A criminal charge or conviction in South Carolina can follow a person into the workplace. This post covers how employers can find arrest and conviction records, and why even a misdemeanor charge deserves serious attention when a career is at stake.
Frequently Asked Questions
If I’m convicted of a crime, will my employer find out?
If you’re convicted of a crime and your employer does a background check, then it’s a public record and your employer will see it. In addition to not even being convicted of a crime, just being arrested and charged with a crime, if your employer looks, that information is available. It’s available usually online based on the booking records, which are publicly produced and put out there.
In addition, there’s a criminal history that’s run based on your name, Social Security number, and date of birth. That’s the formal record.
That record has almost become secondary. If your employer uses a service to do a background check, they’ll check all of these computer database records. For example, the local county has a record which says that you’ve been arrested, what you’ve been charged with and what you’ve been convicted of.
In those records though, one would have to know where it happened. In other words, if you live in Virginia and you got arrested in Myrtle Beach, your employer back in Virginia may have no reason to look for that record in Myrtle Beach.
They could, however, do a background check using your date of birth and social security number, and then that would come up on the traditional criminal history. In addition, sometimes just by doing a Google search there’s information about your arrest, so there are three sources to be concerned about concerning arrest records and conviction records.
I’m being charged with a misdemeanor. Is there any reason to worry about my career?
If you’re being charged with a misdemeanor, there’s every reason to be worried about your career. You’re being charged with a crime whether it’s classified as a felony or misdemeanor. Also in South Carolina, certain misdemeanors would be considered felonies in federal court. They also would be considered felonies in other states.
Generally speaking, a misdemeanor is something that carries one year or less, and so that’s the basic classification. It’s still a criminal record though. It’s still visible, it’s still accessible to the public and it’s something that you would have to explain.
They can be very harmful in terms of people’s careers. If you have a career that you care about, certainly the best policy is to take every step possible to make sure that you don’t suffer a conviction.
The firm is called, it seems like, every week by someone who pled guilty to a misdemeanor a few years ago and now is creating a greater harm. There’s a collateral consequence that they’re suffering, and they come in and ask the firm to try to go back and reopen it and try to have it vacated.
Certainly the better practice is to deal with it when it occurs, and it’s a lot easier to deal with than after the conviction. So that’s something that you definitely want to be careful about and take all of the right steps in the beginning so that you don’t regret that later.
Facing a charge in South Carolina can feel overwhelming, especially when a job is on the line. Greg McCollum brings 30 years of experience to criminal defense, including time as a former prosecutor, which gives him a working understanding of how these cases are built and handled. Every case is different, and an early conversation can help a person understand the options that may be available.
If you have questions about criminal charges and your career, call the Greg McCollum Complete Legal Defense Team at (843) 626-5480. Consultations are confidential.