| Topics and Issues | Background checks (71) Jeff Sedgwick (4) Obsolescence (4) Recidivism (10) |
In 2010, Dr. Jeff Sedgwick, criminologist and former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) at the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote a paper, Overview of Selected Current Research on the Usefulness of Criminal Background Check Information. This paper casts a critical eye on the work done by Megan C. Kurlychek, Robert Brame and Shawn D. Bushway, Scarlet Letters and Recidivism: Does an Old Criminal Record Predict Future Offending? Criminology & Public Policy 5: 483-504 and Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura, Redemption in the Presence of Widespread Criminal Background Checks, NIJ Journal, No. 263 (June 2009).
Sedgwick’s paper points to flaws in the research by Kulychek, Brame and Shawn D. Bushway; and Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura. In short, the propensity of a person with a criminal history is higher than someone with no prior record, and this propensity to commit crime continues well beyond what some consider to be a magical or mythical five-, seven-, or ten-year window.