After working for a year behind the scenes with various industry leading criminal record database companies, backgroundchecks.com is proud to announce the launch of an expungement clearinghouse that ensures that more expunged records are removed from their private criminal databases. This new effort is aimed at assisting job seekers to remove records that may no longer be publicly available but which are still present in private databases.
Research shows that people have been and will continue to be refused employment because of criminal background checks that report expunged or sealed records. With the state of the economy as it is, and with the goal of helping to create more employment opportunities, backgroundchecks.com initiated discussions with a group of criminal record database companies and asked them to join forces to set up an expungement clearinghouse to ensure that more expunged records are removed from their respective private criminal databases.
Since many courts and agencies do not proactively inform the public of expungements, a person may obtain a court order expunging or sealing a record but that order may never be received by the criminal record database companies, who are a source of criminal record information to many of the background screening companies in the US.
The Expungement Clearinghouse is designed as the central mechanism for sharing validated expungement orders by collecting the information from individuals, their attorneys, courts and other sources. Once expungements are validated, backgroundchecks.com and the other members of the Expungement Clearinghouse will receive expedited notification to remove these expunged records from their private criminal records databases. This service provides a faster and more coordinated approach to removing the records that are no longer publicly available.
At the launch of the Expungement Clearinghouse, slated for mid-spring, over 800 criminal background check companies will benefit from the information exchange provided by the Expungement Clearinghouse through its members.
“We believe that this no cost solution for removing more expunged criminal records from our industry’s databases will proactively assist people trying to rehabilitate from their criminal pasts. While the absolute number of expungements is small compared to the number of convictions, we have seen increasing use of expungements to assist these rehabilitation efforts. The Expungement Clearinghouse, an industry initiative, will make that assistance more effective.”
Craig Kessler, President of backgroundchecks.com
Next week during the annual trade show organized by the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS), Craig Kessler, President of backgroundchecks.com is joined by other co-founders to promote Expungement Clearinghouse and welcome new participants. Any background screening agency that has a database of criminal records from which it produces reports on consumers may qualify for membership. There is no fee to join, but all members must agree to Expungement Clearinghouse’s procedures for the removal of expunged records from their databases.
About backgroundchecks.com -
backgroundchecks.com - a founding member of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS®) - serves thousands of customers nationwide, from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies by providing comprehensive screening services. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with an Eastern Operations Center in Chapin, S.C., backgroundchecks.com is home to one of the largest online criminal conviction databases in the industry. For more information about backgroundchecks’ offerings, please visit www.backgroundchecks.com.