DOJ Report: Criminal Background Checks, Immigration Status Are Barriers To Law Enforcement Diversity

This is, um, well, just bat guano insane. The DOJ is utterly sincere in their, let’s call it “wackadoodle”, beliefs

(CNS News) The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a comprehensive report Wednesday examining hiring, recruitment, and retention policies with the aim of increasing diversity in law enforcement.

The report highlighted barriers to diversity within police departments, such as “the use of criminal background checks” which the researchers found “is likely to disproportionately impact racial minority applicants.”

The report also found that U.S. citizenship requirements “may prevent a considerable number of racial and ethnic minorities – many of whom have valuable foreign language skills – from being hired by law enforcement agencies.”

Well, of course they are barriers. Does it really need to be stated that they should be barriers? Should a non-citizen really be in charge of law enforcement? Should a convicted felon really be in charge of law enforcement? One would think that the Department Of Justice, that nations top law enforcement office, would be interested in law and order, but, they’re morphing into the Department of Social Justice.

The report opened with an analysis of EEOC labor force data, which “found that African-American, Latino, and Asian-American police officers were underrepresented relative to the local area population in a significant number of the departments analyzed. Using a statistical test of underrepresentation, the researchers found that within their sample, African Americans were underrepresented in 60 percent of the departments, Latinos were underrepresented in 41 percent, and Asian Americans were underrepresented in 31 percent.”

So what? Women are underrepresented in the NFL and STEM fields. Men are underrepresented in education and health sciences. Whites are underrepresented in rap music and the NBA, Blacks in heavy metal and the NHL. Go to a car dealership: how many women work there in sales? It all comes down to choice and capability. There’s nothing wrong with attempting to diversify a work force. Many police forces have been thrilled to be able to have more female officers, who can often deescalate situations, but, guess what? They still have to pass a background check. And they have to want to become police officers.

What if Blacks, Latinos, and Asians do not care about becoming officers in amounts large enough to be “represented”? Are we to force them? What if part of it is that they cannot pass a citizenship or background check? Sadly, it needs to be said “of course not.”

The use of criminal background checks, the report noted, “is likely to disproportionately impact racial minority applicants since, for a variety of reasons, individuals from those communities are more likely to have contact with the criminal justice system.”

It added that “law enforcement agencies are undeniably justified in carefully vetting and investigating potential hires,” but “excluding applicants regardless of the nature of the underlying offense, or how much time has passed since an offense occurred, or without any consideration of whether the candidate has changed in the intervening period, can be a significant – and unwarranted – barrier.”

So, if someone is essentially committing crimes as a teenager and young adult, that should be thrown out or something. There wouldn’t be a lot of time passing between those time periods in a person’s life and when they would try to join law enforcement.

One has to wonder: while the DOSJ is whining about local, county, and state police forces, are they forcing the FBI and DOJ to hire people with serious criminal offenses in their backgrounds, or who are illegal aliens?

On the hiring of women in law enforcement, according to the report, “research has shown that physical tests may have a significant and unnecessary impact on female applicants when they lack a corresponding benefit or job-related need.

So now the DOSJ wants to add “physically unable to do the job” as a barrier to getting a job.

I’ll leave it up to you to read the rest of the article, which doesn’t get any better when it comes to facepalming from what the DOSJ is stating.

 

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7 Responses to “DOJ Report: Criminal Background Checks, Immigration Status Are Barriers To Law Enforcement Diversity”

  1. john says:

    Teach what do YOU think the minimum time should pass after a felony conviction that it should no longer be held against that person in employment ?
    10 years ?

  2. drowningpuppies says:


    Teach what do YOU think the minimum time should pass after a felony conviction that it should no longer be held against that person in employment ?

    Jeez, retard, maybe that should be left up to the employer. Just a thought.

