Background checks

[jdean]

A question for Joel (mostly), et. al.:

Is the discussion missing the point about the law and the standard to which
courts are holding organizations?  The points being discussed about the
desirability of a policy requiring checks, and the side issue (that seems to
have consensus is a side issue) about potential impact on sponsors, are not
really germain.

I only see one area in which SCNA policy is free to operate; and that is to
establish the level of risk that the organization will accept.  I think I
heard here that it does not matter what kind of organization we are or what
kind of events we participate in.  It just matters if someone (maybe only
someone in a protected population) suffers abuse at the hands of an employee
or volunteer while that person is acting as an employee or volunteer.  If
that happens our only defense, and our only hope to avoid legal sanction, is
to show that we excercised due diligence.

For instance, if we allow minors accounts on SCN, and we have volunteer
staff that interacts with acount holders, we could be liable if someone used
their position to "entice" a minor to meet somewhere and abuse ensued.

Board policy can just ignore risk and hope nothing ever happens.  Board
policy can identify certain job categories as potentially having user
contact with vulnerable / protected users, and require some type of check
for persons doing those jobs. ( Or, anything else you can imagine... )

The discussion ought to focus, in my opinion, on acceptable risk.  There is
near unanimity on the point that IS being discussed... namely that checks
are odious or worse... so it seems to me that that principle should just be
accepted as an organizational 'given', and we should move on to the point of
determining how little we can do and still have acceptable risk.  In
proposing this I do not rule out that we could decide that there is
acceptable risk in requiring no checks of anyone.  I also do not rule out
that we might find that that was not the case; and that some categories of
volunteers ought to require some checks.

Apologies if this sounded 'preachy", I thought a 'process check' might be
useful.

Regards

John Dean

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