Overview:   “Ban the Box” refers to the box on employment applications requiring applicants to disclose whether they have a prior criminal conviction.  Current law prohibits employers from requesting or considering a candidate’s conviction history until a conditional offer of employment has been made.  Ban the Box is intended to push a background check later into the hiring process so that employers consider the applicant’s qualifications before their criminal history.

States, cities, and counties have different requirements as to when employers may request a criminal history or run a background check and what they can do with that information.  If an employer runs a background check after a conditional offer of employment has been made, care must be taken before any adverse decision is communicated to the applicant as there are strict regulations governing this process.  It’s anticipated in the near future that existing laws will broaden their reach to include private employers, resulting in greater enforcement of these laws.

Momentum for the ban-the-box policy has grown exponentially, particularly in recent years.  Ban-the- Box was the rallying cry of the All of Us or None organizers that refers to removing the conviction history check-box from a job application.  All of Us or None is a grassroots, civil rights organization led by formerly incarcerated and convicted individuals.

At the national level, former President Obama endorsed ban-the-box by directing federal agencies to delay inquiries into job applicants’ records until later in the hiring process.   An employer’s use of an individual’s criminal history in making employment decisions may, in some instances, violate the prohibition against employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.  In the last twenty years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Americans who have had contact with the criminal justice system, and along with that, a major increase in the number of people with criminal records in the working-age population.

Areas covered in this webinar:

• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Ensuring conviction information in used fairly in the hiring process
• Integrating the EEOC arrest and conviction record guidelines into the hiring process
• Employers’ Use of Criminal History Information
• The EEOC’s interest in Employer’s use of Criminal Records in Employment Screening
• Determining Disparate Impact of Policies & Practices that Screen Individuals Based on Records of Criminal Conduct
• Determining whether a criminal conduct exclusion is job-related and consistent with business necessity
• Nature and gravity of the offense or conduct
• Employers best practices
• Time that has passed since the offense, conduct and/or completion of the sentence
• Fair-chance policies – Do they work?
• What doesn’t fair-chance policies do?
• What you should know about the EEOC Arrest and Conviction Records
• Green factors and Criminal Conduct Screens
• Nature of the job held or sought

Join Diane Dee, President of Advantage HR Consulting, on February 13, 2020 at 12:00 p.m. for this 75-minute live webinar where participants will be provided with the necessary information in order to provide job applicants with criminal histories a fair chance at employment by removing the conviction history questions from job applications and delaying background checks until later in the hiring process.