Author: CCRC Staff

Editorial staff of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center

Uber sued over illegal background checks and employee policies

phones-signup@1x.8d8db861ab2ef63dc666a89f3e8f5135In recent months, heightened attention has been paid to the background check practices of the ride-sharing company Uber. Concerns about the safety of Uber services prompted the District Attorney’s Offices of San Francisco and Los Angeles Counties to file suit last December against Uber for misleading customers about the scope of its driver background checks. As discussed in a previous post, Uber has largely resisted efforts by legislators to mandate more intensive background checks, but the pressure continues to mount.

This pressure for enhanced background checks has raised another area of concern: the manner in which Uber conducts background checks, and the impact of its employment practices on drivers and prospective drivers.  At the end of 2014, our organizations, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and the law firm Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho, filed a putative, nationwide class action lawsuit against Uber, based in part on its violation of federal and state background check laws.

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President promises more pardons (we think)

new_clean_presidential_seal_by_sharpwriter-d486yc8In a wide-ranging interview with Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith posted on February 11, President Obama was asked about the employment difficulties faced by young black men with a felony record.  His response suggests that he may be interested in addressing through his pardon power the problems faced by people with federal convictions seeking restoration of rights and status, as he addressed them through law-making as a member of the Illinois legislature. This in turn suggests to us that the Justice Department may now be engaged, at the President’s direction, in a more proactive consideration of applications for a full presidential pardon. We post the exchange in full, so our readers can judge its import for themselves: Read more

Retention of DNA Profiles and Fingerprints — Europe and the U.S.

227002_149789751758678_3078486_nComparing the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) 2008 decision in S. and Marper v. the United Kingdom with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Maryland v. King provides a window on the very different legal status of criminal records in the Europe and U.S.  S. and Marper also illuminates the growing chasm between the U.K. and continental Europe when it comes to informational privacy and police records.  As illustrated in prior posts, many criminal justice practices that are common in the U.S. are regarded as a serious invasion of privacy in Europe, and therefore a human rights violation.  As evidenced by the caselaw discussed below, this includes the blanket and indefinite retention of DNA and fingerprint information.

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The Eternal Criminal Record

Harvard_Wreath_Logo_1.svgThe Eternal Criminal Record is the title of Professor James Jacobs’ new book, just out from Harvard University Press.  This is the first comprehensive study of criminal records law and policy, and it deals with a range of contemporary legal and policy issues ranging from how records are created and disseminated, to how they are used by public and private actors, to how they are maintained and (perhaps) eventually sealed or destroyed.  Professor Jacobs examines important jurisprudential issues such as the right to public access versus the right to privacy; the role of criminal records in punishment theory; how U.S. criminal record policy compares to other countries; and the intersection of public safety and fairness in imposing collateral consequences.

The book will be reviewed on this site in a couple of weeks.  In the meantime, here is the publisher’s description of it.

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Disclosure of nonconviction records may violate European Convention on Human Rights

This is the most recent in a series of posts by Professors James Jacobs and Elena Larrauri 250px-Tudor_Rose.svgcomparing criminal records disclosure policies in the United States and Europe.  The decision of the European Court discussed below invalidated a policy of the United Kingdom authorizing broad disclosure of non-conviction records relating to child victims.  (The U.K.’s policies on disclosure are closer to those of the U.S. than they are to those of continental countries.)  While the U.K. has subsequently narrowed its disclosure policy, it remains to be seen whether even as amended the U.K.’s disclosure policy will pass muster under the European Convention on Human Rights.

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