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Are criminal background checks race-biased?

Posted on 03/23/12 by MelvinaBackground-Checks

Melvina Background-Checks View Profile
Member since 23 March 2012
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Pepsi Beverages reached a settlement agreement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), in which it will pay $3.13 million and modify its training and hiring processes based on allegations of racial discrimination. An investigation by the EEOC found evidence that Pepsi’s use of criminal background checks during the hiring process had an adverse and disproportionate impact on black job applicants.

Under Pepsi's policy, job applicants who had been arrested pending prosecution were denied job offers, even if they had not been convicted. In addition, Pepsi's policy denied employment to job applicants arrested or convicted of particular minor offenses. The EEOC found that Pepsi's policy disproportionately impacted more than three hundred individuals.

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Comments

  • Anastasia Romanov

    on 03/26/12, by Anastasia Romanov:

    When performing employment background checks on job applicants, these are the Golden Rules that all employers should abide by: 1. Verify true identity by means of matching an official photo ID to the employment candidate. Otherwise, you would be searching for a friend or relative with a clean record. In addition, there seems to be a trend whereby applicants use someone else social security number in order to continue collecting unemployment benefits on their own social security. 2. Have them sign a background check authorization release form. 3. Make sure you perform the same type of background checks on all applicants applying for the same job opening position. In other words, do not do a more comprehensive background search on one and a more simpler screening on another. You could find yourself in trouble with the EEOC for job discrimination. 4. If doing a criminal background check based on databases, do follow up any findings with an onsite county court criminal search. 5. If you decide not to hire applicant based on any of your background check findings, you must send them a copy of their background check report along with a copy of the FCRAs summary of consumer's rights in order to offer the job applicant an opportunity to dispute any errors. Although there is much more to properly and legally conducting a background check, follow these basic rules and you should be OK.
  • Kelly R. Hildmaf

    on 03/27/12, by Kelly R. Hildmaf:

    Kudos to those who filed this lawsuit and won the settlement! It is not about the financial award that is significant but upholding the rule of law. People who make mistakes, are punished for those mistakes, and have shown a track record of rehabilitation should not be denied employment arbitrarily. It does little to lessen crime and creates a revolving door of people coming home, not being able to get work, going back to prison, and the cycle repeats itself. Further, it is not the character of our young men that is in question. I do not think had behavior should be excused but when a majority of the prison population or convicts are disproportionally African-American or Hispanic men, it says more about the system than the character of these men. There is simply no way to explain the high conviction rate amongst minority groups when they collectively make up less than 30% of the population. Does that mean that most African Americans or Hispanics are bad? I do not think so. Let’s give people a chance to work and actually have a real chance instead of punishing them perpetually for bad choices that they made years ago!!!! This is akin to a punishment for life. Pay your debt to society=should be allowed to integrate fully into society. How else are these people supposed to reform themselves? The answer is not spending money on more building prisons but creating programs that prevent crime in the first place.

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