Business owners can perform background checks on job applicants without a great deal of expense to avoid “bad hires” of “employees from hell,” according to an article on the Santa Cruz (CA) Sentinel website that features suggestions from safe hiring expert Attorney Lester Rosen. The full article – ‘Employment Screening Resources: How to avoid hiring employee from hell’ – is available at http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/capitola/ci_22907219/employment-screening-resources-how-avoid-hiring-employee-from. (more…)

The City Council of Richmond, Virginia has unanimously passed a ‘Ban the Box’ ordinance that would to eliminate the question asking job applicants about prior felony convictions on application forms for many city jobs, according to an article on the Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch website. (more…)

In December 2012, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware became the latest U.S. cities to join the growing “ban the box” movement when the City Council passed legislation that eliminated the check box asking about criminal history from job applications for the city. Pittsburgh joined other U.S. cities such as Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC in banning the box. Reports from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) reveal more than 40 cities and counties and seven states have adopted “ban the box” policies that remove questions about criminal history from job application forms and delay them until later in the hiring process to ensure that qualified job applicants with arrest or conviction records are not unfairly shut out from employment opportunities. This growing trend is Number 3 of the 6th Annual ‘ESR Top Ten Background Check Trends for 2013’ available at http://www.esrcheck.com/Top-Ten-Background-Check-Trends-for-2013.php. (more…)

New legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives – H.R. 6220, “Ban the Box Act of 2012” –  would prohibit most employers from asking about or checking a job applicant’s criminal record until after a conditional offer of employment and would “ban the box” that job applicants are asked to mark indicating whether they have a criminal record. Introduced by Representative Hansen Clarke (D-MI), H.R. 6220 would allow employers to check an applicant’s criminal record only if the job duties in question “may involve an unreasonable risk to the safety of specific individuals or to the general public.” The text of the bill is available here: H.R. 6220, “Ban the Box Act of 2012”. (more…)

The Massachusetts Department of Criminal Justice Information Services (DCJIS) has launched a new Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) request service online called ‘iCORI’ that will allow individuals and organizations to request and obtain Massachusetts criminal offender record information over the Internet. For more information about iCORI, one of the main provisions of the new CORI Reform law that took effect on May 4, 2012, visit the DCJIS web page at: http://www.mass.gov/eopss/agencies/dcjis/. (more…)