Will Disclosing a Long Ago Theft Cause Trouble for Me at Work?
In this article found within the Wall Street Journal, a question arises about the need to disclose a criminal arrest from 20 years ago, because his employer is thinking about conducting post employment background checks on current employees.
The question is in regards to a theft charge that the employee had in college, in which he received a differed adjudication. A differed adjudication finding is not one of guilt. In fact, the case was later dismissed and no criminal conviction resulted. The one question left is what does/did the application ask when the employee was hired? If it asked if the employee had any criminal convictions, then the answer is no and that is what the employee should stick to.
Question: The financial-services company where I have worked for the past 20 years is doing background checks on all its employees and wants to know about any criminal activities. I’m an information-technology security analyst, and I have led b clean life, except for one incident in college, where I was arrested on charges of theft under $5. I received deferred adjudication and was cleared of the conviction, so only the arrest and the charge exists. Should I disclose it, and, if so, will having it in my employee record brand me as potentially dishonest?
– Jeff
Jeff: Let’s be frank here. Isn’t your real concern that you might lose your job if the company uncovers this incident? I suspect that in this era of increased scrutiny, many employees may be losing sleep over past actions they never want their companies to discover.
Most large companies screen employees carefully before they are hired by ordering background checks on them. The screeners look at criminal activity and whether the facts candidates put down on their job applications match what they really did. In your case, the company is doing the screenings after the fact, possibly to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which tightened corporate-governance rules for public companies.
Read Full Article Here
May 30th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
There are many rules and laws governing employment screening and employee rights. Essentially your employer would not be permitted under the court rules regarding deferred adjudication to use this information against you.. Since it is technically a non conviction the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) does not allow non conviction or arrest data older than 7 years to be considered with respect to employment screening. In fact there are many states which have stricter laws which prohibit any negative information older than 7 years to be used against an employee. Bottom line is your employer should be very careful here.