Defining Narratives
The second of two. It does not replace the juvenile justice clearance on Protocol 1.
Read this first, because it is the thing people get wrong. This check does not replace the juvenile justice clearance. A clear Checkr report will never on its own get you through the door of a juvenile facility, and we will not pretend otherwise. If you only have time to start one thing today, start Protocol 1 instead and come back to this one.
Here is the shape of it. You read the covenant and decide. You pay us $26 — us, not Checkr, because Checkr bills organisations monthly and has no way to bill you directly. Once that is settled, an invitation goes out automatically and you fill in Checkr's own form at checkr.com. It takes about ten minutes and asks for your address history and the last four digits of your social security number. The result usually comes back the same day.
Why we ask for it at all, given the first check exists. A state fingerprint check is very good at that state and thin on county records anywhere else. If you have lived somewhere else, this is the one that looks there. The two checks cover different ground and neither one covers the other's.
What we end up holding about you: the word clear, or the words needs a look, and Checkr's reference numbers. Not the report. Never the report.
Nothing is asked of you financially until you have read the volunteer covenant and said yes to it. That order is deliberate. If this is not you, close the tab: nobody chases you, and you have saved us both a fee and three weeks.
The fee is $26 and you pay it to us. That is not us taking a cut. Checkr invoices the organisation monthly and has no mechanism at all for billing the person being checked, so we collect the fee and then send the invitation. We will email you how to pay. If the money is the thing stopping you, say so before you pay anything: it is waivable and we would far rather waive it than lose you.
Checkr emails you an invitation link, and the same link sits on your volunteer page in case that email goes missing. It opens Checkr's own form at checkr.com. You fill it in yourself: full legal name, date of birth, the last four digits of your social security number, and your address history going back several years. Have those to hand before you start, because the address history is the part everybody stalls on.
Most come back within hours. Some take longer, because a county court somewhere has to be searched by a human being, and there is nothing either of us can do to hurry that. Your volunteer page shows where it is. If it is still moving after a week, tell us and we will chase it.
Nothing for you to do. Here is what we end up holding, and it is deliberately almost nothing: the word clear, or the words needs a look, and Checkr's own reference numbers. The report itself stays with Checkr. It is never copied into our system and there is nowhere in our system for it to go, because a WordPress database is not a place for a consumer report and the duties that come with holding one are not duties we could meet.
You can run this at the same time as Protocol 1, and you should. Track 1 takes weeks and this takes an afternoon.
If you are not placed after paying, somebody here has to decide whether the fee is refunded. There is no written refund policy yet and we are not going to pretend there is. Ask us, and we will give you a straight answer rather than a form.
They will give you names, dates and numbers. You will not remember them.