon.
Iain Murray is Director of Business Development at BackCheck in Vancouver, Canada. He can be reached at imurray@BackCheck.ca, by phone (1.866.455.5836), or via LinkedIn.
When a government employee was convicted of fraud and forgery earlier this week, it raised alarm bells regarding screening processes in some organizations. Richard Wainwright was accused and convicted of altering his Criminal Record Check form to use a last name that would not flag his previous convictions in an effort to conceal his checkered past and obtain employment in the Ministry of Child and Family Services in British Columbia.
Wainwright was convicted of fraud, counterfeiting and possessing stolen identification in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada in 2004.
He applied for a B.C. government job two years later. The government required a criminal record check. At the time, Wainwright was still serving a conditional sentence from his convictions.
Wainwright knew having a criminal record would bar him from getting hired, so he used two different names to get out from under that record. Wainwright took the criminal record check under the clean surname of Perran, for which he also had a social insurance number, passport and driver’s licence.
Then he altered the form to read Richard Ernest Wainwright-Perran and submitted it government, said the judge.
Wainwright was hired by government and worked his way up to a supervisor’s position in the Ministry of Children and Family Development before his two driver’s licences in different names were flagged by the Insurance Corporation of B.C.’s facial-recognition technology.
Wainwright and the B.C. government are not alone. Employers across the country are constantly provided with fake background checks from fraudsters in an attempt to gain employment, access to people’s information and a company’s assets.
The best way to protect yourself as an employer is to conduct screening by a reliable third-party provider that does not place the results of a Criminal Record Check back in an individual’s hands. By removing the susceptibility to forgery, employers can be certain that the information they are receiving has not been altered.
Since BackCheck has screened millions of Canadians for thousands of employers, we’ve seen and heard plenty of stories from hiring managers that reinforce the need for forgery-proof delivery and secure storage of results.
Iain Murray is Director of Business Development at BackCheck in Vancouver, Canada. He can be reached at imurray@BackCheck.ca, by phone (1.866.455.5836), or via LinkedIn.
Criminal Record Checks as part of your recruitment and retention strategies can promote volunteerism and safety
Typically, a job candidate is asked to complete a Criminal Record Check before being tendered a job offer. If the result of the search satisfies the curiosity of the Hiring Manager, the new employee will come aboard. At that point, what happens to the copy of the Criminal Record Check?
If the employer uses a third party company or a police service to screen candidates, the applicant probably never sees their result. If they’re provided with a copy, does it stay at home in a shoebox? Is it shredded and placed in the recycling bin?
As an employer, do you print a copy and place it in your applicant/employee’s file? Do you shred it? Hand it back to the candidate upon review? If you outsource your pre-employment screening to a third party, perhaps the information is stored in their proprietary software, ensuring sufficient data security.
Regardless of the storage location for the employer or the employee, does either party ever use the Criminal Record Check again? Probably not, but could they? You bet.
A recent survey completed by BackCheck revealed that 20% of respondents required a Criminal Record Check multiple times a year.
If your organization is like most employers performing some type of pre-employment screening, your background checks – specifically Criminal Record Checks – likely gather dust and are never used again. Well, some organizations have recognized value there and have turned them into an employee benefit.
While it is universally accepted that a Criminal Record Check is only a snapshot – valid only as of the date of issue – most organizations that rely on volunteers such as churches, schools, sports organizations, and community groups will accept a Criminal Record Check completed within the past six months.
If you are already footing the bill for a Criminal Record Check on prospective hires, why not make it available to them so they can re-use it when they volunteer in the community? If your organization sets aside part of its budget for community engagement or sustainability, here’s a perfect opportunity to make the best of it.
Here are some benefits of providing candidates with a copy of their Criminal Record Check:
1. Promote Volunteerism amongst your staff
Since your organization is already spending the money to screen your new staff, why not provide them with a copy of their Criminal Record Check and save them the hassle of getting another one when they volunteer. It may require additional fees and unnecessary time off work.
2. Increase Community Involvement
Not only will a current Criminal Record Check reduce barriers to volunteering, it will save them time from getting a new check. The time off used to go to a police station to get a new check could actually be spent volunteering.
3. Improve Retention with additional Employee Benefit
If your job postings brag about things like ‘free parking’ and ‘casual Fridays’ to entice applicants, why not brag about a volunteer-friendly culture that actually enables participation by turning a Criminal Record Check into an employee benefit. It’s a contribution towards volunteerism and safer communities.
4. Reduce workload on Police Services
Police services conduct a lot of Criminal Record Checks every year as a service to the community they serve. Using existing Criminal Record Checks that are still recent is a great way to reduce the burden placed upon police. Let them get back to catching bad guys.
5. Reduce costs to volunteers and volunteer-driven organizations.
In addition to streamlining matters for police services, churches, sports organizations and all other non-profits are also looking for ways to save money and recruit more volunteers. By essentially sponsoring a Criminal Record Check for their members, your organization is removing barriers to volunteering, reducing the administrative burden and costs place upon these organizations.
As you can see, there are plenty of additional benefits to pre-employment screening. By turning your Criminal Record Check component into an employee benefit, your organization and the community can benefit as well.
Iain Murray is Director of Business Development at BackCheck in Vancouver, Canada. He can be reached at imurray@BackCheck.ca, by phone (1.866.455.5836), or via LinkedIn.
BackCheck's President & CEO, Dave Dinesen
Announced last week, the move sees BackCheck, Canada’s largest background screening company joining forces with Sterling Infosystems.
BackCheck founder-CEO Dave Dinesen, 42, said the BackCheck-Sterling merger will leave his firm’s management team in place and its workforce of 453 people intact. BackCheck, which Dinesen started in 1997, has offices in Surrey, the United Kingdom and Manila.
“BackCheck has been incredibly successful in Canada and the United Kingdom,” Dinesen said in a phone interview with The Province Newspaper. “They absolutely don’t want to mess with that. Where we needed help, and where they needed help, was being able to serve customers that have employees on both sides of the border.”
Dinesen said about eight companies were keenly interest in acquiring BackCheck. The first meeting with Sterling was last October. “Price, obviously, is a huge factor but additional to that, when I met the management team at Sterling it was one of the only organizations where the founder was still CEO. That just gave me incredible comfort.”
The merger of BackCheck and Sterling will create the largest company in North America purely devoted to background checking — and likely the largest such company in the world, Dinesen said.
BackCheck figures it conducts checks on between 600,000 and one million people a year.
“Employers have a duty to know who they’re hiring,” Dinesen said. Dinesen also discussed trends in the industry with the Vancouver Sun. Not only does a company want to avoid hiring someone who is going to steal from them or who has any kind of inappropriate criminal past, it also wants to make sure the prospective employee has the credentials he says he does, he said.
Because if a person is hired to drive a forklift and causes an accident because he doesn’t have the proper skills, that could lead to serious consequences, Dinesen said.
“There’s liability when you put customers [or] employees in harm’s way by lazy hiring.”
Often managers don’t have the time or expertise to do the background checks, which can include reference interviews, employment and education verifications, criminal background checks, credit checks and driving records.
Dinesen believes BackCheck and Sterling are a good fit, not only because their main service areas are complementary but also because they are both run by their founder.
“So from a cultural and focus [standpoint], we’re absolutely identical twins just on different sides of the border,” Dinesen said.
It’s business as usual within the four walls of BackCheck, but with an extra jolt of energy due to the potential of the next chapter. The ability to serve North American and international organizations more seemlessly is a very exciting opportunity that everyone is looking forward to.