Taking a bite out of Apple’s restrictive hiring policies

 

Apple, maker of the iPhone and iPad, came under fire earlier this month when the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that the company was prohibiting those convicted of a felony in the last 7 years from working on the construction of an enormous new corporate campus in Cupertino, California.  Under pressure from the iron workers union and advocates for fair hiring policies, the company quickly reversed course:

We recognize that this may have excluded some people who deserve a second chance. We have now removed that restriction and instructed our contractors on the project to evaluate all applicants equally, on a case-by-case basis, as we would for any role at Apple.

But many believe that Apple can do more to end employment discrimination against those with criminal records and can set an example for the tech industry and the country in the process.

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Is suspension of driving privileges an effective way to collect unpaid fines?

realid-dlNo, according to a recent study of efforts to enforce monetary judgments in a Milwaukee municipal court and to a national organization with expertise in traffic safety. The Justice Initiative Institute reviewed non-criminal, municipal cases from 2008-2013 in which the Milwaukee court had ordered the detention of defendants for not having paid fines.

Not surprisingly, the report shows that most people who fail to pay fines have little if any income (a majority of those detained were unemployed). Therefore, although the prospect of sanctions might encourage payment by a population with greater financial resources, the use of incarceration for non-payment ends up costing the City of Milwaukee more than any additional amount of fines collected.

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“Preventing Background Screeners from Reporting Expunged Criminal Cases”

www.povertylawIn an article published this week by the Shriver Center, Preventing Background Screeners from Reporting Expunged Criminal Cases, Sharon Dietrich offers helpful advice for advocates on to how to combat the problem posed by the reporting of expunged and sealed criminal records by private commercial background screening services. Her advice is based partly on her own organization’s participation in litigation under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) against one of the country’s larger background screeners — an experience that she recounts in detail.

Dietrich identifies the problem of improper private reporting of expunged records as one that “threatens to undermine the whole strategy of broadening expungement as a remedy for the harm of collateral consequences.” She describes the underlying issue as follows:

 [T]he commercial background-screening industry, which runs the lion’s share of the background checks obtained by employers and landlords, sometimes reports those expunged cases long after they have been removed from the public record. Companies in the background-screening industry typically maintain their own privately held databases of criminal cases from which they generate background checks. When updating their data from public sources (often state courts), these screeners often do not use methods to determine whether cases that were reported by their sources have been removed (i.e., expunged or sealed), and they continue to report them.

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“Database Infamia: Exit from the Sex Offender Registries”

Update (5/14/15): We have published a 50 state chart detailing relief from registration requirements on the Restoration of Rights page. The chart is based in part on Wayne Logan’s work. You can find the chart at this link.

 

There has been a lot of discussion about how one gets ON a sex offender registry.  Now Wayne Logan has given us a fascinating study of what it takes to get OFF in different U.S. jurisdictions.  His article, forthcoming in the Wisconsin Law Review, is a must-read for any practitioner, and a helpful guide to law reformers in many jurisdictions.  Its title is “Database Infamia: Exit from the Sex Offender Registries,” and its abstract follows:

Since originating in the early-mid 1990s, sex offender registration and community notification laws have swept the country, now affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals. The laws require that individuals provide, update and at least annually verify personal identifying information, which governments make publicly available via the Internet and other means. Typically retrospective in their reach, and sweeping in their breadth, the laws can target individuals for their lifetimes, imposing multiple hardships. This symposium contribution surveys the extent to which states now afford registrants an opportunity to secure relief from registration and community notification and examines the important legal and policy ramifications of the limited exit options made available.

India’s History Sheet

The following post concerns the use of police records in India, which are (like police records in this country) generally not available to the public, yet have important implications for individual privacy.  In a later piece the authors will discuss Indian policy and practice on court records, which are publicly available and may be used by employers and others to deny benefits and opportunities.  Ed. 

imagesIndiaComparative analysis is always good for the soul. As we think deeper and more broadly about the types, status and use of criminal records, it is helpful to consider laws and practices in other countries. Toward that end, this post illuminates the most salient and interesting type of criminal record in India, the “history sheet” and its cousin the “rowdy sheet”.  History and rowdy sheets are analogous to our criminal intelligence databases, but are more subject to legal constraints.  At the same time, they are more vulnerable to public disclosure because they call for intensive and frequently conspicuous monitoring both by police and civilian leaders.

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