Our industry has done a very poor job of letting a company from France come into the US and convince state legislators that fingerprinting is the only way to do background checks. This is an FBI check against their database of 20 million records, many with no dispositions. Our criminal database has over 551 million court cases with dispositions. The only advantage of fingerprinting is positive identification. Other than that it is forcing background screening companies to lower their price for a real background check to supplement the limited FBI database check.
I think most people know by now that our federal government doesn’t do that many things better than private enterprises. If you are currently doing fingerprint background checks and it is not required by state law you should look at alternatives that would give you a much bigger bang for the buck. I have seen many non-profits work hard to fundraise or get grants to buy the equipment to later find out how limited the background check is. The FBI database (NCIC) was never meant to be a background screening tool. Doing only this kind of check is going to give our industry a bad name even though they are quit different.
Any opinions?
