Background:

Employers Should Check Applicant Criminal Backgrounds Point Depending on where you live, you may have been asked about your criminal arrest record on a job application. Even if you weren’t asked outright, the company may have investigated anyway by using a background check service. Surveys suggest that nearly 70 percent of companies do some sort of criminal background check on job applicants. When so many are using the same basic strategy, it’s likely they have a good reason. Companies check criminal records for many purposes. Most obviously, nothing predicts future criminal behavior like prior criminal behavior. Many employees have used the access and privileges of their jobs to commit crimes, ranging from theft to assault or even murder. A check of their criminal records may have helped screen out these individuals. As Lucia Bone, founder of the nonprofit Sue Weaver Cause, says, “It is the employer’s responsibility to protect both their business, their employees, and their customers.” This is a deeply meaningful issue for Bone. The organization she founded is named after her sister, Sue Weaver, murdered by a man with a criminal record who had access to her home to clean air ducts. Many hiring managers check criminal backgrounds specifically because they do not want their own lack of diligence to lead to similarly tragic outcomes. Besides signaling the direct risk of criminal activity on the job, criminal records may be good behavioral indicators of other deviant workplace behavior. People who are willing to violate social conventions in one area may well be likely to violate them in others. When employers screen for use of illegal drugs or shoplifting arrests, they are trying to identify people who might lie to supervisors or embezzle money. Information gathered from criminal records is likely to be more objective and accurate than a manager’s gut feelings about who is going to pose a problem in the future. Counterpoint According to sociologist Devah Pager, the high U.S. incarceration rate means employers’ hiring decisions have major labor market and social implications if based on criminal records. Koch Industries has stopped asking applicants about criminal records. CEO Charles Koch notes, “If ex-offenders can’t get a job, education, or housing, how can we possibly expect them to have a productive life?” Koch’s concern is valid. One study linked a young-adult arrest record to lower incomes and education levels later in life, and a conviction record to even lower levels. There are also substantial racial and ethnic group differences in arrest rates, and men are much more likely to have arrest and conviction records than women. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) concludes that excluding individuals with criminal records from jobs effectively discriminates against African American men in particular. Furthermore, criminal background checks don’t necessarily give employers the information they seek. A core principle of modern criminal justice holds that we all are innocent until proven guilty. However, some screens will turn up both conviction and arrest records. This is problematic because fewer than half of arrests end in conviction. While the use of arrest records is prohibited in many localities, that is far from a universal rule. Other investigations have found that online criminal records checks are prone to false positives, reporting that someone has a criminal past who really doesn’t. Another problem is lack of relevance. While many would agree that a person convicted of assault is not a good candidate for work that ­requires carrying a weapon or associating with vulnerable populations, it’s less clear how a petty-theft conviction might raise the same concerns. Sociologist Christopher Uggen summarizes by observing, “We haven’t really figured out what a disqualifying offense should be for particular activities.”

Question:

If you were the CEO or HR director of a major firm what position would you take weighing the Point and Counterpoint ideas covered in the above information and the legality aspects of using social media for individual background checks?