Time and again, I have written here about the inaccuracy and incompleteness of multi-county or multi-state criminal background databases. Now, it’s no longer necessary just to take my word for it. What follows is from an online article by Justin Lee based on a report by The Columbus Dispatch and WBNS-TV.
Here’s what it says, “Operated by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) in the office of Attorney General Mike DeWine, the report claims that the system has been plagued with various problems within the 15 years it has been in operation including falsely indicating that thousands of criminals have clean records.
“Following a review of thousands of pages of records, supervisors have labeled the system as being ‘cobbled together’ and ‘running on borrowed time.’
“The system often takes months to connect criminal-convictions to fingerprints records, with some records of convictions not arriving at all.
“Perhaps even more alarming is that the system has compiled thousands of incomplete or inaccurate background checks as a result of missing electronic fingerprint and conviction records.
“The criminal background-check system is used daily by thousands of police officers and employers to vet school teachers, foster parents, medical professionals, firefighters, and day-care and nursing home workers.
“There have been hundreds of cases in the past three years where system inaccuracies have led BCI to incorrectly inform employers that an aspiring or existing employee had no criminal record.
“In addition to errors with the computer system, some court clerks failed to submit criminal conviction records to BCI for months since 2013.”
The preceding paragraph is especially important and confirms what you’ve been reading here for some time – “some court clerks failed to submit criminal conviction records to BCI for months since 2013.” Once again I will remind readers that there is no legal obligation on court clerks to send criminal conviction records to anybody! And, if they don’t, whatever multi-county or multi-state data base is being peddled as a quick and inexpensive way to do a criminal background cannot be complete, nor can it be accurate.