If we just check enough people
The Park, Beach and Recreation Commission in the city of Milford, CT is planning to require background checks for all coaches in the city’s recreation programs. The Commission is drafting a revised processing procedure for new coaches.
“‘We hope whatever we give to City Attorney Marilyn Lipton is airtight,’ commission Chairman Daniel Worroll said.”
If by “airtight” they mean “no evil doer will ever get through,” then our friends in Milford are doomed to failure. There is no airtight.
People fail to do what they’re supposed to. They make mistakes. Some of them lie and get away with it. The best you can hope for is a system that works most of the time and is easy enough to use that people will follow it.
Mr. Worroll also said something else that actually made me chuckle.
“We’re also thinking of asking umpires to go through background checks, as well as volunteers in concession stands since they come in contact with kids.”
Here’s the background. A summer league basketball coach was convicted in September of sexually assaulting a teenaged player. Now the Commission, which has been dithering over new standards for coaches for two years, has been spurred into action. Evidently they think that if they write enough rules and check enough people everything will be OK.
Doing background checks on coaches makes sense. I’m not sure about umpires. But concession stand volunteers? Why not just check all the people in the stands? Heck, don’t stop there, station city workers with laptops at the entrances to the […]
Lessons from Choicepoint
Back in 2005, headlines around the country trumpeted the news that private information on 163,000 people had been stolen from Choicepoint, a data services company. Consumer concerns bout identity theft spiked and Choicepoint was held up as an example of everything that was wrong with data security. That was then.
Today, the company has become what one expert from Gartner called “a role model for data security and privacy practices.” Earlier this year, Daniel Lemecha, ChoicePoint’s chief information officer and senior vice president spoke at the 2007 IDC IT Forum & Expo in Boston about what Choicepoint learned from its experience.
Lemecha’s speech isn’t available online, but he made several recommendations about data security that are valid for you, even if you’re not large data services company. Here they are.
“Clearly define expected behavior and provide tools to simplify compliance for employees.”
Make sure you tell people who handle sensitive information for you what they’re expected to do. Check regularly to see that they’re doing it.
“Create data breach response policies and procedures: Who should be contacted in the event of a breach, and what should the company do for affected customers?”
I’d add one more thing. Develop some standards for when an employee should bring a possible problem to your attention. Make it easy for the people who handle sensitive information to become part of the solution.
“Determine the credentials of those you work with and those who work for you.”
Lemecha advised background checks for employees on a regular, ongoing basis, rather than just at […]
What’s your fraud risk?
One thing accountants do is look for possible fraud when they’re auditing business’s books. Recently the Journal of Accountancy published an excellent article on spotting fraud in your business. Here’s the lead from that article.
Every organization faces some risk of fraud from within. Fraud exposure can be classified into three broad categories: asset misappropriation, corruption and fraudulent financial statements. Answering the following 15 questions is a good starting point for sizing up a company’s vulnerability to fraud and creating an action plan for lessening the risks. The questions are based on information from the 2007 edition of the Fraud Examiners Manual published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.
You can read the full list of questions on the Journal’s site. I want to highlight the question bout background and reference checks: “Does the organization conduct pre-employment background checks to identify previous dishonest or unethical behavior?”
Here are some of the checks that the Fraud Examiners suggest that you consider for “any key applicant.”
Background checks you can order:
criminal records and convictions
credit history
Social Security number trace
driving record
Checks that you should do yourself include:
previous employment
employment references
personal references
education verification
professional license verification
Checking into the background and qualifications of everyone you consider hiring should be a common business practice for you. It can help protect you from both workplace violence and from fraud.
Library volunteers upset over background checks
The Fayetteville, Arkansas Public Library has a problem. For the last several months, the staff has been working on a policy that will protect members of the public, especially children, from predators while they’re at the library. How could anyone object to that?
Well, it depends on how you do things. The Northwest Arkansas News reports on a brouhaha over background checks for volunteers. Here’s the story.
First, the library ran unannounced criminal background checks on employees. The employees learned of the checks after the fact at a staff meeting.
Then, a rumor surfaced that the library was going to run criminal background checks on all of the few hundred library volunteers. In fact, no decision or recommendation had been made on that issue, but the combination of unannounced criminal checks on staff and possible background checks on volunteers sparked a number of volunteer resignations and letters to the Executive Director of the library and to the library board.
As a purely logical matter, checking out staff and volunteers at a place where children and other vulnerable people congregate seems like a good idea. So where did things go wrong? Here are some lessons you can learn from the Fayetteville library experience.
Lesson: unannounced background checks when you haven’t done them before are going to get people upset. Tell people you’ll be checking and why.
Lesson: You should have good reasons for checking on people and you should communicate those reasons. One objection to the idea of criminal background checks on all volunteers was […]
Checking out customers
This is a “man-bites-dog” story about background checks. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel recently carried a story about how charter boat captains are starting to do background checks on their customers.
This isn’t as weird as it might sound. It turns out that those charter boat captains have a good reason. They don’t want to suffer the same fate as the captain and crew of a boat named the “Joe Cool.” Here’s how the Sun-Sentinel tells the story.
The 47-foot Joe Cool fishing boat left Miami on Sept. 22 with a four-person crew and two men bound for the Bahamas. Two days later, the men were found in a life raft and the boat without its crew. Despite claiming hijackers had killed the crew, dumping their bodies overboard, the men were later charged with murder.
So now the charter captains are going to use background checks to delve into their customers’ pasts. It may seem weird, but it’s really good business practice.
What they’re doing is not much different from what an employer does when he or she investigates a prospective hire. You want to make sure the person you’re bringing in to your company won’t be dangerous to you or to others and won’t supplement their earnings by stealing from you.
What the charter boat captains are doing isn’t much different from what a landlord does, checking on prospective tenants to weed out any with a history of violence who might threaten other tenants. It just makes sense.
The general rule is this, if […]
Bill to combat elder abuse is still going nowhere
Maybe it’s because we’ve got older relatives in a nursing home that this story makes me so angry. Here’s how it was reported in the Chicago Tribune.
The Elder Justice Act, designed to combat abuse, neglect and exploitation of older Americans, still gathers dust in Congress. It has been doing that for five years, odd for a bill with few visible opponents.
That last part gets my dander up, the part about “few visible opponents.” If that’s true then why haven’t we seen action on this? I mean, if you all think it’s a good idea, what’s the holdup?
There’s more here that got my nerve endings smoking. Here’s another paragraph from the story.
Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), head of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, backs a separate measure requiring criminal background checks for newly hired nursing home workers, a provision Coldren said might have prevented the rape of her grandmother. But nursing homes have made it clear they don’t want to incur the extra cost of those background checks, so the federal government would have to bear the burden.
The nursing home industry’s position seems to be that it’s better to increase the risk of abuse of frail and vulnerable people than it is to spend $20 or so per newly hired staff member on a criminal background check. That’s sick.
While the politicians dither on this one, you may want to add “Does the nursing home conduct criminal background checks on prospective employees?” to any checklist you’re using to evaluate a […]