There is no silver bullet. Youth serving organizations must have access to a wide variety of sexual abuse prevention strategies and be permitted to select those that enable them to protect the children they serve while not unduly interfering with their ability to accomplish their missions. Certainly, to the extent that criminal history record checks identify individuals who have a conviction for a disqualifying crime, criminal history record checks serve a purpose. For many nonprofit organizations offering valuable services to the nation's youth, the expenditure of funds for criminal history record checks would mean that other portions of the program would suffer. In most cases, probably not.
Access is another big issue.
Second, as long as there is a fee associated with conducting a criminal history record check, many nonprofits are denied access. We have some experience with requiring criminal history record checks that bears examination. Some states enacted legislation several years ago to require criminal history record checks of camp counselors. A common complaint from summer camps is that they frequently hire counselors in the spring and submit their fingerprints for records checks and do not receive the results until after the camping season is over. For organizations in which there is an increased possibility of sexual abuse by a volunteer, the Collaboration recommends augmenting the basic screening with name-based criminal history record checks at the state level and additional reference checking.