How Come Uber's Easing Driver Screening Rules?

Hmm, a sense of corporate responsibility to non-violent ex-convicts or a pragmatic response to high driver turnover and difficult recruiting for a low-paid job with long hours and little long-term upside? JL

Douglas MacMillan and Deepa Seetharaman report in the Wall Street Journal:

Uber presents a good job opportunity for newly released inmates because of the flexibility it affords to someone who may have to work more than one job
Uber Technologies Inc. is taking steps in California to make its driver-screening requirements fairer to some nonviolent criminals who have served prison sentences and are attempting to rebuild their lives.
The car-hailing service no longer will reject people who apply to be drivers in the state it previously would have turned down because of certain nonviolent or nonsexual offenses, such as petty theft and check fraud, Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan said in an interview.
Uber also plans to inform driver applicants in California when it is rejecting them because of a criminal felony conviction, and tell them about steps they could take to reduce their record under Proposition 47, a law that gives non-violent offenders an opportunity to reduce their felony conviction to a misdemeanor if they submit an application by Nov. 4, 2017.
The changes will affect a small number of people and aren’t aimed at growing Uber’s business or expanding its pool of drivers, Mr. Sullivan said.
“This is an opportunity for us to engage with the community,” Mr. Sullivan said. “We should all be in favor of giving everyone a fair chance.”

By helping people with criminal backgrounds get jobs driving for Uber, the company is shining a light on its own background-check process, which has come under fire for failing to screen out potentially dangerous drivers.
In an ongoing civil suit against Uber, the district attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles have claimed that “systemic failures” in the company’s background-check process have led to registered sex offenders, identity thieves, burglars, and a convicted murderer becoming drivers for the service. The suit claims Uber misled consumers about the effectiveness of background checks and seeks a permanent injunction of the business.
Uber says safety is its priority and that its background checks are as good or better than the industry standard used by taxi companies. In California, the company uses a service called Checkr Inc. that runs a security trace identifying addresses associated with a person in the past seven years and then matches any convictions during that time.
Many taxi companies in the state instead use Live Scan, a service that takes an individual’s fingerprints and runs them through FBI and state databases looking for a match. Neither method has proven to be foolproof.
The most common reason Uber rejects drivers is for motor vehicle-related offenses, such as driving while intoxicated and reckless driving, Mr. Sullivan said. The company will continue to reject all applicants who have been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony related to driving, or to sexual or violent behavior, he noted.
For other applicants convicted of nonviolent offenses in California, the company will encourage them to apply to reduce their record under Proposition 47, which covers simple drug possession as well as forgery, shoplifting and petty theft under $950.
Uber also will refer them to nonprofit organizations, such as New York-based Defy Ventures, that help former inmates re-enter society.
Uber plans to contact applicants it rejected in the past for a felony conviction and give them the same information. Eventually, Mr. Sullivan said he hopes some of those people would successfully reapply for a job with the company.
Uber presents a good job opportunity for newly released inmates because of the flexibility it affords to someone who may have to work more than one job, said Mark Loranger, president of Chrysalis, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps homeless and former convicts find employment.
But another nonprofit, Center for Employment Opportunities, says it passed on Uber’s request last month to connect the company with potential drivers.
Bill Heiser, who runs the nonprofit’s California office, says Uber wasn’t a good fit because many of the ex-offenders working with the organization didn’t have a car and couldn’t afford insurance.
Uber is joining a growing number of U.S. businesses that have reformed their hiring practices to accept more workers with criminal backgrounds.
Retailers including Target Corp. TGT -0.47 % , Starbucks Corp. SBUX -1.66 % and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. BBBY 0.36 % in recent years have stopped requiring job applicants to disclose their criminal histories until the final stages of the hiring process.
Those reforms have accompanied a wave of federal and state efforts aimed at decreasing prison populations and reducing high rates of recidivism, or the likelihood that former inmates end up back in jail.
California is one of more than 30 states that have enacted new policies to restrain prison populations since 2007.
More than half, or 54.3%, of people released from California prisons during the 2009 to 2010 fiscal year returned to prison within the following three years, according to a 2014 report by the state.
People who committed property crimes such as burglary and car theft had the highest return-to-prison rates, while those who committed drug crimes have the lowest recidivism rate, according to the report.