Nearly one out of every three American adults is on the FBI’s master criminal database, and that can create problems for those who were cleared of charges.
“Over the last 20 years, authorities have made more than a quarter of a billion arrests.” Between 10,000 and 12,000 new names are added every day, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
“Many people who have never faced charges, or have had charges dropped, find that a lingering arrest record can ruin their chance to secure employment, loans and housing,” the Aug. 18 report said.
Cases of mistaken arrests are also forwarded to the FBI. In many instances, only half of the records with the agency are fully updated. Arrest information is forwarded to the FBI when a case is thrown out locally, but not necessarily updated there.
“There is a myth that if you are arrested and cleared that it has no impact,” said Georgetown law professor Paul Butler. He believes these problems linger for years.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, law enforcement agencies cracked down on urban areas. More than 100,000 officers were put on the streets to combat an out-of-control crime rate.
“The wave of arrests has been fueled in part by unprecedented federal dollars funneled to local police departments and new policing tactics that condoned arrests for even the smallest offenses,” the newspaper reported.
In 2011 the government spent $212 billion on law enforcement at the local and state level, “including judicial, police and corrections cost, according to the most recent estimates provided by the U.S. Census Bureau,” the report revealed.
“You’ve got these large numbers of people now who are stigmatized,” said Jack Levin, co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Boston Northeastern University. “The impact of so many arrests is catastrophic.”
“We made arrests for minor infractions that deterred the more serious infractions down the road,” said James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents about 335,000 police officers. “We don’t apologize for that.” He claims innocent people are alive because of actions taken by law enforcement officers during that time.
Researcher at the University of South Carolina tracked 7,335 randomly selected people in their 20s. Forty percent of the males interviewed were arrested before age 23. “The rate was highest for blacks at 49 percent, 44 percent for Hispanics and 38 percent for whites.”
They found one in five women had been arrested at least once by the age of 23.
Statistics show “47 percent of those arrested weren’t convicted. In more than a quarter of cases, subjects weren’t even formally charged.”
In one case study, a Hispanic male was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting two young girls. The prosecutor’s office dropped the charges because he was the wrong person. He had to hire a lawyer to seek formal expungement after learning “the burden was on him to clear his record.”
Internet websites and background check businesses are charging fees to correct public records and remove mug shots and bogus charges. Recently, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new bill making it illegal for websites to charge state residents to have their mug hots and arrest photos removed, the report said.
“According to 2012 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 69 percent of employers conduct criminal background checks on all job applicants. Fewer than that — about 58 percent — allow candidates to explain any negative results of a check,” the newspaper stated.
Some employers worry about turning down applicants because of criminal records. Business owner Mike Mitternight said he could be open to a discrimination claim. “I have to do the background checks and take my chances. It’s a lose-lose situation.”
In 2009, Precious Daniels participated in a protest against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan during a debate over the new health care law. She was arrested with only a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge and released on $50 bail. The charge was subsequently dropped.
Daniels didn’t anticipate any future problems until she applied for a job with the Census Bureau in 2010. Several days later, she received notification that a routine background check uncovered a “red flag.”
According to the report, “For her application to proceed, the Census Bureau informed her she would need to submit fingerprints and gave her 30 days to obtain court documents proving her case had been resolved without a conviction.”
Clearing her name was no easy task. “From what I was told by the courthouse, they didn’t have a record,” Daniels said. According to the report, “she didn’t get the job.”
“Today, Ms. Daniels is part of a class-action lawsuit against the Census Bureau alleging that tens of thousands of African-Americans were discriminated against because of the agency’s use of arrest records in its hiring process,” it was reported.
Over 850,000 applicants received similar letters to the one sent to Daniels, said Adam Klein, the New York plaintiff attorney.
The Census Bureau and the Department of Justice representatives denied these allegations. They allege the plaintiffs’ method for analyzing hiring data was “unreliable” and “statistically invalid.”
In 2012, John Keir and his wife were arrested for criminal mischief for scratching someone’s car with a key. The report said, “They were found not guilty at trial.”
The 35-year-old Keir was hired by Regions Bank as an $85,000-a-year information security official in 2014. The bank sent his fingerprints to the FBI as part of a criminal background check. Several weeks later, he was fired, the story said.
Keir “says his firing resulted after failing to disclose his recent arrest record as well as a number of traffic violations during his teens that had branded him as a ‘youthful offender’ in Alabama. He says he didn’t lie on his application, and only recalls being asked about any criminal convictions.”
Arrest records don’t always disappear over the years. According to the report, “An arrest record can only be removed if the local court system notifies the FBI that it should take it out of the file.”