Blog, Resources
According to The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), which is maintained by the FBI, there are currently 78-million subjects in its criminal master fingerprint file.
When you take into consideration that slightly more than one in three American adults has a criminal record, that number seems low. Especially when you consider that over the past 20 years authorities have made more than a quarter of a billion arrests, according to the FBI.
America now houses roughly the same number of people with criminal records as it does four-year college graduates. In fact, the number of Americans with criminal records today is larger than the entire U.S. population in 1900.
All of this isn’t meant to disparage the use of fingerprints as part of any company or organization’s background check process, because it is absolutely true that the use of fingerprints for identity verification does have its advantages.
For one thing, fingerprint data is unique and cannot be falsified.
However, the associated information is oftentimes inaccurate or incomplete. That’s especially true as it relates to case dispositions, because many records submitted to the FBI don’t report the court’s final ruling.
A big part of the problem is that there is no universal reporting methodology and local regulations vary. Thus, the FBI database is reliant solely upon what state and local agencies choose to originally report.
That is why at SELECTiON.COM® we always recommend a thorough approach to your pre-employment discovery and background check procedure.
We bundle reporting based specifically upon the needs of our clients, combining granular criminal reporting from the actual counties of residency and the most complete national criminal database in the industry.
Next week, we’ll talk about our Search America™ product and the benefits that it brings to any criminal history reporting. If you can’t wait until then, I’ll be happy to talk to you right now. Call me at (800) 325-3609, extension 3024.
SOURCES:
“Fbi — Iafis”. Fbi.gov. 1999-07-28. Archived from the original on 2012-09-21. Retrieved 2012-09-14.
Fields, G., & Emshwiller, J.R. “As Arrest Records Rise, Americans Find Consequences Can Last a Lifetime.” The Wall Street Journal, 18 Aug. 2014. Web.
Friedman, Matthew. “As Many Americans Have Criminal Records As College Diplomas.” Web blog post. Just Facts. Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, 17 Nov. 2015. Web.
Blog
According to the DHS website, the government shutdown has caused them to suspend their E-Verify services. SELECTiON.COM®’s customer support and all other services are up and running. This will only affect the E-Verify reports.
- E-Verify telephone and e-mail support will be unavailable. You may send e-mail messages, however, they will not respond until they reopen.
- Employees will be unable to resolve E-Verify Tentative Nonconfirmations (TNCs).
- Any E-Verify webinars and training sessions scheduled during the unavailability of E-Verify are cancelled.
- Self Check and myE-Verify will not be available.
To minimize the burden on both employers and employees, the following policies have been implemented by E-Verify:
- The ‘three-day rule’ for E-Verify cases is suspended for cases affected by the unavailability of E-Verify. They will provide additional guidance regarding these time deadlines once they reopen. This does NOT affect Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, requirements—employers must still complete Form I-9 no later than the third business day after an employee starts work for pay, and comply with all other Form I-9 requirements.
- The time period during which employees may resolve TNCs will be extended. The number of days E-Verify is not available will not count toward the days the employee has to begin the process of resolving their TNCs. They will provide additional guidance regarding these time deadlines once we reopen.
- For federal contractors covered by the federal contractor rule, please contact your contracting officer to inquire about extending federal contractor deadlines.
- Employers may not take any adverse action against an employee because the E-Verify case is in an interim case status, including while the employee’s case is in an extended interim case status due to the unavailability of E-Verify. (Consult the E-Verify User Manual for more information on interim case statuses).
Feel free to contact SELECTiON.COM® with any questions on how this will affect your hiring process.
Blog
by Wayne J. Jung
Life comes at you fast.
I know, what an overused cliché.
In fact, you hear it so much online these days that it really has lost its significance. Which I suppose makes it the truest of truisms.
During the holidays especially, the speed with which we process the sales, jingles, greetings, parties, family, holiday music, weather, travel, debt, health and good cheer make this the time of year when life comes at you fastest!
And that can be a very bad thing.
We recently lost a dear member of my extended family after a lengthy illness. Hers was a life well-lived, spending the better part of the last 25 years serving as a galley cook on an assorted variety of seagoing vessels (research, charter, etc.).
She was a remarkable person who lived life to the fullest even while spending most of her time in the slow lane, and watching so many around her just speed by.
Never sweating the small stuff, life seemingly never came at her too fast to handle.
When our children were younger, my late wife used to remind them to “just breathe” and that life was best lived one breath after another.
As we speed through this holiday season, I find myself oftentimes struggling to remember her advice, but I keep trying.
And it shouldn’t be just a holiday mantra, or a “when times turn tough” kind of thing. It is truly good advice year-round.
There are so many things that we can’t control in our life, like the speed at which it is delivered, but there is one thing that we can master and that is how we react to it.
So, this holiday season and the new year ahead, my wish for all is a simple one.
Just breathe.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at SELECTiON.COM®!
Blog, Employee Spotlight
Stephanie Whalen has been a valued member of SELECTiON.COM® since the beginning. Here’s a little more about her.
Favorite part of working at SELECTiON.COM®
I enjoy working with numbers and the people I work with.
Favorite Hobby
Watching sports.
Favorite Quote
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”- Eleanor Roosevelt
Favorite Food
Fresh food.
Favorite Sports Team
Cincinnati Teams and The Ohio State Football
Fun Fact
I’ve been with SELECTiON.COM® since it’s beginning -even before we had official office space.
Blog, Resources
by Thomas Wright, Satisfaction Executive
SELECTiON.COM®
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been in the news a lot recently with its first and only director, former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, stepping down the day after Thanksgiving and announcing his intent to run for Ohio Governor.
Created in large part because of the 2008 recession and accompanying housing bubble, the CFPB is still a fairly new government agency by any standard.
It’s not surprising, then, that many Americans, although having heard the name, still don’t know what the CFPB does.
So, let’s take a slightly deeper dive.
According to the CFPB website, the bureau’s primary task is “to provide a single point of accountability for enforcing federal consumer financial laws and protecting consumers in the financial marketplace” from potential wrongdoing by banks, credit lenders, brokerages, insurance companies, etc.
Designed to “protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices” by acting against companies that break the law, CFPB records show that it has helped more than 29-million consumers secure nearly $12-billion in relief as of July 20, 2017.
To date, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has handled more than 1.2-million complaints.
The six core functions of the CFPB include:
- Rooting out unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices by writing rules, supervising companies, and enforcing the law
- Enforcing laws that outlaw discrimination in consumer finance
- Taking consumer complaints
- Enhancing financial education
- Researching the consumer experience of using financial products
- Monitoring financial markets for new risks to consumers
As a background check company tasked with assembling consumer credit or other consumer information for the purpose of furnishing reports to third party clients, SELECTiON.COM® is required to operate under the guidelines of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)
Under law, the consumer has the right to know that a background report is being compiled as part of their application, that no search will be conducted without their approval and to see what is in these reports upon their conclusion.
Maintaining the accuracy of collected data is also required and the CFPB, acting in its capacity has the regulatory arm of the FCRA, has ruled in multiple instances against consumer reporting agencies that failed to take basic steps to assure the information reported about job applicants was accurate.
At SELECTiON.COM® we are always monitoring our security and our accuracy to provide our customers with complete, timely, secure and accurate results. We are fully FCRA compliant and can help our customers maintain their compliance at the click of a button.
CFPB, CRA, FCRA…it may all seem like alphabet soup and it might not even be important to most consumers. That is, until they get passed over for the job or home of their dreams.
Then, it just may be a job for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
If you’d like to know more about the CFPB, or the results we provide for our clients and our applicants, please contact us today.
SOURCES: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/
