Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation to protect children by requiring predators to undergo criminal background checks.

Every year, thousands of youth recreation programs are a vulnerable target for child predators who hope to gain access to their next victims under the guise of seeking employment or volunteer opportunities. In 34 states, child-serving organizations do not have reliable access to state and national FBI fingerprint-based background checks – the standard for criminal background checks – because access to the FBI system is often limited, unreasonably time-consuming or prohibitively expensive.

The bipartisan Child Protection Improvements Act (CPIA), introduced by Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Mike Bishop (R-Mich.), will make FBI fingerprint-based background checks permanently and widely available to youth-serving organizations nationwide. They introduced the legislation with 26 bipartisan co-sponsors.

“When parents send their children to after-school programs, sports camps or to be with mentors, they must be able to trust that their children are in safe hands,” Schiff said. “Every organization that serves our youth should have access to the FBI fingerprint-based background check system so they can thoroughly screen anyone who will be working with kids. The results of a multi-year pilot program strongly indicate that this system will be effective in catching child predators who try to avoid detection by moving across state lines.”

Currently, many child-serving organizations have the ability to request state background checks on prospective employees and volunteers that will work with children. However, a state background check is not equivalent to the FBI’s finger-print based system. The FBI’s system is capable of performing a nationwide search, preventing child predators from avoiding detection by moving from state to state.

CPIA builds on the success of the PROTECT Act’s Child Safety Pilot which ran from 2003 through 2011. The pilot program provided access to FBI fingerprint background checks for child-serving non-profits and more than 105,000 background checks were conducted. Approximately 6 percent of potential volunteers were found to have criminal records – over 6,500 individuals. Additionally, over 40 percent of individuals with criminal records had committed crimes in states other than where they were applying to volunteer. The criminal offenses included convictions for criminal sexual conduct with a child, child endangerment and manslaughter.

The legislation would ensure that organizations that serve children, the disabled and the elderly have access to FBI fingerprint searches in a timely and affordable manner. It would also protect privacy rights by ensuring that the specifics of a criminal record are never disclosed without explicit consent by the volunteer or employee and providing an opportunity for individuals to correct errors in their records.

The bill does not authorize any new spending. The program will be supported by the fees assessed for background checks. An earlier version of this legislation was approved in the House of Representatives in 2010 by a 413-4 vote.