by Jason Morris

In my opinion one of the most over looked and underutilized searches in employment screening is the Sex Offender Registry Search, an inexpensive way to protect your employees, customers and your reputation. There are over 250,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. These people need to work and maintain a living. The question is: are they working for you?

Conducting a Sex Offender Registry search is the most effective way to screen out these predators. A Countywide Felony & Misdemeanor Search will sometimes uncover these crimes but if the perpetrator knows the system, they can outsmart it. A Countywide search is still the most effective way of finding a record if it exists in that particular County. Using additional tools such as the Registry Search will allow you to uncover additional areas not found otherwise. Organizations must be diligent in trying to uncover these misdeeds. Using your entire arsenal of searches to uncover this type of criminal history is imperative. A typical Sex Offender Registry Search will scour a County and, or State Sex Offender Registry to see if your subject has a listing. Per the FCRA, the result would again lead us back to the source of the record to make it compliant and reportable to you.

One of our clients operates several overnight camps for children with terminal illnesses. I have had the pleasure of speaking at their national conferences a few times and the example I use regularly is as follows: People who like numbers find jobs in accounting. People who like medicine find jobs in the medical field. People who like writing find jobs writing. People who like to molest children WILL put themselves in situations where they are around kids. The facts are there: sexual predators feed their hunger by exploiting situations and taking the opportunity presented to them. Unfortunately, sex offenders don’t only prey on children, hiring a sex offender could jeopardize your clients, employees and your reputation.

Click here for some interesting information about recidivism rates among sex offenders. A few interesting Facts:

• For women, homicide was the second leading cause of death on the job in 2003.¹⁰
• Women are the victims in 80 percent of rapes and sexual assaults that take place in the workplace – at least 29,000 acts of rape or sexual assault each year.¹¹
• Women who have been raped or sexually assaulted report diminished work functioning, sometimes for up to eight months after the attack.¹²
• An estimated one million women are stalked each year in the U.S.,¹³ and about one-fourth of them report missing work as a result of the stalking, missing an average of eleven days.¹⁴
• One study of female domestic violence victims found that 44 percent were left without transportation when the abuser disabled the car or hid the car keys.¹⁵ ’
• In a survey of 7,000 women, 37 percent said domestic violence had a negative impact on their job performance.¹⁶
• Among a group of abused employees receiving workplace counseling, the average absenteeism rate of the group at the time of beginning counseling was about 30 percent higher than the average employee absenteeism rate.¹⁷

This information is available for all fifty states due to Megan’s Law. Megan’s Law is named after Megan Kanka, a New Jersey girl who was raped and killed at age seven by a known child molester who had moved across the street from the Kanka family without their knowledge. In the wake of the tragedy, the Kankas sought to have local communities warned about sex offenders in the area and on May 17, 1996, President Clinton signed Megan’s Law.

¹⁰ U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2004). Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries: Table 4. Fatal occupational injuries by worker characteristics and event or exposure, 2003.
¹¹ U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (August, 2001). Crime Characteristics: Summary Findings.
¹² Resick, P.A., Calhoun, K.S., Atkeson, B.M., & Ellis, E.M. (1981). Social adjustment in victims of sexual assault. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 49, 705-712, as cited in Koss, M.P. (1991). The Rape Victim. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p. 62.
¹³ U.S. Dept. of Justice, National Institute of Justice. November, 2000. Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women. NCJ 183781., pp. 14 – 15.
¹⁴ Tjaden, P. & Thoennes, N. (April, 1998). National Institute of Justice Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Research Brief: Stalking in America: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice.
¹⁵ McFarlane, J., Malecha, A. Gist, J, Schulz, P. et al. (2000). Indicators of intimate partner violence in women’s employment: Implications for workplace action. AAOHN Journal, 48(5), 215.
¹⁶ The Body Shop. (September, 1997). The Many Faces of Domestic Violence and Its Impact on the Workplace. New York, NY: EDK Associates.
¹⁷ Urban, B.Y. (2000). Anonymous Foundation Domestic Abuse Prevention Program Evaluation: Final Client Survey Report. Chicago, IL: The University of Illinois at Chicago. Contact byurban@aol.com.
¹⁸ Burke, D.F. (January, 2000). When employees are vulnerable, employers are too. The National Law Journal.
¹⁹ Patrice Tanaka & Company, Inc. October 16, 2002. News Release: Corporate Leaders See Domestic Violence as a Major Problem That Affects Their Employees According to Benchmark Survey by Liz Clairborne, Inc. Contact Lauree Ostrofsky (212) 229-0500, x 236.
²⁰ Partnership for Prevention. (2002). Domestic Violence and the Workplace. Washington, D.C.: Partnership for Prevention, (202) 833-0009 or www.prevent.org.
²¹ Ibid.
²² Urban, B.Y. (2003). The Attorney General’s Report to Congress: Workplace Responses to Violence Against Women. An unpublished report of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, with release pending.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 11:50 am and is filed under Articles, Employment Screening 101, Series, Sex Offenders. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.