What is an OFAC background check — and should I use it?
Many customers have asked us about OFAC, named for the Office of Foreign Assets Control. In this post we explore what OFAC is, what an OFAC check does, and whether it is appropriate for use in corporate employment screening. The Office of Foreign Assets Control is part of the U. S. Treasury. It is the official body that determines whether or not an entity or individual is permitted to do business with the United States. Sanctions, first used in 1812 against Great Britain, are part of the tools used to apply financial pressure to a group. The government learned a [...]
The origin of variable sentencing for criminal convictions
In the United States and many other countries, sentencing is a separate phase of a criminal trial. Once a defendant has been convicted, a judge will typically determine his punishment in the sentencing phase -- and that punishment can vary. We are so used to this that the origin of the tradition is rarely questioned. But why would two people who committed the same crime serve different jail sentences? You might assume the purpose is to allow the circumstances of the crime to be taken into account, and indeed this is its main use today. As it turns out, variable [...]
The FBI’s National Criminal Information Center
Today we look at the mother of all criminal record databases: the National Criminal Information Center, or NCIC. This is a compilation of various criminal record files that are maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The files of greatest interest for background check purposes tend to be the list of wanted persons, and individuals who have been "charged with serious and/or significant offenses". The NCIC actually has seven categories of people in its database. In addition to the two mentioned above, it includes: Missing persons. People the Secret Service believes are a danger to the President or other protected [...]
Suppressing criminal records in Massachusetts
There is an active public debate with respect to the longevity of criminal records. Many advocates are concerned that even a minor crime, committed 20 years ago, can follow a person for the rest of their life. It can limit their job opportunities, marginalizing them and perhaps making it more likely they will return to the criminal sector. This can happen even for incidents such as arrests or dismissed charges, where the accused may be innocent of a crime. On the federal level there are some limitations imposed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) with respect to the use [...]
Speeding through airport security with the help of a criminal background check
Most of us think of background checks in the context of applying for a job, or an apartment. But if you travel on airplanes, you probably go through airport security a lot more often than you change jobs. The steps a airline traveler goes through -- lugagge screening, removing shoes, opening up a laptop, and passing lookup up against a no-fly list, constitute a background check in their own right. It is probably fair to say that most of us consider this something of an inconvenience. The Transportation Security Administration has a Registered Traveler program that may allow travelers to [...]
The need for identifiers in accurate criminal checks
Identity theft is a growing concern for the American public. There have been many articles, books, and broadcasts on the topic. High-profile data breaches at ChoicePoint and LexisNexis have served to heighten the sense of alarm. Newspapers have been regularly trumpeting the increasing rate of identity theft, while neglecting to mention that this frightening term refers to stolen credit card numbers (as opposed to a true impersonation) 90% of the time. Much of the concern has focused on the social security number, or SSN. This is understandable as the SSN is the basic number used in the financial world. As [...]