Georgia is hardly the first state where different municipal or education services experience a mishap with background checks. I believe it will not be the last. Instead, according to Fox32 News, the Georgia Board of Regents joins a long list of public services that have mistakenly hired employees, despite previous criminal records.
In some cases the public services and municipality actually conducted background checks. However, by the time the background reports were returned either someone forgot to review them or in some way the damning details were neglected. This was the case in Georgia where an associate university professor had to prior convictions for sexual improprieties, including soliticaiton for sodomy, and sexual battery. . The associate professor was arrested recently, yet again for sexual assault.
In many cases, the various state services or municipal agencies did not conduct background searches on their job applicants.
The Board of Regents claimed in this case that prior to September 17th, 2007 it was up to the individual institutions to conduct background checks at their own discretion. This really makes uniformity in the hiring procedure awkward at best. You run background searches on some hires, but not on the others.
