One of the principle background checks run from pre-employment screening is the sex offender registry. Employers conduct the sex offenders registry background check for both out of self-interest and to meet compliance standards for different governmental and public service groups. School boards are obviously concerned with sex offenders and often have stringent rules about hiring them.
Sex offenders can, frankly, be toxic to the workplace environment. Once other employees become aware that the new hire is a sex offender, the talking starts and usually it is a long way from favorable conversation. I have blog about sex offenders and their impact to the working environment. One recent article is entitled. Background Checks and Sex Offenders in the Workplace.
The Los Angeles Times reports in an article that sex offenders can be tough to track. There are something like 5,100 registered sex offenders living in Los Angeles alone. Twenty percent are on parole or probation and residency restrictions, not living too close to a school or park, for example, make it difficult for law enforcement officer and parole agents to keep tabs on them. Some fall off the radar screen and according to records have no known address.
Because they are not being tracked as easily, a sex offender when applying for a job may be tempted to leave this little bit of news off of his resume. Not knowing a new hire is a sex offender can be a lot more challenging than discovering his criminal record before actually hiring him. This is why conducting the sex offender background check as part of the pre-employment screening program is that much more important. Whether an employer is conducting this background check for compliance purposes, meeting with the standards of government or private contractors, or whether an employer runs it as part of its own filtration system, this is one screening search you do not want to leave off the list.
Check them out before you hire.
3 replies on “Sex Offenders Can BE Difficult To Track”
I don’t know who wrote this article, but it is full of disinformation. A sex offender on probation will have their probation officer check with the employer to ensure they work there. Sex offenders will work harder at jobs, because they know that losing a job can violate their probation. Are you aware that the recidivism rate, nationally, for sex offenders is less than .3%? Sex offenders are being tracked more than any other type of criminal, so where your information comes from that they aren’t being tracked as easily is erroneous.
Probation officers track sex offenders on a DAILY basis. Yes, there is a large caseload, but don’t let bad media throw you off. They are being tracked and carefully watched. If you don’t believe this, then you have no faith in your local law enforcement. That is their job and they take it very seriously.
Your article is very bad reporting. You are biased on sex offenders, and it shows that you are not willing to give people a chance. Try doing some constructive reporting. Maybe you should write an article on a black man who got caught robbing a store, and print your article that all black men are thieves and robbers. You wouldn’t print that, but you just printed an article that says an eighteen year old who has sex with his sixteen year old girlfriend (or boyfriend) is a sex offender. and yes, the laws say they are. Get your facts straight.
Here is but one report where sex offender reports are underreported. http://www.csom.org/pubs/recidsexof.html
Here is an article form the Wall street Journal that puts recidivism rates at much higher than your specious .3%. More like 52% with an account that it could be moire. Here is the link for that articlehttp://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/how-likely-are-sex-offenders-to-repeat-their-crimes-258/
This is from Wikipedia. “A 2002 study by the United States Department of Justice indicated that recidivism rates among sex offenders was 5.3%; that is, 5.3% of released sex offenders were later arrested for another sex crime. The same study mentioned that 68% of released non-sex offenders were rearrested for any crime (both sex and non-sex offenses), while 43% of the released sex offenders were rearrested for any crime (and 24% reconvicted).[2]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_offender
Then the other question for you, of course, is that given the high crime rate in all areas, if the recidivism rate is your mere .3% then why as you state are sex offenders so frequently and thoroughly tracked?
I should have also added that we have had more than a few sex offenders move from one state to another, and then not register, leaving it up to the employer to discover whether or not the candidate had previous criminal records in other states. As far as giving people a chance, that is not up to us but the employer.