There has been a lot of discussion around the county about pre employment criminal searches. The main discussion is about the basic database search that many employers do and weather it is a effective and thorough search. We subscribe to numbers websites and newsletters that updates us on State and Federal laws, FCRA discussions and CRA compliance rules and regulations. One of the many is “The Public Record” powered by BRB publication. I want to throw out some quotes and statistics from this Aprils update. Even though some of the follow statements are not about database searches I think they are very interesting.
- Overall, only 65% of the courts holding felony records provide online access. Also, many states will not sell their data in bulk electronic format.
- Here is an example of how you can be mislead with online searches. There is no instant online statewide search in AZ since the 2nd largest county is not online, but many firms tout an instant service. In MN, there are cases not on the statewide online system but will appear on the courthouse terminal system.
- With the U.S. Department of Justice there was a back log of 1.6 million unprocessed or partially processed court dispositions not entered into the states criminal history database.
- There is a %13.26 overall hit ratio on criminal record name searches.
Here are some interesting numbers:
- The national averages for the price of a state driving record is $8.39. To purchase a “nationwide MVR record” would cost 427.73.
- There is only %65 of felony courts in the US that provide online access for searching.
- There are 92 villages, towns or cities in the US named Salem. 40 of these places are located in two or more ZIP codes.
- There are 535 municipal courts in New Jersey.
- We have 1,076 primary civil courts in the US that will no permit court personnel to perform a record search for the public.
- There are 5,665 state licensing boards that have a direct website to search for registrants and licensees.
- Approximately 423,200,000 unassigned social security numbers were converted to rhe random assignment pool in June 2011. there are approximately 4 million biths annually in the US. So accounting for the population growth and immigrants, it will prbably be at least 90 years before we run out of numbers.
The main reason we wanted to share this was to help people understand that there are holes in background screening. And to not rely on a simple online or database search if you want to do good pre employment background screening.
