Employers taking advantage of increased access to
criminal offender record information must comply with strict
information-dissemination and recordkeeping
guidelines.
The final slate of changes implemented by the 2010 Massachusetts
Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) reform
legislation—signed into law by Governor Deval Patrick on
August 6, 2010—will take effect on Friday, May 4, 2012.
Like the "ban the box" provision implemented in 2010 that
prohibited employers from asking about an applicant's criminal
history on an initial employment application, a number of the
soon-to-be-effective requirements impact Massachusetts employers
that seek criminal records information or conduct criminal
background checks. In addition to the law, the Department of
Criminal Justice Information Services (DCJIS), the state agency
responsible for administering the CORI statute, appears poised to
issue final regulations, as the comment period for the proposed
regulations ended on
