FACTS RELATING TO THE
CURRENT FINGERPRINTING LAW
WHERE EXACTLY IS THE PROBLEM OF CHILD ABUSE?
1999 US Dept. of Health and Human Services figures show the perpetrators
to be:
75% parents
10% other relatives
8% unknown perpetrators
5% non-caretakers
0.9% child care providers
0.5% foster parents
0.3% facility staff
?? (School workers are not listed as a separate category
because their number is statistically insignificant.)
HOW MANY CONVICTED PEDOPHILES MIGHT BE IN THE SCHOOLS?
NASDTEC (Nat. Assoc. of State Dirs. of Tchr. Educ. & Cert.) 2000 Manual
shows:
2190 criminal convictions nationwide for the 13 years (1987-99) for
sexual misconduct against a child by applicants for educational
certificates.
[2190 divided by 13 years X Me.'s 0.0049 share of US pop. (2) = 0.83
cases (that's 5/6 of a case) per year for Maine.]
Me. Dept of Education reports (3) the following convictions among school
personnel over the past 10 years:
27 convictions for sexual abuse of a child, 15 other kinds of
convictions and (since 1995) 16 negotiated surrenders of
licenses (crimes unspecified)
[Comparing Dept. of Educ. figures to those of Me. DHS suggests that the
annual in-school abuse constitutes about 2/10ths of 1% of the
total abuse occurring in Maine.
Of these, again only a small portion might be prevented by fingerprinting,
as 3/4 of the Dept. of Educ.'s cases occured after initial licensing
in Maine.]
WHAT IS MAINE DOING ABOUT CHILD ABUSE?
The Maine Dept. of Human Services Child Protective Services 1999 Report on
Referrals states: "There were 1264 Appropriate reports which were not
assigned for assessment due to Insufficient Staff. The allegations in
these reports warrant Child Protective Services Intervention but are not
assigned because the office has reached the upper limits of its capacity
to investigate and assess."
Me. Dept. of Education will spend roughly $3,000,000 in the next five
years and $300,000 each year thereafter to hunt for possible abusers
among school personnel. This may not include fingerprinting a reported
20,000+ certificate holders who are not currently employed in the schools.
WHO WORKS TO PREVENT CHILD ABUSE?
1999 referrals of suspected child abuse made to Maine DHS were from:
765 school personnel
503 social services personnel
503 law enforcement personnel (sic)
WHAT IS THE RESPONSE OF SCHOOL WORKERS TO CURRENT LAW?
Among academic personnel (4):
76.7% are not comfortable with the law,
and of these:
66.5% do not support the law but feel they
have to comply to keep their jobs, and
8.5% find the law unacceptable and will
refuse to comply.
Among non-academic support staff:
56.4% are not comfortable with the law,
and of these:
59.4% do not support the law but feel they
have to comply to keep their jobs, and
3.0% find the law unacceptable and will
refuse to comply.
FUZZY FACT
HOW MANY OTHER STATES ARE DOING THIS?
According to the Commissioner of Education (5):
"Maine is following the lead of 39 other states that require
background checks."
According to the NASDTEC 2000 Manual:
Not including Maine, only 25 states require FBI checks of
all personnel. FBI checks are the only reason Maine wants to
require fingerprinting. Only 30 states require fingerprinting
for all personnel.
According to the Maine Education Association:
Not including Maine, no Northeastern state (PA, NJ, NY, CN, RI, MA,
VT and NH) requires fingerprinting of all school personnel.
Not including Maine, east of the Mississippi only Washington DC
requires fingerprinting of all school personnel.
WHAT DOES THE US CONGRESS SAY?
The following quote is from the FBI's Criminal Justice Information
Services Division's Information Letter dated 12/1/99 re the Volunteers For
Children Act (VCA):
"Under the VCA, a qualified entity's decision to request a background
check is discretionary. As Congressman McCollum stated, 'This bill in no
way requires these organizations to conduct fingerprint checks.... The
bill simply provides organizations with the option of requesting checks if
there is no law in place precluding them.' Congressman Foley echoed this
observation, 'It does not require any group to seek these background
checks....' October 7, 1998, Congressional Record.
The qualified entity may, therefore, elect to submit fingerprints on some
applicants/employees/volunteers and not on others. For example, it may be
desirable to background only those with unsupervised access to these
susceptible populations rather than all volunteers (many of whom would
never be alone with their charges), a distinction permitted under the VCA.
Accompanying the NCPA [National Child Protection Act of 1993] was House
Report 103-393 9 (NCPA Committee Report) by the Committee on the Judiciary,
which encouraged such distinctions. The bill includes a very broad
definition of 'child care provider,' but the Committee does not believe
that all occupations and volunteer positions within that broad definition
merit the time and expense of criminal history records checks. There are
other means available to protect children from abuse, including the
checking of prior employment history and character references and proper
training and supervision of employees and volunteers. The Committee
expects that the states, in deciding which types of categories of positions
require criminal history background checks, will consider the degree to
which a particular position or child care activity offers opportunities to
those who would abuse children. The Committee expects that the states will
find, for example, that positions involving long-term or ongoing contact
with children in one-on-one situations merit criminal history record checks
and that positions that involve infrequent direct contact or contact only
in group settings do not merit such checks."
(1) Child Maltreatment in 1997: Reports from the States to the National
Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systgem, US Dept. of Health and Human
Services, 1999
(2) US Census, 1990
(3) "Essential Points: Criminal History Record Checks on Educational Personnel,"
2/9/200
(4) Maine Educators Against Fingerprinting Poll Data (1172 respondents from
16 school systems) 2/20/2000
(5) Opinion Column by J. Duke Albanese, Bangor Daily News, 2/9/2000
Prepared by Me. Educators Against Fingerprinting