Staff background checks: New arena of compliance

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Staff background checks: New arena of compliance

The Fair Chance Act in New York and the Fair Credit Reporting Act are both hyper-tech and easily breached, with stipulated, increasingly escalating penalties for non-compliance. This has made expensive class action litigation for the complainant's bar an emerging cottage industry.

In 2014, last year where data’s available, nearly 1.6 million US citizens were in State or Federal prisons. The United States Statistics of the Office of Justice, "Prisoners in 2014." 4,751,400 people were either on parole or on probation in 2013. Bonczar, Bureau of Statistics, Probation and Parole, 2013 (Rev. J. Heberman & P. Bonczar, United States, 21 Jan. 2015).

Former prisoners face a strong stigma, and many employers oppose the idea of employing them after they have been released. Getting jobs are crucial if the former inmates are to effectively get back to society. Lawmakers face a dilemma: A criminal record poses a potentially unfair impediment to obtaining or retaining a job, irrespective of how qualified an applicant is otherwise. At the same time, prospective employers have the right to take account of their companies' best interests, and of customers' best interests and safety. In fact, the OSHA allows workers to be free of the "recognised risks" from their workplaces. See 29 USC § 651 et seq.

 

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