10% of job applicants have a criminal record

On 30 June, 2011, criminal checking as most human resource professionals and recruiters know it, was officially switched off. The well-known criminal name/ID check was discontinued, making fingerprint checking (via AFIS or paper-based), the only legal means of checking job applicants' criminal records.

The industry as a whole has known about this looming change since 2007; the actual time that it would happen was the unknown factor. Having studied the statistics and compared the different checks over the past three years, EMPS anticipated a dramatic increase in the number of criminal records picked up in the screening process once this change took place. EMPS knew that the well-known name/ID check was getting less and less reliable over the past three years, but 2010 had an all-time low of four percent of job applicants with criminal records discovered, using name/ID checks.

Security industry higher than average

According to EMPS statistics, the first two months, July and August 2011, of "official" fingerprint checking picked up over 10 percent of job applicants with criminal records, across a broad spectrum of industries. The security industry showed a trend of closer to 13 percent and both retail industry and merchandising staff around nine percent.

It goes without saying that the new criminal checking process is more costly; it's an operational challenge for companies who have a large national base and generally it has made screening much more difficult for many companies. But, when it comes to risk and proper due diligence when employing, the statistics speak for themselves, with one in 10 job applicants having some kind of criminal conviction, can anyone afford not to do it?