Almost every state mandates child care centers conduct criminal background checks prior to employment. Some also call for a fingerprint check, a statewide check, or even an FBI check. The concept of conducting a criminal background check sounds like a good, reasonable and prudent practice until you question exactly what information you're receiving and from where it's coming.

One school district in Houston recently discovered that one teacher's aide was an illegal alien and had been convicted of extortion with intent to commit bodily injury and credit card abuse. He'd been working at the center since the 1990s, but the school had just gotten around to performing a background check.

In this case, it would have been helpful if the school had understood just how important a pre-employment background check could be. For instance, when the FBI conducts a fingerprint check, it reports every felony arrest the agency has for the individual. Currently, there are 47.7 million people in the FBI database.

With an FBI check, a center is also privy to information on any misdemeanor arrests. Regardless, most submitting agencies -- police departments, for example -- don't report misdemeanor arrests to the FBI. In fact, the FBI has only about 50 percent of the arrest dispositions in its database. As such, any arrest should certainly be considered a red flag and warrant additional research.

To keep the children in your center safe, it's important to conduct pre-employment research. Even though an applicant has an arrest record, the charges could have been dropped or the person found not guilty. If you refuse to hire an applicant because an arrest record, you could set yourself up for an employment practice lawsuit.

Deceitful Applications

One national youth organization recently conducted a study involving 1,650 volunteer and paid staff background checks from 24 states. The study was very limited in scope, and certainly the statistics could vary if conducted on a larger scale, but the findings nevertheless raised several concerns.

Part of the study involved comparing the criminal record information obtained from the FBI to the information uncovered by two commercial background check firms. Disturbingly, the FBI found just 60 percent of all the applicants' criminal convictions (remember, the FBI doesn't normally track misdemeanors), and the two commercial firms uncovered only 40 percent to 50 percent each.

The youth organization also consulted with experts to establish what crimes -- referred to as "barrier crimes" -- made an applicant undesirable for working with youth. The list included animal cruelty, drug-related convictions, assault, sex misdemeanors and felony convictions. The same study found that more than 12 percent of all applicants had some form of criminal history, and 5 percent had been convicted of a barrier crime. Of the 12 percent overall, more than half falsified their applications response by indicating they had no criminal history whatsoever. What this information tells us:

> People will lie on their applications, so verification is critical.

> Many applicants with criminal convictions may believe that either you will skip the criminal background check or it will not be thorough enough to pick up past criminal activity.

> No single source criminal background check is absolutely reliable.

Here's a hypothetical scenario to illustrate the potential problems with background checks. Sally Smith is a 24-year-old with some teaching experience. She went to college in New York, lived in Connecticut, taught last year in Colorado, and now wants to work at your child care center in California. Sally also worked several summers at camps in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Your state requires you to conduct a state criminal record check and a sex offender registry check. Even if you checked all six states, you wouldn't pick up any criminal offenses she might have committed in the other states.

Hypothetically, to be on the safe side, you run a fingerprint check through the FBI—a good idea, but only up to a point because your state must have passed legislation permitting you to do an FBI check. A few states, including Illinois, have not done so.

Keep in mind that the FBI records are mostly for uncovering felony charges, so even if your child care center's policies dictate that certain misdemeanor crimes would negate employment, you might not uncover them through the FBI. A fingerprint, on the other hand, is a positive identification of a person's identity, which you can't get by running a name and Social Security number based search. Social Security numbers can be forged, stolen or inaccurately written down.

Fingerprint Checks

When requesting an FBI background check, you must send a clear set of 10 fingerprints, along with the proper paperwork and appropriate fees. Processing time for non-electronic record submissions usually takes seven to 10 days, not including mail time or other inadvertent delays.

To reduce turnaround time from weeks to hours, some centers are conducting digitized fingerprints. You can buy a hand scanner for about $3,000, and there may be grants available from the U.S. Department of Justice or from your state government to purchase a scanner. Check the FBI website, www.fbi.gov/hq/cjsid/ident.htm, for equipment specifications and software requirements.

Once you've digitized the fingerprints, your center must go through a channeling agency--typically the state police--who will check the state database before forwarding the prints to the FBI. Depending on the number of staff, parent chaperones or others you might need to fingerprint, a scanner could be an investment that saves time and frustration.

A name and Social Security number based search has some validity as well, but how do you determine what counties or states to search? Relying on the resident history listed on the application isn't a good idea; remember, 53 percent of the people lied on applications about having a criminal history at all. A better solution is to conduct a resident search based on credit history mailing addresses, which will also verify information on the application. Then you can check other counties or states.

How much confidence can you invest that those checks will pick up every offense for every applicant? The answer depends on which firm you use, what databases they're checking, how frequently those databases are updated, and if the clerks accurately update the information. Keep in mind that law enforcement officers may enter a Social Security number, but because they don't track people by that number, it might not always be accurate. Additionally, people might not have Social Security numbers at the time of their arrest, but they need them to get a job, so they obtain them somehow later. Taken altogether, there's a lot of room for human error.

The Best Combination

A thorough employment screening program is incomplete without a criminal background check, but you must understand the limitations. Can you ever count on a single source check to catch 100 percent of the crimes your center may consider as barrier crimes? Probably not. No one is going to penalize you for doing more than minimum requirements so it's worth it to conduct multiple checks.

If your center has the funding, the best combination is an FBI check in conjunction with a name, Social Security and credit history residences. Don't forget to check the state sex offender registries as well. The more you understand about the advantages and disadvantages of various criminal background checks, the better the decisions you can make to ensure the safety of your students and faculty.