As a Consumer Reporting Agency, Checkr must maintain processes to ensure maximum possible accuracy when reporting criminal records. Record matching is the process and standard we follow to avoid over-reporting or under-reporting of criminal records. In other words, we maintain processes to avoid (1) reporting an offense for a person other than the candidate, and (2) not reporting a reportable offense for the candidate.
A few factors affect record matching for most consumer reporting agencies:
- Social Security numbers are usually not available on public access to match records, so other information must be used -- generally, this is Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
- Many name combinations are common (i.e. John Smith or Jose Garcia), so there's a likelihood that different individuals may have the same identifying information.
- Variants of common names (suffixes, hyphens, nicknames, aliases, misspellings, etc.) may add complexity when trying to determine whether a candidate and criminal record match each other.
In general, for a criminal record to be reported, there must be at least two pieces of matching PII. For common names, and other cases, that threshold may be higher. Checkr does additional manual and automated work to QA (quality assure) accuracy of reports and maximize the probability of correct record matching.
That said, candidates always have the right to dispute the accuracy of their report if any potential discrepancies arise.