[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 145 (Friday, November 4, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12401-S12402]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BIDEN (for himself and Mr. Hatch):
  S. 1961. A bill to extend and expand the Child Safety Pilot Program; 
to the Committee on the Judiciary.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Extending the 
Child Safety Pilot Program Act of 2005, along with my good friend 
Senator Hatch.
  At the outset, let me thank Senator Hatch and his staff for joining 
with me in this effort. I can think of no stronger advocate for 
children's safety than my friend from Utah, and I am so pleased to have 
him as an original cosponsor of this bill.
  When a mom drops her young son or daughter off at the local Boys & 
Girls Club, when a dad brings his child to little league practice, or 
when one of our kids is mentored by an older member of the community, 
we hope and pray that they are going to be safe. They usually are, and 
youth-serving organizations are constantly vetting new employees and 
volunteers to ensure there's nothing in their background to indicate 
that potential workers should not be around our kids.
  But these groups can only do so much. They send information and 
fingerprints on prospective workers to their State criminal 
identification agencies, and that effort typically results in a 
comprehensive search of criminal history information on file in the 
State where the organization is established. But if the worker spent 
time in another state, or if a State's records are not up to date, 
kids' safety can be put in jeopardy.
  The organization with the most complete set of national criminal 
history information is the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services 
Division, in Clarksburg, West Virginia. Years ago, I was approached by 
the Boys & Girls Clubs and others and asked whether there would be a 
way for them to directly access CJIS' records and avoid the then-
cumbersome system requiring them to apply for these national background 
checks through their States.
  I looked into the issue and discovered that a patchwork of statutes 
and regulations govern background checks at the State level. There are 
over 1,200 State statutes concerning criminal record checks. In 
different States, different agencies are authorized to perform 
background checks for different types of organizations, distinct forms 
and information are required, and the results are returned in various 
formats that can be difficult to interpret. Youth-serving organizations 
trying to do the right thing and keep the kids in their charge safe 
were being forced to navigate an extremely cumbersome system.
  Indeed, in 1998, the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services 
Division performed an analysis of fingerprints submitted for civil 
applicant purposes. CJIS found that the average transmission time from 
the point of fingerprint to the State bureau was 51.0 days, and from 
the State bureau to the FBI was another 66.6 days, for a total of 117.6 
days from fingerprinting to receipt by the FBI. The worst performing 
jurisdiction took 544.8 days from

[[Page S12402]]

fingerprinting to receipt by the FBI. In a survey conducted by the 
National Mentoring Partnership, mentoring organizations waited an 
average of 6 weeks for the results of a national criminal background 
check to be returned. In a New York Times article published this past 
August, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America's vice president of club 
safety, Les Nichols, was quoted as saying that about a third of the 
criminal records that Clubs' checks turned up were from states other 
than the one where the applications were submitted. ``It can take as 
long as 18 months to retrieve those records,'' Mr. Nichols said, ``and 
that time lag works against us, particularly because we are in a 
business where we have a lot of seasonal staff and volunteers.''
  Not only was the national criminal history background check process 
slow, but it was often too expensive to be useful to youth-serving 
organizations. In 2000, I introduced comprehensive legislation designed 
to plug these security holes. No action was taken on my National Child 
Protection Improvement Act that year. The following year, I re-
introduced the bill as S. 1868. That bill cleared the Senate 
unanimously but was never acted on by the House. It would have set up 
an office in the Justice Department to coordinate background check 
requests from youth-serving organizations, and would have required the 
results of these checks to be forwarded from the FBI to the requesting 
groups quickly and affordably.
  Finally, in 2003's PROTECT Act, we were able to make some progress on 
this critical issue. Along with Senator Hatch and Chairman 
Sensenbrenner of the House Judiciary Committee, I authored section 108 
of the PROTECT Act conference report. Section 108 of Public Law 108-21 
established an 18-month pilot program for certain organizations to 
obtain national criminal history background checks. When he signed the 
PROTECT Act into law, the President noted ``this law creates important 
pilot programs to help nonprofit organizations which deal with children 
to obtain quick and complete criminal background information on 
volunteers. Listen, mentoring programs are essential for our country, 
and we must make sure they are safe for the children they serve.''
  The Child Safety Pilot Program created in the PROTECT Act was 
extended for another 12 months by a provision in last year's 
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, but the initiative is 
scheduled to expire at the end of January 2006. Although the Department 
of Justice has yet to submit a status report on the Child Safety Pilot 
Program, as required by law, data provided by groups using the program 
demonstrate its effectiveness and the need for it to be extended.
  At last check, over 10,000 background checks have been conducted 
through the pilot program. In those performed checks, 7.5 percent of 
all workers screened had an arrest or conviction in their record. 
Crimes discovered were serious: rape, child sexual abuse, murder, and 
domestic battery. Half of those individuals were not truthful in their 
job application and instead stated they did not have a criminal record. 
Over one-quarter, 28 percent, of applicants with a criminal record had 
crimes from States other than where they were applying to work. In 
other words, but for the existence of the Child Safety Pilot Program, 
employers may not have known that their applicants had a criminal 
record.
  The bill Senator Hatch and I introduce today will extend the Child 
Safety Pilot Program for an additional 30-month period. It will also 
change the original program so that more youth-serving organizations 
can participate, and will shorten the timeframe given to the FBI in 
which to return the results of the background check. We are pleased 
that our bill has been endorsed by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, 
the National Mentoring Partnership, and the National Center for Missing 
and Exploited Children.
  I would like to thank those who have made this program such a 
success. Specifically, Ernie Allen and his team at the National Center 
for Missing and Exploited Children have generously provided staff and 
equipment and have served as a clearinghouse to process background 
check requests. Robbie Callaway and Steve Salem of the Boys & Girls 
Clubs of America originally came up with this idea, and have provided 
tireless advocacy on its behalf. And Margo Pedroso of the National 
Mentoring Partnership has been invaluable in making Members of Congress 
and the general public aware of the need for an affordable, efficient 
national criminal history background check system. Without her, this 
program would never have been created.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Child Safety Pilot Program Act, 
and I look forward to its prompt consideration.
                                 ______