The National Employment Law Project (NELP) is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization that conducts research and advocates on issues affecting low-wage and unemployed workers. NELP promotes policies to create good jobs, enforce hard-won workplace rights, and help unemployed workers regain their economic footing. NELP also promotes the employment rights of people with criminal records, seeking to ensure fairer and more accurate criminal background checks and to reduce unnecessary and unfair barriers to employment. Although considered the gold standard of criminal background checks, the FBI records routinely fail to report important information on the outcome of arrests, information that is often beneficial to workers subject to these reports. Given the massive proliferation of FBI background checks for employment (roughly 17 million were conducted last year) these inaccuracies have a devastating impact on workers, especially workers of color who are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system. There is a solution to this problem that would immediately result in less job-loss and financial hardship: the FBI must ensure that records are accurate and complete prior to being released for employment and licensing decisions.
Read more
