Fair Criminal Reporting Act

The use of background checks to disqualify job candidates and dismiss current employees has become a widespread problem that its time for Congress to enact a Fair Criminal Record Reporting Act. “A criminal record shouldn’t be a life sentence.

But with electronic databases that now routinely reach back to the sixties and even earlier, something you did 20 years ago will hurt you today. This is happening more and often, where an old conviction is holding someone back. Most of the crimes are not intentional and minor offenses. People are denied into college programs, denied licenses to practice their careers, denied employment, denied right to earn a living as a respectable citizen.

We need a Fair Criminal Record Reporting Act like the Fair Credit Reporting Act to keep one mistake from being a life sentence. We citizens, of the United states have protection under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

We need protection for ourselves to reform the law on background checks. We should be allowed to have the records automatically fall off and be removed after five years if there has been no negative activity or actions during this time. The statue should state that minor prior convictions of misdemeanor and felony should be removed automatically once the time limit has been completed. Some felony conviction should remain on record, such as murder, serial rapist, etc.

The current system lets government and employers abuse background checks to stretch the limits of the law to restrict, deny, and use prejudice when making decisions regarding individuals right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. These decisions made upon us by others, affect rights under The Declaration of Independence, Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness....

"The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave."
See: www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_new

"Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state—and nothing else."
“Conservatism: An Obituary,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

"The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness means man’s right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own private, personal, individual happiness and to work for its achievement, so long as he respects the same right in others. It means that Man cannot be forced to devote his life to the happiness of another man nor of any number of other men. It means that the collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of a man’s existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness."
“Textbook of Americanism,” The Ayn Rand Column