If it was discovered that a major chain establishment that caters to children was hiring workers without conducting proper background checks, most patrons of that establishment would become incensed. They would accuse the people running that company of gross negligence and child endangerment. The same would be said of a school, a daycare center, or an after-school program that hires employees without proper screening.
Why then do individuals routinely fail to do their due diligence when it comes to other individuals who may have contact with their children? Parents typically don’t run background checks on their children’s little league soccer coaches, karate instructors, private math tutors, or the church members they send their children camping with.
I am not suggesting that people should be paranoid, and many parents already use sound judgement to determine who to entrust their children with. However, many parents are handing over their children to complete strangers who they know absolutely nothing about. The Chinese language instructor you hire off of Craigslist to teach your 10-year-old Mandarin may indeed be legitimate. Then again, he or she may very well be a nefarious individual. So could the nanny you hired from the sign you saw with “Nanny for Hire” and a phone number written on it.
One way to make sure that your children are in good hands is to conduct proper background checks on the individuals who have unsupervised access to them. Detailed and reliable background checks are very inexpensive and require minimal information to conduct. Furthermore, a person’s criminal history is public record, which means that you don’t need any consent or permission to view it.