The Pre-Employment Screener -The 1st Edition

Volume 1 Number 1 August 1999

NEWS YOU CAN USE WHAT IS ILLINOIS 1410/710 PROBATION?

The Illinois Cannabis Control Act

and the Controlled Substances Act were enacted in 1971. They specify two special types of probation sentences for offenders convicted of possessing either marijuana or other controlled substances. For those convicted of Controlled Substances Act violations (e.g., possession of less than fifteen grams of cocaine, heroin or morphine), the sentencing option is known as “1410 probation” and for those convicted of marijuana possession or delivery, it is known as “710 probation.”

Only offenders with no prior felony convictions, probations or supervisions, including those resulting from previous violations of either Act (or of similar laws in other states or at the federal level), are eligible for 1410/710 sentences (for example, Chapter 570, Sec. 410a of the Illinois Revised Statutes). In addition to having no felony prior convictions, 1410/710-eligible defendants also must have plead or been found guilty.

The principal incentive for defendants to accept sentences to 1410/710 probation is that at the end of five years following their sentencing date (a period that includes the successful completion of their probation term) they can petition the court for expungement of their conviction.

State courts convicted almost 998,000 adults of a felony in 1996, an average growth of approximately 5% every year since 1988.

Like that’s almost a million! I hope they’re not out looking for a job!

From 1988 to 1996 the number of felony convictions increased faster than the number of arrests.

It’s about time they went to trial. Perhaps there will be more time for justice and less time for plea bargaining.

Sixty-nine percent of those convicted in 1996 were sentenced to incarceration.

Oh no! That means there is 31% out looking for work?!!

Almost two-thirds of defendants charged with a felony in the 75 most populated counties in May 1992 were released from jail pending disposition of their case.

And you can bet they were looking for a job to fool the judge, too!

A third of those who were released were rearrested for a new offense or did not show up for a court date or violated some other condition of their pretrial release.

Sure, and they were probably robbing me blind on the job!

Between 1982 and 1993, the number of drug defendants investigated by U.S. attorneys increased 10% annually, on average, from 12,186 during 1982 to 34,396 during 1993.

And that’s just at the Federal level. The rest of the drug addicts were out figuring ways to rip me off!

Anyway, with all this crime stuff going around and pre-releases and early releases and conditional discharges and time off for good behavior no wonder I can’t sleep at night.

The New York criminal record system can be confusing. There are Supreme Courts which aren’t the highest courts in the state.

There are County Courts which are the same as the Supreme Court but mainly hear civil cases and the Lower Courts that lie at the local level.

The Supreme Court – Criminal has unlimited original criminal jurisdiction in the prosecutions of felonies and in New York City indictable misdemeanors. It generally hears cases outside the jurisdiction of the other courts.

All records are open to the public except those sealed by a judge or closed by statute.

In order to search these records effectively a location and date of action is needed. Once the location and date is narrowed down the main index is searched, first by date, then by defendant’s name. This will give a docket number for case materials. Additional information will be given in judgment and minute books.

The Lower Court – Criminal is held at the town, village, district, and city level. The jurisdiction of the lower courts are minor criminal infractions.

The local clerk of the court is contacted to determine the availability, hours, location and procedures for access. In New York City the court of limited criminal jurisdiction is the Criminal Court of the City of New York. Each borough has a branch of the court. All records are open to the public except records sealed by a judge or closed by statute.

The Criminal Court of the City of New York was not created until 1963. Until that time there were numerous courts throughout the city that exercised similar jurisdictions. Over the years attempts were made to streamline the court system but it wasn’t until 1963 that the local courts were brought under the unified court system.

The question is should one hire or fire a person who has been convicted of a felony and is now on probation?

Why did the court give probation? Was it the offender’s first offense? Was the charge and class of the felony a low grade? The probation department has the answer.

Probation departments screen all persons found guilty of a felony prior to sentencing.

Each court has its own procedures but one common deciding factor is the risk factor to the community. This premise opens up a can of worms.

Assume the offender is a drug abuser. The crime was a first offense possession of a controlled substance. The court sentence is probation with conditions of drug abuse treatment, etc. Are the courts going to tell us that the prospects of this probationer not violating are slim? That’s what they would like us to believe.

Actually, there aren’t enough jails to hold all the convicted felons. There isn’t enough money to build all the jails we need. There are those, too, who still hold on to the idea of rehabilitation.

