{"id":178,"date":"2006-12-08T06:51:38","date_gmt":"2006-12-08T12:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/2006\/12\/08\/st-paul-pioneer-press-12072006-st-paul-gives-ex-cons-a-break-on-city-hiring\/"},"modified":"2006-12-28T13:30:56","modified_gmt":"2006-12-28T19:30:56","slug":"st-paul-pioneer-press-12072006-st-paul-gives-ex-cons-a-break-on-city-hiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=178","title":{"rendered":"Criminals Need Not Not Apply"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saint Paul stops asking job applicants about criminal records<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, duh.<\/p>\n

In a letter ordering the change, Coleman also said he would work with the private sector to “encourage adoption of a similar policy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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 \u2014 so far, only Boston has completely removed the question from city job applications.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I support this change in principle, <\/em>I have to wonder what’ll happen a few lawsuits down the road.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Therefore, there’s no risk of a sex offender being assigned to work with children, Nalezny said.<\/p>\n

“Anybody that works in a rec center, absolutely we’re going to do a background check on them,” Nalezny said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All well and good. But it’s the convicted burglars working for the Code Enforcement department that I’m most worried about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}