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nikkiwhite40 · Sep 24, 2013, 04:47 PM

Hello:

Can you please provide me with your experience with applicant's who have a First Offender discharge being hired, i.e. passing a Back Ground check? I completed a First Offender felony ID Theft (wrote a check on my boyfriends account). I have everything to get it to discharged (completed all Probation, paid fines). It is not showing on my GCIC (Georgia) but Background companies are using a Court Runner to get the records. Can you please inform me- do discharged First Offenders still get employed?

smoothy · Sep 24, 2013, 04:54 PM

It all depends on employed in WHAT industry doing WHAT job. (speaking generalities... no company names needed)

Some you won't ever be able to do again... while others it won't matter.

nikkiwhite40 · Sep 24, 2013, 05:06 PM

First Offender in Georgia will still show up on your BackGround Report. Even if you get it "expunged"- the "expungement" is from GCIC. If the BackGround check company uses a Court Runner, they will still find and report the records (my did). And will list the word "Felony". I have not been able to find a lawyer to even take the case for a Record Seal. Do whatever you can NOW to get the charges dropped BEFORE you go to court, in front of a Judge. Get a lawyer now because later there seems to be little that can be done.

Fr_Chuck · Sep 25, 2013, 02:26 AM

A first offender program, depends on the terms. It will show up until every term is completed and you go back before the judge.

Also even if explunged, it will always still show up for any job that is related to criminal justice, or national security.

Also a court runner ( this is so rare that any company does that) a court runner is a very costly method of checking a back ground and is only done in some of the most highest positions. Records are always in the court house, records of the court date, and so on, is not able to be taken out.

joypulv · Sep 25, 2013, 04:30 AM

I'm not sure what's going on in the case of a trip to the courthouse. It would seem to me that you have a good case for faulty database management at the courthouse. I would think that the expungement should be recorded, unless it's brand new.

Most background checks are done by companies who get huge amounts of data (digital transfer only) from all over the country, and when an expungement is filed at the courthouse and in the court's online database, the background check company might not retrieve that new information. The expungement data doesn't get sent to them; they have to get a fresh batch of data themselves. So lots of such changes may or may not show on a background check. It depends on when you got it and when the check is done and how new the data is for that particular company, and there's no way to know if yours will show up for one employer and not another.

This of course is not fair to those whose charges have been dropped or expunged. But the nation's courts haven't addressed the problem, and people like you get burned.

You don't need a lawyer and probably can't get one for free. Go down there and keep telling various departments what happened to you. A lot of them won't care. They figure you committed a crime and that's that, so you will have to keep calm and just keep working on it.