Massachusetts, the state recently started requiring FBI fingerprint-based criminal background searches for teachers and other school employees. Previously, all that was required was a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) search. As statewide repositories go, CORI is generally accepted as being one of the good ones. Most other states don’t have a one-search option allowing private employers to skip the county-by-county court searches that are as good as CORI.
Still, CORI provides criminal record information from Massachusetts courts only. The vilest offender with a criminal conviction record in another state will go undetected if the employer only searches the CORI system. That’s not a knock on CORI; it does what it’s designed to do pretty well. But lawmakers here and elsewhere do not want to take a chance that a school teacher or a school bus driver has a conviction record in another state involving violence, sex offenses or some other crime making the individual unfit to work around children. They can’t leave it to chance that a record in another state goes undetected because they continue to rely on a system that reports in-state convictions only.