Volume_6_Issue_4_Digest

12 TPC Digest Maribeth F. Jorgensen, Kathleen Brown-Rice Analyzing CACREP-Accredited Programs’ Utilization of Criminal Background Checks T he purpose of this study was to determine how CACREP-accredited master’s counselor education programs are utilizing criminal background checks (CBCs) regarding applicants and current students. Currently, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands require a CBC for school counselors and 17 states report requiring an applicant to pass a CBC in order to become a licensed professional counselor. This could be a problem, however, because counselors-in-training work with clients while they are in their training program. Counseling programs that do not have access to CBC data may be left without critical information to help best protect vulnerable populations. Therefore, the responsibility of having CBC results might more appropriately fall on counselor educators. Literature searches revealed only one study that explored the use of CBCs by counseling programs. Over 10 years ago, researchers conducted a study of 50 CACREP-accredited counseling programs to examine use of CBCs. Specifically, they sought to gather data about how counseling programs use criminal background checks and what resources are consulted when deciding how and when to use CBCs. At the time of that study and within the sample, five CACREP-accredited counseling programs were utilizing criminal background checks. Alarmingly, none of the programs that indicated use of CBCs answered the question about having established criteria to decide how criminal background check results are used. In the present study, 27.7% ( n = 23) of respondents reported requiring applicants to undertake CBCs. Although this may seem like a small portion of the sample, it still offers the field knowledge that can augment previous findings. Previous research revealed that educators would like to use background checks, but they feel hesitant due to litigation that can come with such methods. These fears may be exacerbated by the fact that the use of CBCs is not universal across university programs, and there may be little knowledge about how to seek out university lawyers when developing these requirements. At this time, most university guidelines around CBCs focus on the use of them with employees. Some researchers posit that it is this lack of guidance and misuse of results that continues to keep graduate programs from using CBCs. Alarmingly, of the 23 programs in this study that required CBCs, only 13 reported that their program had an established procedure for deciding about the non-admission of applicants based on CBC results. When procedures are not in place, there may be a greater potential for phenomena such as the empathy veil effect, leniency effect, or likability effect. The consequences of graduating a student with a criminal history could be great and, ultimately, put future clients at risk for harm when those individuals are not screened out at the training program level. Perhaps CACREP could assist programs in understanding if and how to use CBCs by adding ideas for best practices in their accreditation standards. Previous literature has indicated that the field of counseling may benefit from creating more formalized screening procedures that include reliable, objective measures. The current study offers support that programs are using CBCs as a part of the admission process and to continually evaluate their students. Given this is a trend, it may be important to establish best practices and policies around CBCs so that programs are using them in ways that are consistent. Maribeth F. Jorgensen, NCC, is an Assistant Professor the University of South Dakota. Kathleen Brown-Rice, NCC, is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Dakota. Correspondence can be addressed to Maribeth Jorgensen, 414 East Clark Street, Vermillion, SD 57069, maribeth.jorgensen@usd.edu . 12