Criminals Need Not Not Apply
By Mitch Berg
Saint Paul stops asking job applicants about criminal records:
Mayor Chris Coleman made the change this week, and ordered the city’s Department of Human Resources to investigate whether ex-convicts have been discriminated against in city hiring practices in the past.
Well, duh.
In a letter ordering the change, Coleman also said he would work with the private sector to “encourage adoption of a similar policy.”
While I think policy change is generally a good idea (I say “generally”), good luck with that “working with the private sector” thing. Most of us don’t have an army of underemployed lawyers to get us out of messes our employees cause.
“As the ability of employers to do background checks increases, one measure of a negligent hiring claim is you didn’t do as much as you could have,” [labor attorney Joe] Schmitt said. “As the bar raises in terms of what you can do, then the bar raises in terms of what you should do.”The Council on Crime and Justice has been lobbying cities to implement changes. Gambill said St. Paul’s decision makes it a national leader in the effort — so far, only Boston has completely removed the question from city job applications.
While I support this change in principle, I have to wonder what’ll happen a few lawsuits down the road.
The city started down this road a year ago, when it moved the criminal question to a part of the application seen only by the human resources department, but not hiring managers in other departments, said HR director Angie Nalezny.
Nalezny also said the city conducts background checks when the applicant would work with children or have access to money or sensitive information, and would know whether those applicants have a criminal record.
Therefore, there’s no risk of a sex offender being assigned to work with children, Nalezny said.
“Anybody that works in a rec center, absolutely we’re going to do a background check on them,” Nalezny said.
All well and good. But it’s the convicted burglars working for the Code Enforcement department that I’m most worried about.
December 8th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Highly ironic that Slashdot actually had an article on the necessity of background checks for IT workers today that referenced this article: http://www.varbusiness.com/sections/news/breakingnews.jhtml?articleId=196602482. It basically covered the case of Roger Duronio who at USB Paine Weber got a bit miffed at not getting a big enough bonus and took down the IT network at his employer and caused $3.1M in recovery costs and unknown amounts in trading losses using his root access. Naturally, USB hired an ex-con and put him in a position of trust, and oops!
So, your new housing inspector could be an extortionist? I mean a convicted one, not the officially licensed version they are now. It seems like putting someone with a history of not resisting that temptation into a situation of power where they are exposed to that same situation that got them in trouble would be a bad thing. But not to St. Paul!
December 8th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
St. Paul is also a leader in affirmative action, interpreted as seeking a person who barely meets the minimum qualifications for the job but fills an important quota.
Take the least qualified, add the convicted, give them union cover, and you’ve got just about the worst imaginable workforce.
Aside from the DMV.
And the public schools.
And Comcast.
And . . . well, pretty much any outfit that has a monopoly so it doesn’t need to please customers to stay in business.
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December 8th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Anyone who has spent time studying the criminal mind (not the “I shoplifted a candy bar when I was 12” kind–I mean the habitual kind) knows that giving a criminal a job will just make him a criminal with a job. (S)he will just have another venue to exhibit his criminality.
Giving a criminal a job is useless without changing the thought patterns that lead a criminal to think it’s okay for him/her to prey on people.