The U.S. economy created jobs at the fastest pace in nine months in January and the unemployment rate dropped to a near three-year low, offering a hopeful sign for hiring in the year ahead. Read more…

The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously restricted the police’s ability to use a GPS device to track criminal suspects in a first test of how privacy rights will be protected in the digital age.

The court rejected the government’s view that long-term surveillance of a suspect by GPS tracking is no different than traditional, low-tech forms of monitoring. But its decision was nuanced and incremental, leaving open the larger questions of how government may use the information generated by modern technology for surveillance purposes. Read more…

An opinion letter from the EEOC was recently released which addresses the American’s with Disability Act (ADA) and hiring practices. In effect, it states that an employer may not have a high school diploma requirement for a job if that requirement eliminates an individual who is unable to obtain a high school diploma because of a learning disability that meets the ADA’s definition of disability. Any hiring criteria that would cause a disparate impact on persons with disabilities can only be maintained if it is job related and a necessity. Read more…

The job market got a bucket of good news Thursday showing private sector hiring picking up and new claims for unemployment benefits dropping. Read more…

Ohio lawmakers are looking for ways to ease the hundreds of restrictions blocking felons released from prison from obtaining jobs. They are called “collateral sanctions,” the 800 or so stipulations written into Ohio’s constitution, laws, administrative codes and court rules that keep many former inmates from qualifying for a myriad of jobs.

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From birth to death, a government document is created for almost every major life event; birth certificate, property records, marriage and death certificates. A public record is any document or information a government agency has collected during the process of conducting local, state, or federal governmental business, and they are the main source of information used in background checks. Why are records about public dealings with the government made public? One of the main reasons is to ensure government transparency. The line between Public and Private Records can be a thin one, and the selling and repackaging of these records has become commonplace. Read more…

Standing outside D.C. Superior Court’s blocky mid-century building, you’d never guess the court is a technological leader among its cohorts in the Washington region, particularly if you’ve visited Fairfax County’s “high-tech courtrooms” with wizardry that lets trial attorneys build dazzling visuals in real time. But here’s the difference between D.C. and most of the region’s other courts: When you visit other courthouses to research a case, there’s a good chance you’ll come up empty handed. The files could be anywhere - maybe in a judges’s chambers, maybe not. Your guess is as good as the file clerk’s, who, by the way, is pretty sick of fetching your documents all day. Read more…

Please be sure to stop by and see the Crimcheck.com booth at the 2010 Ohio HR Conference, held at the lovely Kalahari Resort in Sandusky, Ohio!

Representatives from our company will be on hand at our booth September 15 - 17, 2010.

Stop by to meet and chat with members of our team during the conference exhibition.

We look forward to seeing you soon!

New Jersey lawmakers are considering legislation that would require background checks for school volunteers.

The bill (A-1019) would require any individual who volunteers to provide service on an unpaid basis in a public school district to undergo a criminal history background check in accordance with the same standards and procedures used to conduct such checks on paid school district employees.
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For James Butler III, the little box on job applications looms large: Have you ever been convicted of a felony? The machinist from Hartford, convicted nearly a decade ago of drug and weapon charges, says he rarely hears back from employers when he checks the dreaded box. Read more…