  3. Dana says:

    Along the lines of unintended consequences, a wholly, completely, totally unforeseen result of the “ban the box” movement, which states that employment applications may no longer ask if an applicant has a criminal conviction has been that employers seem to be giving fewer initial interviews to applicants with ‘African-American’ sounding names. From The Wall Street Journal:

    ‘Ban the Box’ Laws May Worsen Hiring Discrimination, New Research Finds
    But advocates say getting rid of policies against criminal-record questions won’t solve racial issue
    By BEN LEUBSDORF
    Updated Oct. 3, 2016 3:25 p.m. ET
    86 COMMENTS
    From city-council chambers and state capitols to the White House, officials across the U.S. in recent years have embraced “ban the box” policies aimed at helping Americans with criminal records find jobs. But new research indicates the laws may be exacerbating racial discrimination in hiring.

    Despite a low national unemployment rate, millions of Americans remain out of work, stuck in part-time jobs or sitting on the sidelines of the job market—including many with criminal records that turn off potential employers. Policies aimed at preventing firms from screening out ex-offenders can help those applicants get a foot in the door.

    But new research suggests that ban-the-box laws—so-called because they eliminate a box on many job applications asking if applicants have a criminal record—are creating a wider racial gap when it comes to which applicants are interviewed and hired. In one study, employers appeared to screen out African-American candidates based on their names, and the callback gap with white applicants widened after ban-the-box laws took effect. Another study looked at Labor Department data and found fewer young, low-skilled Hispanic and black men were employed in U.S. regions that had adopted the policies.

    “Employers may tend, absent information to the contrary, to assume that black applicants have criminal records and white applicants do not,” said Sonja Starr, a University of Michigan School of Law professor who studied the introduction of ban-the-box laws in New York City and New Jersey.

    There’s more at the link.

  4. Dana says:

    John asked:

    Teach what do YOU think the minimum time should pass after a felony conviction that it should no longer be held against that person in employment ?
    10 years ?

    That ought to be left up to the employer, but there are obvious considerations. Was it a violent or non-violent crime? How many criminal offenses are in the malefactor’s background? Does the open position involve handing drugs or money? Does the open position involve contact with the public?

    I’d have no problem hiring a convicted felon to finish concrete, to roof houses, to do many construction jobs. I have personally hired a man who started on work release after domestic abuse, and have worked with a truck driver who had killed a man. The positions they had had no real bearing on the crimes they had committed.

    But I would never hire anyone with a drug offense conviction, because commercial drivers — the people I used to hire, though I don’t have any hiring responsibilities now — because commercial drivers have to be drug-free, and are subject to pre-employment drug testing. If one got through, had an accident, and then failed a post-accident drug screen, I can see the plaintiff’s lawyer now: “You knew that this man used drugs, yet you put him behind the wheel of your truck anyway.”

  5. gitarcarver says:

    Teach what do YOU think the minimum time should pass after a felony conviction that it should no longer be held against that person in employment ?
    10 years ?

    As drowningpuppies said, that decision should be left to the employer.

    But as with most things liberals do and particularly this administration, this is another act of telling people and businesses what they must do. The regulations require that a business prove that not hiring the person was the right thing to do. Which means that the business has to prove its “innocence” rather than the government prove the alleged discrimination.

    But as usual, john doesn’t think anything through. Should a person convicted of embezzlement be hired as a bookkeeper? Should a child molester be hired in a day care center? Should an arsonist be hired as a fire equipment inspector? Should a drunk driver be hired as a delivery person?

    john, as always, is clueless.

    (Of course, in john’s favorite country of Venezuela, they are hiring field workers. Maybe john should go down there and work.)

  6. Dana says:

    Hypothetical situations: what if a good and noble employer, deciding to hire a convicted rapist who done his time and cleared probation, and that employee appeared to have turned his life around and was doing a good job, then discovered that one of his current employees was a rape victim? Could not the employee who was a victim then sue the employer for creating a hostile work environment, or have some other actionable complaint?

  7. drowningpuppies says:

    Ah, yes, the honorable DOJ so worried about employment for criminals…

    The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton’s private emails as Secretary of State, and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi.

    http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/marc-turi-libyan-rebels-hillary-clinton-229115

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