Policy Summary
Criminal background checks are required for staff and non-Senate academic employees newly hired, transferred, promoted, reclassified, or reassigned to certain sensitive positions. They are not required for employees holding sensitive positions at the time this policy went into effect. The department is responsible for initiating the criminal background check. If the background check reveals a conviction relevant to the sensitive position, the individual may be disqualified from holding the sensitive position.
Who Should Read this Policy
- Vice Chancellors, Deans, Directors, and Department Heads
- Chief Administrative Officers and Management Service Officers
- Managers, supervisors, and anyone else hiring employees for positions that require a criminal background check
- Individuals holding or applying for positions that require a criminal background check.
Why We Have This Policy
To protect the campus community and its assets, the University needs to ensure that individuals assigned to certain campus positions (cash handlers, police officers, child care workers, and data managers with access to personal information, to name a few) have no history of criminal behavior relevant to their employment. Although this is no guarantee against criminal acts, it does reduce the likelihood of crime, and may reduce the campus’s liability in the event a crime occurs. It also helps protect hiring departments from the possibility of lawsuits, which exact a heavy cost in time and morale, and from the cost of embezzlement (the University’s Employee Dishonesty Insurance Policy has a deductible of $1 million, meaning anything less than that is paid by the department).
The campus recognizes that its need to investigate employees’ criminal history must be balanced with the need to protect those employees’ privacy. University policy and state and federal laws recognize the individual’s right to privacy and prohibit campus employees and others from seeking, using, or disclosing personal information except within the scope of their assigned duties.
Responsibilities
Departments
- In consultation with Human Resources, determine whether a position should be designated as sensitive and document that information on the Job Description. This includes career, limited, contract, per diem, student, and volunteer positions. For non-Senate academic appointees, the consultation should be with the Academic Personnel Office, and designation should be documented on the Permission to Recruit Form or the Exceptional Permission to Recruit Form.
- Make sure all recruitment information, announcements, and descriptions state whether a position requires a criminal background check.
- Initiate criminal background checks prior to the hire, transfer, promotion, or reassignment of individuals into sensitive positions, including reclassification.
- Notify the individual under consideration for a sensitive position that an offer for any personnel action (employment, transfer, promotion, reclassification, or change in duties) is conditional on successful completion of the criminal background check, and that falsification of information submitted on University application materials may be cause for corrective action up to and including dismissal.
- Maintain confidentiality of any DMV Pull Notice Reviews.
- Pay a recharge to the UC Police Department for processing criminal background checks.
- Pay a recharge to Fleet Services for processing the DMV Pull Notice Reviews of employees who routinely drive University vehicles as part of their job. This is in accordance with Section III.C.5 of Business and Finance Bulletin 46, “Use of University Vehicles.”
UC Police Department (UCPD):
- Conducts criminal background checks.
- Notifies departments whether an individual is suited for employment based on the results of the criminal background check.
- Provides the subjects of criminal background checks with a summary of their background check results, regardless of outcome, and informs them when a conviction disqualifies them from employment in a sensitive position.
- Maintains confidentiality of criminal background check results.
- Recharges departments for criminal background checks at a rate approved by the Recharge Committee.
- Serves as the Office of Record for files concerning criminal background checks.
Fleet Services
- Upon request from the department, obtains a Pull Notice Review from the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for employees who routinely drive campus vehicles on University business.
- Maintains confidentiality of DMV Pull Notice Review results.
- Recharges departments for DMV Pull Notice Reviews at a rate approved by the Recharge Committee.
Human Resources/Academic Personnel Office:
- Consults with departments to determine whether positions require a criminal background check.
- Consults with departments about policy interpretation.
Criminal Background Check Review Committee:
- Reviews only criminal background checks which reveal convictions and determines within seven days whether such convictions disqualify individuals from sensitive positions.
CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING SENSITIVE POSITIONS
The department and Human Resources (or the Academic Personnel office, as appropriate) determine whether a position requires a criminal background check. Positions subject to criminal background checks typically involve one or more of the following responsibilities:
- Senior management of the campus (Senior Management Group);
- Care, safety, and security of people or property (includes sworn public safety officers, child care workers, camp counselors);
- Direct access to, or control over, cash, checks, credit card account information (includes cash handling or credit card acceptance positions);
- Authority to commit financial resources of the University through contracts greater than the Low Value Purchase Authority (LVPA);
- Control over campuswide or departmental business processes, either through functional roles or systems security access (includes network administrators, system programmers, Human Resource Management System [HRMS] and Payroll functional leads);
- Access to detailed personally identifiable information about students, faculty, staff, or alumni which might enable identity theft (includes student advisors, fundraisers, Human Resources and Payroll specialists);
- Possession of building master or sub-master key access to residences and certain other facilities, particularly laboratories (includes custodial services, Residential and Student Service Program employees);
- Regular operation of University vehicles as part of assigned job duties (includes transit drivers, delivery staff).
Performing a criminal background check does not relieve the department of its obligation to perform reference checks, conduct credit checks when appropriate, verify prior employment, obtain copies of licenses or certificates required for the specific position (with more extensive checks for police officers), and perform other checks.
Once it has been determined that a position requires a criminal background check, the department makes a note to that effect on the Job Description. The department also ensures that all recruitment information, announcements, and descriptions state if the position requires a criminal background check.
INITIATING A CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK
The department authorizes the UCPD to initiate a combined California Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Background Check concurrent with the personnel action (hiring, transfer, promotion, reclassification, or reassignment of job duties) of an individual, but no later than five days after a new employee’s start date; continued employment in the sensitive position is contingent upon successful completion of both the DOJ and FBI background checks. When the individual is already an employee in the UC system, the criminal background check must be initiated and completed (including, when appropriate, a review and determination by the Criminal Background Check Review Committee of suitability for employment) before the individual can begin working in the sensitive position.
The department must notify the individual under consideration in writing that the offer for any personnel action (employment, transfer, promotion, reclassification, or reassignment) is conditional upon successful completion of the DOJ/FBI background check. The notification must include a warning that falsification of information submitted on University application materials is cause for corrective action up to and including dismissal. (See Sample Letter.)
The combined DOJ and FBI background checks use fingerprints to look for criminal convictions through the Live Scan System. The Live Scan System transmits fingerprints electronically to DOJ databases in Sacramento, California for State of California conviction results, and to the FBI for a national criminal conviction check.