The era of pre-employment background checks has done much to help prevent unqualified employment candidate from entering the workplace. There are many reasons for such prevention. It could be that the employment candidate has lied about his past, his education, his places of employment. He may not have the skill sets he has claimed in the application and as part of his pre-employment interview. There are any of these reasons. But not the least of them being that the candidate has the type of egregious criminal records that would make it unwise or unwarranted to give that person the job over another, more qualified candidate.
Most often a reputable background checking service will turn up such criminal records. Sometimes they make mistakes, miss a records, or are inaccurate with the final disposition of a criminal record. What appears to be a felony is in reality as case that has been plea bargained down to a misdemeanor. Criminal background records that have been reported in fact have been expunged. And sometimes, despite all efforts at quality assurance an accuracy, the mistake in reporting is beyond the control of the background checking service. Sometimes the mistake is on the part of the court system. Either, in rare cases, the record is not entered into the system, or if the court is overseen by a county clerk, it is the country clerk who doesn’t enter the case into the record search.
Such was the case with the recent high profile news story involving Ryan Jenkins, purported murderer of his ex-wife and model, Jasmine Fiore. Jenkins was a contestant on the television reality show, Meagan Wants a Millionaire. Jenkins as the world knows now, allegedly murdered Fiore, cut off her fingers and pulled out her teeth to prevent identification, and then fled to Canada. He hanged himself there, ending the manhunt.
As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the responsible background checking firm has stated they did in fact search Canadian Criminal Records on Jenkins. The records were returned from the Canadian Court minus the single charge of domestic violence. Jenkins had been sentenced to 15 months probation and counseling. As to why the record was not returned could be any number of reasons. Knowing the background checking firm involved, I certainly believe they performed all due diligence on its part.
This is not the first time criminal records have gone unreported, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Sometimes, as noted before, it is a matter of a county clerk missing a record. And sometimes the reason for the missing record is more elaborate. There have been a few occasions when conducting background searches I have found the missing records to be a bit suspicious. Granted, it hasn’t happened often, but I have learned either from the employer or investigator that the subject in question was either an ex-cop, a relative of the chief of police or the relative of an influential person in a local or regional environment. We can surmise or grow conspiracy theories out of our mindset, but none of that will do any good. The simple fact is that the criminal record just isn’t being reported. Interesting, huh?
So the veracity of the unreported records are, in my belief, directly related to the credibility of the service conducting the background search. A reputable firm can also make mistakes. But a reputable firm will also admit its mistakes. But if on the other hand the record was not reported by the county clerk, it is beyond anyone’
