Does your company do criminal checks on new employees?

According to government figures released today, criminals on probation committed more than 1000 serious crimes over the last two years, including nearly one murder a week in England and Wales.

1,167 offences were committed while the offender was being supervised by the probation officer. The total included 94 murders, 105 rapes and 43 arson attacks. This year's Ministry of Justice figures showed a further 657 criminals on probation were found guilty of serious violent or sexual crimes. More than 400 other criminals are accused of committing serious further offences, but their cases have not yet come to trial. The details were revealed in the 2008 offender management caseload which reveals details about the scale of prison and probation workload.

At the same time in a separate study in the United States Carnegie Mellon University researchers have created a model for providing empirical evidence on when an ex-convict has been “clean” long enough to be considered “redeemed” for employment purposes. The new study, which appears in the current issue of Criminology, estimates that after five years of staying clean an individual with a criminal record is of no greater risk of committing another crime than other individuals of the same age. The research comes at a time when President Barack Obama’s crime agenda includes breaking down employment barriers for people who have a prior criminal record, but who have stayed clean since their earlier offense.

What this makes abundantly clear to HR directors is that they need to be aware if a potential employee has a criminal record prior to making a decision to employ. A criminal record should not necessarily prevent employment but being aware is being forearmed.

The importance of conducting Criminal Checks

As the story below demonstrates, financial firms run the risk putting their organisations in financial peril by not conducting basic criminal searches. As a minimum media searches should always be part of a proper screening process, since they will unveil any high profile case that reached the local or national press.
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TWO Zimbabwean insurance workers based in Sheffield who plundered customers' personal details then used them to scam hundreds of thousands of pounds from policy holders have been jailed for five and-a-half years.
Failed asylum seekers Edward Dzingai, 27, and Gregory Maumbe, 26, both worked at Norwich Union's Pomona House in Pear Street, Ecclesall Road.
They used their positions to gain access to the personal insurance policy details of 28 "gone away" customers - clients for whom the company had no current address - often targeting elderly or vulnerable people.
Ian West, prosecuting, told Sheffield Crown Court: "Dzingai and Maumbe's positions in the organisation gave them access to the computer databases - the names and details of the policy holders and copies of the signatures of these 'gone away' cases.
"They would use this information to manufacture fraudulent surrender letters and the funds would then be transferred to the bank accounts detailed on these letters."
They targeted 28 policies yielding more than £655,395 between September 2005 and October 2007.
They also tried to steal a further £144,000 but failed.
When police raided their homes and examined their computers they found details of another 53 policies worth £1.5 million.
Dzingai, of Windy House Lane, Manor, and Maumbe, of Fretson Road, Manor, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to obtain money transfers by deception.
They claimed they were forced into the scam by men who threatened to hurt their families in Sheffield and Zimbabwe.
Maumbe admitted receiving up to £40,000 for his part in the operation, while Dzingai said he received between £1,500 and £2,000 for five different transactions.
Sentencing them to five years in prison for the deception case, plus an extra six months for possessing fake passports, His Honour Judge Patrick Robertshaw said:"You were actually possessed of freewill and made the choice to play a crucial, critical role in this fraud over a significant period of time.
"The breach of trust involved was serious, flagrant, calculated, deliberate and protracted."
The prosecution claim Allan Manhire, 26, from Liverpool, arranged the bank accounts through which the money was laundered. He faces trial at a later date.
Several other defendants, some of them UK nationals, have admitted opening bank accounts into which the money was laundered.

Jail time for applicants who lie on their CVs

NHS’s pre-employment screening practices come under scrutiny after director jailed for CV exaggerations. A senior director at the NHS has been jailed for exaggerating his qualifications during his job application.
In January 2007 Lee Whitehead was appointed director of planning and modernisation at Stoke-on-Trent Primary Care Trust (PCT) after falsely claiming that in addition to being a member of the British Psychological Society (BPS) he had a first class bachelors degree, a Master’s degree and a doctorate, when in fact he only held a second class BSc in Psychology and was not a member of the BPS.
6 months after bring appointed Mr Whitehead resigned his £78,000 a year job after suspicions were raised by a coworker and Mr Whitehead was unable to provide proof of his qualifications. Even though the post-holder was not required to hold either a Master's or a PhD, or be a member of the BPS, the court handed out a 12 week prison sentence after Mr Whitehead pleaded guilty to obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception and making a false instrument.
The lies were not discovered by pre-employment screening checks but by a suspicious coworker and Mr Whitehead had made the same claims on applications going back to June 2003. These included the Vale of Aylesbury PCT, where he had worked from April 2005 until he started employment with Stoke PCT.

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It is very surprising that the NHS has chosen to appoint a senior official without checking their qualifications. Mr Whitehead occupied a position of public trust in a Primary Care Trust and there is no excuse that his background wasn’t thoroughly investigated at the recruitment stage.
This is not the first time that the NHS has failed to spot fraudulent applicants for senior positions. In 2003, Neil Taylor produced a bogus degree certificate to land the position as head of the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust. The risks that the NHS takes when they skimp on the background investigation or when they start an applicant prior to the checks being completed can have very serious repercussions and it is a particularly risky approach when the qualifications are of a clinical nature. This can endanger patients' lives.

