How do most Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRA) deal with New York State? Most will state that they are forced to use the Office of Court Administration (OCA) Criminal History Report, or State criminal search.

This comes with a hefty price tag, though, of nearly $100.00, per name, and the name must be exact to what is on the record, so if you have a court that misspelled the name of the subject by just one letter, you’re not getting that result.

This is one of the many arbitrary rules that the OCA has employed. What they report changes almost monthly, and it’s becoming more and more restrictive.

Recently, while working on a report, we were made aware of a case that was missing from the results provided to us by the OCA. We had the court, case number, offense, and disposition dates - all the information!

When we reached out to the OCA to inquire as to why this was not reported, we were told that after five years of inactivity from the court that they do not report the case at all. This was a disposed case!

The OCA had it stored as unfinished with no activity, therefore, we did not obtain the results. Who is holding the courts accountable? It’s not the Office of Court Administration.

An even more frustrating issue is when an investigator reaches out to the courts and is advised that they have to go through the OCA to obtain the results they desire.

The OCA is leaning on the courts more and more to not provide case information to researchers, and to insist that the State criminal record search is used. However, they aren’t providing comprehensive results, are not holding courts accountable, and frequently change what they will and will not report.

Another example of this is their “Misdemeanor Redemption Policy,” which basically states that any misdemeanor conviction older than ten years will not be reported, as long as there are no other convictions on the record. 

The biggest issue with this is, of course, the exact name match. 

Name Match Only

Case in point, we had another instance where the record of an assault conviction was not reported to us because the name was misspelled on the record, and it was considered a misdemeanor redemption because the name was misspelled. 

Technically, their records had only one case for that individual even though they actually had nine convictions for that individual, but the court didn’t have the name spelled exactly the same as the other records. 

All other identifiers matched, including address history.  This is a major flaw in the system.  I could continue, with many anecdotes of the failings of the OCA and their policies in regard to background investigations, but that would be a dissertation-length document.

So, what is the solution?  Well, for one, we as Consumer Reporting Agencies need to start holding the OCA accountable, which may include litigation through PBSA or through grassroots movements. 

In the meantime, Commercial Investigations LLC (CI) does have a solution.  Our Cursory Indicator New York™  inquiry provides us with arrest information for individuals that can either be researched by CI or provided to other Consumer Reporting Agencies to conduct their own research. 

While it’s not the perfect solution, it gathers more data and provides that data for additional research at a fraction of the cost.  The added benefit is that it doesn’t base results on an exact name and date of birth match like the OCA. 

It’s a fuzzy logic that is able to collect possible record matches, even if human error along the way made a mistake.

It’s time to hold the Office of Court Administration accountable for an extremely broken product at an extreme cost to our Consumer Reporting Agencies and our clients. 

Contact us to start obtaining all available criminal history on your applicants.