Do you guys have a standardised back ground check?

11 comments

1. Background checks are a little bit harder in the US due to federalism, which leads to somewhat fragmented record keeping — law enforcement is organized locally, which means records are kept locally and might not always percolate up to more centralized databases. That said, criminal background checks are performed for a lot of jobs, not just education.

   I can’t imagine any prior offending sex offender could get hired as a teacher (maybe in a private school? i don’t know if they have to do background checks, and some might choose not to). But just because someone has never done it before, or never been caught, doesn’t mean they never will.

2. US has about 5x the population of the UK, according to this article, in 2016 the UK had 65 teachers involved in sexual misconduct. Adjusted for population that’s the equivalent of 325. This is not a US specific issue.

   [Source (using a webcached article since there is a paywall)](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5QFCQrNc6ZMJ:https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/teachers-banned-classroom-sexual-misconduct-record-numbers-statistics-investigation-a7828891.html&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

3. There are 3.5 million teachers in the US. 300 is 0.00857142857%.

   There were 42 teachers banned for sexual conduct in the UK in 2016-2017 school year. With a total of 512,000 teachers in the UK 0.008203125%. so basically the same rate, if within the margin of error.

4. For teachers it would be done by the states at their discretion (since education is a power reserved to the states). 12 states and DC have abyssmal safety guards. The school or school district may run their own checks at their discretion. Some states may or may not publicly share misconduct breaches, and some schools may not be required to report misconduct to the state. It’s also not a crime to just *be* a pedophile, so there’s zero way someone not yet convicted would even show up as someone to look into.

   Though, with 3.8 million staff in the US, compared to 624520 in the UK, were there more or less than 50 nonces caught in the UK in the same year?

5. The company I work for does a standard background check for all positions, but the only real disqualifier is a violent felony conviction.

   I had to go through a background check for my concealed carry permit, and another (almost the same type) for my foster parent certification. My church requires background checks for anyone involved in child care or teaching children. I’ve had my info run through the federal government’s criminal background check system each time I’ve bought a firearm (let’s just say “quite a few times” and leave it at that).

   So it’s not a universal thing, but it depends on what you’re doing that requires the background check and somewhat where you live.

6. I have a friend who worked for a background check company. They are private companies that partner with each other to form national databases where they can look up criminal records, driving records, drug offenses, etc etc in (almost*) every state in the US. It’s a labor intensive manual process, because of the fragmentation of records between different states and organizations. Something like a sex offense in California would be discovered easily, while sometimes a DUI in Mississippi is not. It usually takes a couple weeks to come back with a report because of how many sources of information they have to pull from. But the reports are thorough for the most part, and different background check companies *should* return the same things on their report. It’s just not a standardized process.

   *some states have odd laws about what type of records are available to the public, so certain offenses in certain states are often hidden

7. most companies contract out to a company that specializes in background checks. they check court records, arrest records, employment history, social media posts, etc. a lot of it is automated, but some of it can’t be and is performed manually. it’s quite the industry. a lot of local courts charge for access to court information (I believe you can get it free through the Freedom of Information Act request system), so it’s basically necessary to have a company that only does that. the fees for access to literally all criminal data would pile up as it’s thousands of sources, even if only some of them cost money it adds up quick.

8. Criminal records are kept by the states in their database,reported by the reporting agency to them. This can be run by various agencies in the states, depends by states. The Federal agencies feed into their database..which alot of this is run in Clarksburg WV for the Feds.

   Via NCIC agencies can query this database via an IQ query. What you get back from the main FBI query may not be 100% inclusive, so you do a query direct query to the state. This is why you may get asked to list the addresses you have lived at in the last 10 years. Thus if lets say you apply for a job in PA, but you’ve lived in WV, OH then queries will be made the FBI database, the WV, OH, and PA databases…Another route this can go is lets say all your addresses are in the same state.. then an inquiring agency will do the FBI, and state queries, and they may as well send a switched message Records section to run the name internally in the agency, and send a reply back. It depends on the agency and the job.

   I will give you an example, that the local township, we take all persons who are on the “Hire list” meaning the township has offered them a job pending background check. This includes teachers for the local district. These are then run via NCIC to the state and FBI database, and then our internal database for any incidents, and then as I listed above if you have an address in state, in a different area, we will message that agency for anything as well.

   The access to this data is managed far differently than those connecting via NCIC/NLETS, and this happens via various authorized systems.

   This is set up because the Federal government in the US is meant to be weak, and the states do most of the work. Whereas other countries like the UK have a top down structure where the central government is strong and the local councils are weak.

9. Please define “nonce.” There is adequate context to make an assumption and capability to google. I sure would appreciate your definition though as I’ve never heard this term before.

10. So there is the NICS system for background checks that is nationwide. However this system is specifically for buying a firearm from a federally licensed firearms dealer, aka a gun store.

    I know plenty of jobs require background checks for both government and private jobs but I’m not sure if there is one giant system they all pull from or not.

11. Pretty much the only standardized background check across the entire 50 states is the ATF’s 4473 form which is ran through the NICS background check system in order to buy a gun.