Corporation For National And
Community Service
Office of Inspector General |
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It Could Be Your Worst NightmareAn
AmeriCorps member in your program who works with youth has been arrested and
convicted of molesting a child enrolled in your after-school recreation program.
As the case unfolds, newspaper headlines and TV reports repeatedly link the
words “AmeriCorps’’ and “sex offender,” casting a pall on the
reputation of
your otherwise worthy community efforts.
To
make matters worse, the media discovers and reports that your program failed to
conduct a criminal background check, a Corporation for National and Community
Service (Corporation) requirement for all AmeriCorps members who have
substantial contact with youth and other vulnerable persons, before it assigned
the member to a local campus. What’s more, a criminal background check
conducted by the media, using readily available law enforcement data, reveals
that your AmeriCorps member is a repeat sex offender.
You
issue an apology and announce that the member has been dismissed from your
program. You promise to tighten your applicant screening procedures. But
incalculable damage to your program and its reputation has likely already been
done.
AmeriCorps
programs are required to abide by myriad regulations under their grants of
Federal funds from the Corporation. But there is probably no more important
provision than the Corporation requirement for criminal background checks as
part of the overall screening process for members and employees.
New Corporation regulations which went into effect November 23, 2007, require grantees in the AmeriCorps, VISTA, Senior Companion, and Foster Grandparent programs to check their State’s criminal registry and the National Sex Offender Public Registry (NSOPR) maintained by the U.S. Department of Justice, for any listings of applicants who enroll as program volunteers or are hired as grant-funded employees who would have “recurring access” to children, the disabled, and persons age 60 and older. For grant-funded staff and program volunteers involved in these programs prior to November 23, 2007, grantees must check only the NSOPR. Under the regulation, any individuals found to be on the NSOPR, or, who refuse to consent to a state registry check, are deemed “unsuitable” for a Corporation-funded position. If an individual is found on a State criminal registry, and not the NSOPR, that individual’s eligibility is left for the program to decide, but the regulation requires that grantee program officials document consideration of the background check results prior to selection. Grantees found to have violated this regulation will be denied reimbursements or costs under the grant, restricted or denied eligibility for future grants, and are responsible for reimbursing the Corporation for all education awards, accrued interest awards, salaries and other benefits allocated to participants and grantee staff deemed ineligible due to the lack of a criminal background check. The rule is codified at 45 C.F.R. §§ 2510; 2522, 2540, 2551, and 2552. Criminal
background checks should also be an integral part of volunteer recruiting and
staff hiring for Senior Corps and Learn and Serve grantees. Elder abuse has been
identified as a growing concern, on a par with child abuse. Many Senior Corps
programs, including the Foster Grandparents Program and Senior Companions, place
volunteers in direct – and often one-on-one – contact with children and the
elderly. Learn and Serve volunteers and coordinators are also directly involved
with youth in school settings.
How
important and effective are criminal background checks? Consider the recent
experience of the Fairfax County (VA) Public Schools in suburban Washington, DC. In 2004, Fairfax conducted checks on all 6,930 applicants for jobs at its
K-12 campuses. The checks turned up 81 applicants, more than 1 percent of the
total, with criminal records that posed an unacceptable risk to Fairfax
students.
Recent
program audits conducted by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) have detected
a disturbing pattern of non-compliance with criminal background check grant
provision requirements. In some cases, programs have failed to conduct the
checks. Just as disturbing, other programs have failed to retain documentation
proving that background checks were conducted for members working with youth and
other vulnerable persons.
It
is OIG audit policy to question all grant costs related to members working with
youth for whom there is no documentation of a criminal background check. That
includes outlays for living allowances and education awards. But while an audit
finding may hit a program in its pocketbook, the OIG’s prime concern is to
protect vulnerable populations by mandating strict compliance with criminal
background check requirements.
Because
laws governing volunteer and employee screening can vary from state to state,
AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and Learn and Serve program directors should make
themselves familiar with these statutes. For example, the Federal Child
Protection Act of 1993 gives access to national criminal data, including
fingerprint-based information, to “qualified entities,” including nonprofit
groups that provide “care, treatment, education, training, instruction,
supervision or recreation to children, the elderly, or individuals with
disabilities.”
Program
officials should also make an inventory of all available criminal databases,
ranging from that maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to State and
county court records, and make use of as many sources as possible in their
screening efforts. Many of these records are accessible to the public, or to
designated entities like nonprofits, via the Internet. Programs in States where
such data is less accessible should utilize one of a number of private firms
that conduct criminal background checks.
Information
and training on effective screening and the use of criminal background checks is
also available from a number of expert sources, including the Washington,
DC-based Nonprofit Risk Management Center (www.nonprofitrisk.org).
For example, in their training handbook, Center experts, citing recidivism
rates and offender treatment data, note that persons with “any convictions for child sexual abuse, rape or other
sexually exploitative offenses constitute an unacceptable level of risk
extending throughout an individual’s life.”
The
Center also advises its trainees to be wary of certain types of volunteer
candidates, including those who have had extensive involvement in youth programs
to the exclusion of activities involving persons of their own age level. While
not an automatic cause for rejection, the Center’s experts caution that
pedophiles and other sex offenders are often drawn to programs and situations
where they can stalk their juvenile prey.
The
Center’s Staff Screening Tool, which offers step-by-step guidance on criminal
background checks and related issues, can be downloaded from the Corporation’s
Internet site by clicking
here.
The
Virginia Mentoring Institute (www.mentoring.org/virginia),
a nonprofit training group based at Virginia Commonwealth University in
Richmond, has also developed a handbook and course on volunteer screening that
focuses on risk management. It advises program officials to screen applicants by
using a variety of sources, including Department of Motor Vehicles driving
records and Virginia State Police registries of convicted nonviolent and violent
sex offenders, as well as a Department of Social Services site that lists
persons convicted of child abuse and neglect.
Both
training groups also advise that criminal background checks be conducted for
paid program employees, as well as program members and volunteers. This advice
is especially targeted at the hiring of employees who, as a part of their
program supervisory duties, also have substantial contact with youth and other
vulnerable persons.
Overall,
the best policy for all grantee programs is to screen and, when in doubt,
conduct additional background checks before hiring an employee or accepting and
placing a member in service with young or other vulnerable individuals.
Failure
to fully screen employees and volunteers can lead to problems of nightmarish
proportions, especially for the young and other vulnerable persons whom lax
program oversight has placed in harm’s way.
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