Criminal records on sale for just £37

Employers have been found to abuse the system in obtaining CRB checks for roles which do not justify this type of in-depth criminal search. The Sunday Times investigated the allegations and came up with some very interesting findings (see article below). CRB criminal searches are different from Basic Criminal Searches (offered through Disclosure Scotland) which are available and legal for any level of employee.

Basic Criminal Searches only disclose unspent criminal convictions
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Police files that were opened up with the aim of helping to protect children from sex offenders are being sold for as little as £37 to employers who simply want to find out more about job applicants.

The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), an executive agency of the Home Office, was set up six years ago to carry out checks on prospective employees whose work would bring them into contact with children and vulnerable adults. Its declared aim is to identify those unsuitable for such work.

But a Sunday Times investigation has established that the CRB is passing files to more than 50 recruitment agencies and corporate investigators which check the background of people applying for jobs that may have nothing to do with children or other vulnerable groups.
Some offer unlawful checks of potential business partners and staff, ranging from web designers to clerical workers. The disclosures mean further questions for Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, already embroiled in a row over the loss of criminal data.


Last week Paul Cavadino, the chief executive of Nacro, a charity that works to reduce crime, called for an inquiry into the trade in CRB records. He said: “The law is clearly being flouted in some cases and it is outrageous that it has been allowed to happen.”

One of the agencies accredited by the CRB — the United Criminal Records Bureau — offers criminal record checks for potential employees for £37. For an extra £5 it can supply an enhanced check that may include unproven police intelligence.

Operating out of a detached house in Bexleyheath, Kent, it claims to scrutinise thousands of police records each year. When approached last week by an undercover reporter asking for information about medical sales staff, it offered checks on a range of employees “as long as you are willing to pay upfront”.

Meena Thiagarajan, a director of the company which operates United Criminal Records Bureau, recommended enhanced checks for administrative staff who were handling confidential company documents. “Whatever they’ve done in their entire life will come up on their enhanced disclosure,” she claimed.

She said an employee’s agreement should be obtained for a request for the file but admitted that she did not obtain original documentation, such as a passport, to check the validity of the application. The reporter did not follow up her offer by submitting an application.
When confronted by The Sunday Times, Thiagarajan said all applications were carefully checked and she would not have submitted an unlawful one. In some cases enhanced checks on administrative staff were justified, she said.

The CRB was established under the Police Act 1997, which stipulates that checks be confined to those working with children and vulnerable adults, and some specific jobs such as police officers, lawyers and accountants. It was launched in March 2002 with the objective of improving access to criminal records in the interests of public safety.

The owner of another CRB-accredited agency, who asked not to be identified, said legal checks on credit card ratings, mortgage details and driving records were routinely checked for job applicants. She said some companies were also offering unlawful checks on criminal records, with a complete background check costing as much as £100.

“It’s easy to abuse the system,” she said. “You can get almost anyone’s criminal record because there are no proper checks to ensure you’re complying with the law.”

At least some of the information held by the CRB appears to have been sent to companies overseas. The CRB lists one company on its website, Personnel Profile Specialists Ltd (PPSL), at a residential address in Upminster, Essex, but its head office is in Auckland, New Zealand.
The PPSL website states: “PPSL are unique in New Zealand as we are the only organisation with an office in the UK registered to access records from the Criminal Records Bureau . . . this has proven exceptionally useful to our clients.”

Richard Peach, who owns the company, said it was not currently accredited by the CRB but had always complied with rules when checking British criminal records.

The law was a “grey area”, he said. But he believed a criminal record, once in the public domain, should be accessible.

Many employees are worried by the ease with which dubious or borderline checks can be made because of the minor misdemeanours and unproven allegations that can be unearthed. In one case, the subject of a complaint to the information commissioner, a CRB search revealed the theft of a packet of meat worth 99p in 1984 when the person involved was 16.

Nacro now gets about 20,000 calls a year from people with concerns about the CRB system, including unlawful checks, compared to about 7,000 a year when it was first launched.
A CRB helpline offers little support. One caller who complained of an unlawful check last week was told there was little the CRB could do to help, even though it was accepted by the telephone operator that the rules appeared to have been broken. “If you don’t comply, obviously they will not employ you,” the caller was told.

In a landmark case Derek Howman, 46, from Weaverham, Cheshire, who was fired from his job as a gardener at a residential home after an enhanced CRB check, is taking legal action. He claims the check, which revealed two spent offences, was unlawful. He is seeking compensation.
His case is backed by the information commissioner, who concluded that the CRB check appeared to be unwarranted.

Nacro says it would prefer new a system where employees in the caring professions are vetted by a licensing authority without the criminal records being sent to employers.

The Home Office stated that agencies could have their accreditation removed if they carried out improper checks.