In many volunteer positions across the country it doesn’t make sense to run criminal background checks on some of these types of volunteers. Where it does make sense is for volunteer positions where time is spent with at-risk populations like children and the elderly. Across the country more and more organizations are requiring criminal background checks including sex offender checks on volunteers. This is most prevalent within the education sector where school districts are adopting background screening policies for volunteers even if they are parents to children in the school.

The current debate going on within the K-12 education system is that schools already have enough difficulty getting parents to volunteer for much needed help already. The fear is that with mandated volunteer background checks less and less parents will be willing to participate at all and therefore will not volunteer for much needed positions. Making these types of volunteers go through a criminal background check can be viewed as intrusive and information required to run the background check is private and sensitive. However, the current trend in the country is to implement an employment screening system for volunteer checks most especially for those volunteers that will have access to children, the disabled or the elderly. To learn more about volunteer background checks and why should background screening be conducted on volunteers read recent press release found at: http://www.criminalbackgroundrecords.com/news/2104-10-21-Volunteer-Checks-A-Critical-Tool-in-All-Areas-of-Volunteering.html