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| *Ostroff, Fair and Company>>>Law & Legal |
If an employer does a background check, over what time period do criminal records show? |
Is there a statute of limitations on criminal records shown to employers. For example, do the results of an employment screening only show the last X years of criminal records? What is the X - if there is an X? Please provide verification on your sources. There are two considerations to this question: 1) the employment screening company; and 2) the federal and state laws, policies, and regulations. The employment screening company: The first factor in this question is the company that is performing the background check. The information that is contained within a background check is not universal from one company to another. Some companies will provide only recent information and others will provide a longer time history. In general, background screens include employment histories, criminal and civil records, credit information, educational verification, and contact information. Typically, the criminal and civil records portion of the screen will only go back 5 to 7 years. While this is not always the case, employers seem to value the most recent information the most. My advice is to perform an employment screen yourself and see what is returned. You can use a screening site like http://www.freeemploymentscreening.com... or get additional information at sites like http://www.employmentscreeningadvice.com... If you happen to know the company that is performing the screen, I'd suggest you try to use that service. As far as the second part of your question, you should know that background checks by employers are subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act - which means that any adverse or negative piece of information must be disclosed to you - so that you can have the opportunity to dispute it. With respect to non-felony records, this typically goes back 7 years - after which the information is typically expunged. Felonies do not have an expiration. For information about the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you should visit the Federal Trade Commission http://www.ftc.gov or you can see some tips at http://www.employmentscreeningcenter.com... Generally, the time period is 7 years, unless it's a felony, which will appear forever. With that said, different states have different laws of how far an employer can go back...many people don't realize that. The reason is, the state doesn't want someone to be punished for the rest of their life for a stupid mistake when they were extremely young...that is why the state has laws in place of how far a search can go. The other reason these laws are in place, is to prevent the court system from being clogged with everyone that has ever been convicted of a criminal charge, from having to apply for an expungement. In general, the way it works, is that the check is for 7 years. If you are applying for state licensure, they can go back longer. If you are, let's say, working for a daycare center, they can go back 20 years and specifically look for charges such as "taking indecent liberties with a child", but they couldn't search for a drug charge, petty theft, etc. Some states also allow an employer to go back additional time if the salary is over $85,000 per year (or other pre-set amount set by the state). An easy way to find out, is call a local private investigator...they will probably be happy to answer these questions for you, and they will be familiar with the laws in YOUR state....there are no Federal guidelines on this, so that is why you need to check locally. My husband used to work for Pinkerton Services Group, which is one of the largest background check services in the world. Depends on the organization and company used to conduct background checks. For example, the company we use conducts background checks as far as 10 years. We receive this report normally within 10 to 15 days depending on how extensive the background search is (i.e., more than one state.) |
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