Most employers knowing of a felony conviction during the interview process will not hire the applicant. Some employers might feel more at ease knowing a felon is under supervised probation and reporting regularly to the probation department.

Drop that false sense of security.

Recidivism is a factor of environment. Education. Income. Family. Location. Right now there are experimental probation programs singling out areas by zip code; areas the government knows is crime-ridden.

A recent survey in Tennessee shows 41/2% of the population commit 70% of the crimes; and they’re still walking around!

How high is recidivism? 80% according to some surveys!

This leads to a double-edged sword. If the probationer isn’t working, most likely he will return to crime. If the probationer is working there are 4 chances in 5 he will commit another crime before his sentence is finished. Job or no job the risk is too high for the businessperson.

Should one then hire or fire a person convicted of a felony? The saying goes you can’t judge a book by its cover. But then you don’t have to read it, either.

An estimated 53,000 felony cases were filed in the State courts of the Nation’s 75 largest counties during May 1994.

About a fourth of these felony defendants were charged with a violent offense, usually assault ( 12.7% ) or robbery ( 8.5% ). Murder ( 1.1% ) and rape ( 1.4% ) defendants accounted for a small percentage of defendants.

About two-thirds of defendants were charged with a nonviolent felony. The most frequently charged nonviolent offenses were drug trafficking ( 14.6% ), other drug offenses ( 20% ), theft ( 11.2% ), and burglary ( 8.8% ).

About 3 in 8 defendants had an active criminal justice status at the time of the current charged offense, including 17% who were on probation, 15% on pretrial release, and 8% on parole.

Sixty-one percent of all defendants were convicted of a felony and 11% were convicted of a misdemeanor.

The highest felony conviction rates were for defendants charged with a drug trafficking ( 73% ), driving related ( 70% ), murder ( 67% ), burglary ( 67% ), or a weapons offense ( 67% ).

The lowest felony conviction rate was found among assault defendants ( 41% ).

Ninety-two percent of convictions occurring within 1 year of arrest were obtained through a guilty plea. About 5 in 6 guilty pleas were to a felony.

Murder defendants ( 32% ) were the most likely to have their case adjudicated by trial. About 4 in 5 trials resulted in a guilty verdict, including three-fourths of murder trials.

Overall, 67% of the defendants whose most serious conviction charge was a felony were sentenced to incarceration. Nearly all of the remaining convicted defendants received a probation sentence.

New Hampshire's court system includes Superior and District Courts.

Each of the state’s 10 counties has one Superior Court for felonies but more than one District Court for misdemeanors. A good source to find the court that you are seeking is to check The Guide to Background Investigations.

This information packed book is available from CrimeSearch, Inc.

JOKE

Crime doesn’t pay! But at least it doesn’t tell you the check is in the mail!

CANADIAN CRIMINAL SEARCHES

There are four levels of courts. The Justice of Peace. The Provincial or Territorial Court. The Superior Trial Court. The Superior Court of Appeal. The Prosecution is called The Crown.

CONVICTION RATES FOR CRIMES

Property crimes are much harder to solve than crimes of violence. This is because property crimes are usually committed by a person or persons unknown to the victim, whereas crimes of violence are usually committed by a person known to the victim.

OFFENDERS ON PROBATION There are more than three million!

OFFENDERS IN PRISON 1.6 million!

JOKE

Criminals are so bold these days. I was in a department store and saw a guy trying on nylons over his head!

MEXICO CRIMINAL SEARCHES

State Courts include the Superior Court of Justice and the Courts of First Instance. Unlike the United States, bankruptcy cases are heard at the Minor Courts of Special Jurisdiction!

MEXICO VS. USA

In Mexico, one is deemed guilty until proven innocent. There is no parole or bail on personal recognizance. In virtually all Mexican prisons, prisoners are allowed conjugal visits, and greater freedoms within the confines of the prisons, than in most U.S. penitentiaries. Also, no death penalty exists in Mexico.

COST OF CRIME

A recent National Institute of Justice survey calculated the annual cost of crime at $450 billion a year. But about threefourths of the study’s estimated costs of crime are intangible costs, such as pain and suffering of crime victims and a general decline in the quality of life. Their conclusion was if crime was eliminated there are no actual cost savings to taxpayers!

LAST JOKE

I’ll tell you how bad the crime problem has become. Yesterday I heard two people calling for help – and they were muggers!

