Background checks

[Rich Littleton]

Or, put simply, I think our current very low risk is clearly way below the
acceptable threshhold.  (i.e., it is acceptable)

Rich

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On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, jdean wrote:

> 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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