FREMONT — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted last week to update decades-old guidance on how employers may use criminal background checks in hiring decisions. The old EEOC guidance dated back to 1987.
The updated guidance provides employers with greater clarity on the fair use of background checks, in order to help the vast majority of employers who want to do the right thing, but are often unaware of federal civil rights laws, according to a news release from the EEOC.
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In the 25 years since the EEOC issued its initial guidance, the use of background checks by employers has exploded in popularity. More than 90 percent of employers — up from 51 percent in 1996 — conduct criminal background checks on some or all job applicants, according to a 2010 Society of Human Resources Management.
“We all heard ‘If you do the crime, you need to do the time,’ but when does that the time end,” asked Kay Hofacker from the Sandusky County Reentry Task Force. “Working directly with individuals who have a criminal conviction in their past, we see the challenges they face every time the background check statement is mentioned on an application. Yes, the individual needs to be accountable for their behavior; when does the sentence end? Legislation is a huge milestone for ex-offenders to be able to return to the community, secure employment, take care of their families and become law abiding, tax paying citizens.”
An estimated 65 million people in the United States — or one in four adults — have an arrest or conviction record that can show up on a routine criminal background check for employment.
Demand for the revised guidance was strong, according to the EEOC. Following a 2011 hearing on the issue, the commission received more than 300 public comments, which, by a two-to-one ratio, supported the need for updating the guidelines to better reflect changes in the economy, workplace, and world of criminal records screening.