Civil Record Searching can bring in $$$ if you can obtain the results that your client requested. The most common type of information needed by PreEmployment Screeners are civil lawsuits where the subject has appeared as a defendant. The idea would be to find out if the applicant defaults on his word ( contract ) or in the case of a driver ( motor vehicle personal injury )This is usually a test of an applicant’s integrity. Other types of civil cases requested are usually for divorce, paternity or medical malpractice.

The most common barrier to this type of search is the lack of identifiers found. Many suits are filed by name only and upon inspection of most files one usually finds just an address of the defendant.

Other documents that might help identify the defendant would be copies of the installment agreement ( some require social security numbers ) and there usually is a signature of the defendant on that agreement.

Another barrier is where the summons is served to their attorney of record. There would be no address. Pray for a signature.

Be grateful if the jurisdiction you are researching requires a social security number for recordkeeping; they are far and few between.

In 1992 the Nation’s largest 75 counties disposed an estimated 378,000 tort cases ( complaints charging damages ) of which the majority were auto torts ( charging damage caused by a motor vehicle ).

Most cases ( about 75% ) were disposed through an agreed settlement or voluntary dismissal. Only 3% were disposed by trial verdict.

BREAKING NEWS !!!

Now you can receive results from CrimeSearch by email instead of fax ! The reports will look exactly the same except it will arrive on your PC!

And it’s simple to set up!

First make sure you have Snapshot Viewer installed on your PC. Download this program from this address: http://www.microsoft.com/accessdev/prodinfo/Exe/snpvw80.exe

After the program has been installed send us an

e-mail confirming your enrollment in this new service including the e-mail address you would like us to send your results.

Send your confirmation to: custserv@crimesearch.com You will be notified before the first results are sent to your PC

Educational credentials say much about an individual’s motivation, initiative, qualifications, leadership abilities, or lack thereof. While certainly not the only measure of a person’s capabilities, past academic achievements do indicate a great deal about what an individual may accomplish in the future.

As a result, education is among the first inquiries on most employment applications. However, the same companies that ask about job applicants’ schooling seldom take the time to verify the information they are given.

This is unfortunate because the sad fact is that inadvertent and intentional misstatements of academic background present a real and serious danger for American business.

False, exaggerated and misleading educational claims saddle employers with workers of both the wrong qualifications and the wrong character.

So why don’t employers, as a matter of standard practice, verify the educational background of their job applicants? Certainly inertia plays a big part. It’s easier to stay with the status quo, unless and until some unscrupulous candidate slips through, causes a problem and forces the issue.

But another hurdle has loomed even larger.

With our increasingly mobile society, companies are seeing more applicants from locations and institutions with which they are unfamiliar.

Thorough educational verification practices would require the employer to be ready to check thousands of possible institutions. The enormous data management requirements this would entail are simply more than most companies have been willing to meet.

Top Twenty Cities With highest crime rates 1991 Population over 200,000 Crime rate per 100,000

FRONT COVER SALT LAKE COUNTY COURT HOUSE 3

CONTENTS

4

STATISTICS YOU CAN BANK ON NEW YORK COURT SYSTEM

5

PROBATION: HIRE OR FIRE? CRIMINAL STATISTICS NEW HAMPSHIRE COURTS

6

COLUMN: A LITTLE ABOUT EVERYTHING SO YOU WANT TO DO CIVIL RESEARCH

7

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND CHECKS

PUBLISHER Steven Brownstein

CONTRIBUTOR The Guide to Background Investigations

COVER PHOTOGRAPHER Steven Brownstein

PURPOSE: “Dedicated to the welfare of pre-employment screeners everywhere” PRE-EMPLOYMENT SCREENER is published by CrimeSearch, Inc., 4433 West Touhy Avenue, Lincolnwood, IL 60646. Phone: 847-679-9595. Copyright 1999 by CrimeSearch, Inc. Material in this magazine must not be reproduced by any method without the written permission of the copyright holder.

4433 West Touhy Avenue, Suite 402, Lincolnwood, IL 60646

1 Atlanta 2 Miami 3 Fort Worth 4 Tampa 5 St. Louis 6 Dallas 7 Newark 8 Kansas City 9 Baton Rouge 10 Mobile 11 Charlotte 12 Birmingham 13 San Antonio 14 Detroit 15 Seattle 16 Oakland 17 Fresno 18 Richmond 19 Baltimore 20 Stockton