Long wait times for criminal records hurt employers and candidates
Finding out if a job applicant has a criminal record has become harder just at a time when obligations for employers in ensuring safe workplaces are becoming more onerous.
Changes to how the RCMP handles criminal record checks, announced late last year, have made it more difficult and time-consuming to confirm whether an individual has a criminal record.
As outlined in one of this issue’s stories (“Criminal checks hit roadblocks” ), the RCMP will no longer confirm an individual has a criminal record without getting her fingerprints. It’s hard to argue with the policy change. Using only name and date of birth as identifiers inevitably triggers false positives — take the name Mike Smith, for example. A quick Canada411 search shows 297 Mike Smiths in Toronto, 70 in Vancouver and 44 in Montreal. So in just three Canadian cities, there are more than 400 Mike Smiths. Undoubtedly, some of them have criminal records. And it’s possible a couple of them share birthdays.
It would be irresponsible for any police agency to release information about the wrong person during a pre-employment background screening check. It also raises privacy concerns, which is one of the reasons the RCMP made the change. (To be clear, the RCMP didn’t introduce new rules — it just started enforcing ones already on the books.)
Most of this sounds fine. Receiving inaccurate information on candidates doesn’t help employers one bit. But the red flags start to go up pretty quickly when you look at how the new process works.
If there are no hits on a job applicant, nothing changes. You’ll get a report back from the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) that the criminal record is clear. But if the search on Mike Smith shows a match, all the employer will know is the background check is incomplete. Then the job candidate will have to submit fingerprints to the RCMP and wait to hear.
And, as Tom Petty famously sang, “Waiting is the hardest part.” It’s also the longest part. The Mounties are implementing a Real Time Identification Project to modernize processes and promote electronic fingerprint submissions. Its goal is to respond to 85 per cent of civil requests within 72 hours. That doesn’t sound too bad.
But here’s the other shoe you’ve been waiting to hear drop: If a criminal record is encountered during the verification process, the turnaround time could exceed 120 days. And a paper put out by CPIC ominously notes paper-based fingerprint submissions require a “great deal of manual processing.”
In the world of recruitment, that’s a timeline that simply won’t work. And job candidates, who don’t have criminal records but have the misfortune of sharing the name and birthday of someone who does, will suffer collateral damage. It’s not hard to imagine an employer deciding to discreetly move on to the next candidate if a check comes back incomplete. It’s not right, but it’s what will happen in the real world.
Employers that take a leap of faith on these applicants in limbo will have to draw up rock solid employment contracts that clearly state if, four months down the road, the background check comes back showing a criminal record, then their employment can be terminated for cause. What a fun time that interim period will be — the employer unsure about whether the new hire is a convicted murderer, the new employee waiting desperately to find out what, if anything, CPIC knows about him and whether it will cost him his job.
With new legislation coming into force in Ontario next month that puts more onus on employers to ensure a safe workplace, and existing and proposed laws on the books in other jurisdictions, the system needs to be sped up significantly — sooner than later.
