Your post is really an example of the unintended(?) consequences of treating every adult as a potential child molester – guilty until proven innocent. You wrote:

And who wants more to be alone with unsupervised little children than a child molester?

Do you understand how perverted that sentence is? My four daughters are now adults, but I was a SAHM for 16 years of their youth and I wanted to be at their schools volunteering because I wanted to participate in their lives. I did PTA and ran talent shows. I headed up fundraisers and worked in classrooms. I was a Band Booster mom for 13 high school years, everything from running the concession stand at football games to chaperoning the band when it toured out-of-state. I love working with kids, especially teens. But your blanket statement reduces parenting to warehousing and anyone that wants to get involved with their kids’ activities must have some ulterior motive.

And this fingerprinting of parents who volunteer creates a false sense of security. As if a molester who doesn’t have a record gives a rip about fingerprinting.

But I will say this – part of this argument is that this is a minimally invasive requirement and hey, even if it doesn’t screen out 100% of potential child molesters it is worth the effort if it screens out a few. But what if there are unintended consequences to this?

To start with, are child molesters really that stupid that they are likely to submit to background checks which will identify them as child molesters? Only the stupid ones will get caught, the smart ones not only won’t get caught but – now that we feel safer knowing these volunteers have been screened – they will be that much harder to catch because we aren’t looking as hard for them .

If you think about it, even a minimally invasive requirement will keep some good parents from volunteering on the grounds that volunteering is now just too much hassle. The more burdensome the requirements to volunteer become, the smaller the pool of volunteers will become. In order to volunteer, you are going to have to work at it, you are really going to *want* to volunteer. You are really going to *want* the opportunity to be alone with unsupervised little children in order to go through the process of being allowed to volunteer. And who wants more to be alone with unsupervised little children than a child molester?

I know, I’m probably crazy to think that by attempting to decrease the likelihood of harm from child molesters you may actually be increasing the risk. I may also be crazy to think that mandatory seatbelt laws might have made driving less safe or that outlawing alcohol may have increased the incidence of alcoholism or that mandating fuel and energy efficiency may have led to an increase in the use of fuel and energy or that sending free food to starving Africans may have led to more starving Africans……………..

It may, except it doesn’t dissuade coaches and teachers that abuse kids.

Fingerprinting only gets more people into the legal system. It does not prevent anything further that a regular non-fingerprinting background check wouldn’t bring forth.

Secondly, it is great to think that it will prevent child abuse, but if that is the case, then how do you explain teachers and coaches that abuse kids? They are fingerprinted by contract and it doesn’t stop them. It doesn’t dissuade them from applying for the position and knowing they are on record doesn’t dissuade them from actually committing the crime.

How about keeping people with drug convictions from volunteering at the high school?

That might eliminate half the teachers. 😉 (just kidding)

But that is an issue that I raised and never got an answer. What “crime” is acceptable? Drug convictions? A DUI? Trespassing? Theft? How about an 18 year old that was convicted of sex with a minor who was his girlfriend at the time and now is his wife of 20 years? Is someone who was convicted of tax evasion good enough to volunteer?

What happens if the search turns up something that doesn’t have anything to do with the school or volunteering? For instance, what happens if the person has some unpaid parking tickets on the books? Should the state then use the information from the fingerprinting to come and arrest the person?

This type of invasive check simply a tangent of “guilty until proven innocent.” That’s not the way this country works.

Also, what I haven’t seen mentioned is other types of felons. How about keeping people with drug convictions from volunteering at the high school?

Then add this to your list: There is risk when giving personal information to institutions.

There has yet to be any mention of what would happen if volunteer’s background check resulted in a false positive. Report them to other authorities “just in case”? After all, it’s for the children™.

-Overwhelming majority? Of course. But that clearly is not the point: we all agree that .1% is a number that is way too large
-I don’t think there are enough measures in place to stop the problem we are trying to address: repeat offenders. I suspect a small number of people are the biggest criminals, many of which have already been caught and prosecuted
-Absolutely true that you can’t prevent all risk. I lose sleep at night knowing you are exactly correct, not just about this risk but risk in general. But, ultimately, would you be willing to have us all give our fingerprints to save one child from being molested. I would. Your best comeback would be to grab what I said earlier: would I require every kid to wear a helmet if it would save one life? You draw the line somewhere, I guess. I draw it somewhere after fingerprints.

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