Many job roles, like teachers, child care providers, and health workers, require fingerprint background checks. Employers and lawmakers often assume fingerprint checks are a more thorough way to screen candidates because they can reduce false positives by matching prints to existing records.
However, fingerprint checks have their limitations.
Identifying Fraudulent Applicants
As one of the most thorough background checks, fingerprinting offers valuable information. It reveals criminal convictions, including pending charges and misdemeanor or felony arrest records. It can also reveal details about the offenses, like conviction dates and locations. It can also show the vetting company whether an applicant’s charge was dismissed, dropped, or acquitted.
In addition to criminal records, fingerprint checks can uncover civil and employment verification records. These can provide additional information about an applicant, including address and date of birth. They can also show past addresses, employment, and previous vehicles or insurance claims.
Fingerprint background checks typically search the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), a national database that stores criminal records. However, this process only guarantees that the information is accurate and up-to-date. This can lead to inaccurate results, such as missing or incorrect identifications. These errors can lead to legal risks for employers, particularly when they are used to make adverse hiring decisions.
To prevent inaccurate results, fingerprint-based background checks should be paired with other searches to ensure the most thorough results possible. Name-based background checks conducted by private screening companies often use large networks of court researchers to find information in criminal records and verify it for accuracy. They can also include a variety of other personal identifiers to help eliminate duplicate records.
Identifying Suspected Criminals
Compared to name-based background checks, fingerprint background checks provide more accurate and complete data. This is because a fingerprint background check uses a person’s unique prints to cross-reference against FBI and state criminal databases. A name-based background check uses only the person’s name and personal information to search a limited number of commercially available records. Fingerprint-based background checks typically produce identification error rates of less than one percent.
Police forces have used fingerprints for decades to identify suspects and solve crimes. They’re also helpful in determining a person’s age, gender, race, and ethnicity. Police forces are finding new ways to use these ridges on people’s fingertips – including detecting traces of illicit substances.
If a job requires fingerprinting, an employer must work with a state-approved fingerprint channeler to process these prints. For example, some positions, such as those working around children or in the financial industry, require fingerprint-based background checks. For employers not required to conduct fingerprint-based background checks, a name-based background check from a PBSA-accredited provider is a good alternative. These searches can reveal more information, such as pending charges, dismissed or acquitted cases, etc. They’re also often more affordable than fingerprint-based background checks.
Identifying Employees Who Have Been Arrested
Many state and local laws require specific jobs, such as those in healthcare and finance, to have employees undergo a fingerprint background check. These checks are an excellent way for employers to ensure that any criminal activity a candidate has is transparent to the organization, and they can also help them determine whether or not an applicant will be successful in their roles.
Fingerprint background checks involve an individual physically going to a vetting agency, police department, or another location to have their prints scanned and cross-referenced against a database of criminal records. Once this is complete, a report can be returned that details any potential criminal history an individual may have, allowing organizations to make more informed hiring decisions.
While fingerprint-based searches are more thorough than simply searching an online database using an applicant’s name and date of birth, they aren’t infallible.
For this reason, employers should only use fingerprint background checks as part of a comprehensive prescreening process that includes criminal checks at the county level, education verification, and employment verification. This way, the fingerprint-based search is just one piece of the picture, and it’s not used to discriminate against a qualified candidate for being arrested.
Identifying Employees Who Have Been Convicted
Fingerprint background checks offer a unique identifier that can’t be faked or misrepresented, especially for candidates who have committed financial crimes. However, they aren’t a substitute for a comprehensive national criminal records search. Instead, fingerprint searches should confirm the accuracy of other information gathered during the hiring process.
In most cases, prospective employees must visit a local police department or approved fingerprinting location to have their fingerprints scanned electronically. These prints are then matched against a database of criminal records to identify any matches.
While the IAFIS is a vast repository of records, it has challenges. For example, it’s not uncommon for fingerprinting methods to yield incomplete or inaccurate results due to the large number of people who have been arrested and have had their records entered into the IAFIS. Relying on this data can create legal risk for employers, especially when an unfavorable employment decision is made in response to incorrect or incomplete records.
Additionally, there are times when the demand for fingerprinting services outstrips the availability of live scan machines and trained technicians.