Background Checks: Reform the System and Protect Your Mentees

Legislative Goal:

To secure passage for the Child Protection Improvements Act of 2008 (S. 2756 and H.R. 5606). These bills would create a permanent successor to MENTOR's existing SafetyNET background checks pilot that would be available to ALL organizations that work with young people. SafetyNET provides mentoring organizations with access to nationwide FBI fingerprint searches at a cost of $18 and with a 3-5 day turnaround time. The bills would addresses current problems with our nationwide background check system, which include: lack of access to nationwide checks, high cost, and often-lengthy response time.

Latest Action:

March 14, 2008: Sens. Biden (D-DE), Hatch (R- UT) and Specter (R-PA) and Reps. Schiff (D-CA) and Rogers (R-MI) introduced the Child Protection Improvements Act of 2008 (S. 2756; H.R. 5606), which would ensure that national youth-serving organizations have access to FBI fingerprint checks on prospective volunteers and employees in a streamlined and affordable way.

MENTOR's SafetyNET pilot program serves as the model for the permanent system proposed by the Child Protection Improvements Act of 2008. Specifically, H.R. 5606 and S. 2756 would:

Create universal access to nationwide background searches, by establishing an applicant processing center to process background checks on prospective employees and volunteers for youth-serving organizations. The FBI could either create this clearinghouse within its structure, or contract with an outside entity to provide these functions:
- Approve programs for participation and handle questions and inquiries
- Receive paper and electronic submissions of fingerprints
- Transmit fingerprint submissions to the FBI
- Return fitness determinations/results of the check back to the requesting organization
- Handle the collection of fees and reimbursement of the FBI
Draw upon the expertise of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to run the fitness determination program. NCMEC would review any criminal records found when conducting a background check, and make a determination as to whether the individual’s criminal record bears upon their fitness to work or volunteer with children.
Create a “one-stop” functionality where a local organization could elect to obtain both a state and FBI search through the central clearinghouse. To do this, the applicant processing center would be allowed to negotiate agreements with state agencies to transmit background check requests to them for an additional fee. Participation by the state agencies is optional.
Keep the fee as low as possible for non-profit organizations, no more than the actual cost – with a maximum of $25. The bill authorizes $1 million per year in annual appropriations to help keep the nonprofit fee low, with the remaining costs being supported by the background check fee charged to for-profit youth-serving organizations, which shall not exceed $40.
Ensures that individuals that are subject to background checks can request their full criminal histories and challenge their accuracy and completeness, and receive a prompt response from the jurisdiction holding the records.
Extend the current SafetyNET pilot until the new system was up and running and able to enroll current SafetyNET users.

Without the comprehensive system envisioned by the Child Protection Improvements Act of 2008, youth-serving organizations in over thirty states will continue to experience difficulty accessing FBI searches due to state regulations and processes. Even when FBI searches are accessible, costs can approach $100 per volunteer or employee, and response times can take as long as forty-two days. And, without access to the important results an FBI search can provide, youth-serving organizations will continue to run the risk of employing or utilizing individuals who could potentially harm a child.

Please take a moment to contact your Senators and Representative to ask them to co-sponsor these important bills.

Summary of the Issue:

Mentoring organizations and other youth-serving organizations across the country often rely on criminal background checks as part of the screening process for potential volunteers and employees. These background checks help protect children by ensuring that volunteers and employees do not have a criminal record that would preclude them from working with young people.

Under current law, volunteer organizations can only obtain FBI background checks through their states. Each state sets its own rules and regulations governing access to background checks, leading to inconsistencies from state to state. Many states don't even allow volunteer organizations to access FBI checks, which forces organizations to rely on less thorough state or local background checks. Even when FBI checks are accessible, they are often very costly and the turnaround time can be slow.

MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership believes that mentoring organizations and other youth-serving organizations should be able to access an FBI background check for their volunteers and employees. Those background checks should be reliable, effective, affordable, and timely.

To test out this kind of system, Congress created the SafetyNET pilot in April 2003 as part of the PROTECT Act (S. 151). Launched on August 15, 2003, SafetyNET enables mentoring organizations to access FBI fingerprint background checks for prospective mentors at a cost of $18, with a turnaround time of 3-5 business days. The five-year pilot is testing various methods of obtaining criminal background checks on volunteers. The PROTECT Act also requires the FBI to study the criminal background check system and make recommendations as to how volunteer organizations could access FBI background checks.

Some key results from the pilot program are:

Of 37,000 background checks performed through the pilot in four years, 6.1% of volunteers were found to have a criminal record of concern – including very serious offenses like sexual abuse of minors, assaults, murder, and serious drug offenses.
In addition, over 40% of the individuals with criminal records had committed an offense in a state other than where they were applying to volunteer, meaning that a state-only search would not have found relevant criminal records.

S. 2756 and H.R. 5606 have been crafted to build on the system created and tested through SafetyNET to ensure that all youth-serving organizations have reliable, timely, and affordable access to FBI searches. These bills have been endorsed by a number of youth-serving organizations:

Afterschool Alliance
American Camp Association
America’s Promise Alliance
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
Boys & Girls Clubs of America
Camp Fire USA
Communities In Schools, Inc.
First Focus
GLSEN - the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network
MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership
National Collaboration for Youth
YMCA of the USA

Take Action - Background Checks

Background Checks: Reform the System and Protect Your Mentees

Legislative Goal:

Latest Action:

Summary of the Issue: