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DUE TO changes in Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) procedures, many
volunteers at churches and other charities will need to be fingerprinted before
they will be allowed to serve.
In order to guard against sexual abuse, it is now common practice for churches
and other organizations to require a criminal record check for any volunteers
who will be working with ‘the vulnerable sector’ (children, youth, seniors and people with disabilities).
Heather Card, vice president of member services for the Canadian Council of
Christian Charities (CCCC), told BCCN two things have changed to make this process more cumbersome. Previously, some
checks were performed by approved outside agencies which were given access to
police data bases. In December 2009, this practice was discontinued out of
concern for protecting the confidential information of those being checked. The
police must now do all the checks themselves, resulting in backlogs and delays.
The second change came July 9, when the RCMP said many criminal checks will also
require fingerprinting. There are about 14,000 pardoned sex offenders in the
national data base, some of whom have changed their names.
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For this reason, checks by the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) are no
longer done by name but only by gender and birth date. If the person being
checked has the same gender and birth date as a sex offender, that person’s criminal check will come back as “not clear.” The person will need to be fingerprinted to prove he or she is not the sex
offender.
This means some 20 percent of women and over 40 percent of men volunteers will
need to be fingerprinted. While only 2,500 volunteers were fingerprinted in
2009, many times that number have been in 2010.
The fingerprinting is part of a vulnerable sector search, which also includes a
check of a registry of pardoned sex offenders and a check of local police files
for recent offenses.
This also has created a backlog. While a normal check can be completed in two to
four weeks, a check that requires fingerprinting can take as long as four
months.
The changes have been a major inconvenience for churches and other
organizations. However, this pales in comparison to the damage done to
vulnerable people – and to churches and ministries themselves – by abusers, Card said.
A longer version of this article is at canadianchristianity.com
– Jim Coggins
November 2010
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