MOSCOW, August 20 (RIA Novosti) - Nearly one out of every three American adults is currently on file in the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) master criminal database, The Wall Street Journal writes.
Over the past 20 years, US authorities have made more than 250 million arrests, according to FBI estimates. Between 10,000 and 12,000 new names are added to US arrest records every day.
American employers, banks, college admissions officers and landlords routinely check the records online. The information they are provided with rarely describes what happened to a person following the arrest.
According to a 2012 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 69 percent of employers conduct criminal background checks on all job applicants. Only 58 percent of those that check backgrounds allow candidates to explain the results.
Many people who have never faced charges or have had charges dropped find that a lingering arrest record can ruin their chances of securing employment, loans and housing.
Analysis by the University of South Carolina performed at the request of The Wall Street Journal suggests that men with arrest records earn lower salaries. Men with arrest records are also less likely to own a home compared to those who have never been arrested. The same holds true for graduation rates and whether a person lives below the poverty line.
More than 95 percent of survey subjects without arrests graduated high school or earned an equivalent diploma. The number falls to 84.4 percent for those who were arrested but not convicted.
Even in cases of a mistaken arrest, the damaging documents are not automatically removed from the database. An arrest record can only be removed from the criminal database if a local court system notifies the FBI that it should be taken out of the file.
If new arrest information is forwarded to the FBI, the file is not necessarily updated. Only half of FBI records have fully up-to-date information.
