dispatches from TJICistan

http://www.boston.com/news/local/article…

Governor Deval Patrick, returning to one of the more contentious issues of his campaign, has begun quietly putting together a plan to limit employers’ access to the criminal records of potential employees.

Aides have been meeting with lawmakers and advocates working to limit the scope of the Criminal Offender Record Information law, which gives many employers broad access to criminal records. Activists argue that many applicants are rejected for jobs based on minor criminal convictions, crimes unrelated to the post…

So “activists”, who do not run the risk of embezzlement, workplace violence, destruction of corporate reputation, etc., know better than do entrepeneurs what risks are and are not worth taking when running a small business?

I’ve got a modest proposal: we continue to allow potential employers to know about actual convictions in the courts run by the government, but we then allow employers to tell potential employees “we consider you a bit of a risk – to compensate us for this risk, please pay us $XXX if you’d like this job”.

Then, activists can put their money where their mouths are by helping felons buy their way into companies.

Patrick has not yet settled on specific legislation, an aide said, but wants to give employers access only to criminal information that is relevant to the job being sought.

I believe that court records are public, no? Seems to me like there’s an opportunity for an entrepeneur here – get the records, digitize them, and then sell access to public records.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 12th, 2007 at 8:34 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.