More and more States and cities are adopting Ban-the-Box legislation which is prompting employers to review and update their employment screening policies. Effective January 1st 2015 the City of St. Petersburg and the State of Illinois enacted Ban-the-Box legislation mandating how and when criminal background checks can be conducted on job applicants. Highlighting the national trend of changes in background screening laws particularly with pre-employment background screening policies. Many companies need to revise their hiring practices in order to avoid discrimination even in the instance of disparate impact which the EEOC has been looking for in larger US based companies.
The whole point of the Ban-the-Box initiative is to give job seekers with a criminal past a fair shot at getting a job that they are qualified for. Most such candidates until recently would never have made it past the application stage in the hiring process. Instead the employer would see the criminal record box checked off and then discard the application completely without getting to know anything further about the job applicant. This happens without the employer hearing the story behind the criminal record. It also doesn’t allow for consideration on how old the criminal record is and certainly removes the possibility of an interview or further development in the hiring process. To read more regarding the impact of ban-the-box legislation view recent CriminalBackgroundRecords.com press release: http://www.criminalbackgroundrecords.com/news/2015-1-15-To-Expand-Background-Checks-or-Not-to-Expand-Background-Checks.html