alexiscc

Sorry, misdemanors always had about 5 time limit after which the records were detroyed by the clerk of the court. It is only recently that these minor offences became attached to the permanent electronic record following a person. If you want to come here and hate on people,... why don't you write a letter to congressmen or something? This Big Brother thing will get you too, trust me :) NO QUESTIONS should be asked for misdemanors, after certain time had elapsed. Holier than you types: you all will too slip and fall, one day or fall to organizations like the one in TX where a digruntled manager or a dishonest manager who coerces a nurse to provide sexual favors can permanently ban you from any local employment. As to "domestic violence" misdemanors: a lot of these cases are either false reports or reports by women who live off men who pay their bills who provoked them or cheated on them. I've seen a lot of this.

The thing is that getting through nursing or medical school is not an indicator of person who doesn't make poor decisions... there's been doctors and nurses with spotless record who's been murdering patients. There should be no "case presenting" or "digging into past" for misdemeanors--there should be a list of time limits for each type of misdemeanor, as to felonies, there should be a list of barring felonies (abuse of elderly, sexual abuse, etc), the rest should just have time limit--if person had not re-offended, no questions should be asked. Everyone, including holier than thou types can find themselves in trouble, when they least expect. Just one contact with the wrong person can result in it...

Exactly, if, after a lot of efforts, a person secures a position, they'll have a "watchful eye" on their back at all times and can have things forced on them, like extra work or pressured to do unethical or illegal stuff, because their employer will know they have nowhere else to go.... I worked as a private caregiver after having that dismissed misdemeanor--I felt that if my employers knew about my past conviction they would have a lot of leverage over me... scary, makes one very vulnerable to abuses. The knowledge about you having a record just gives people too much power over you.

When you see a very young person talking about botox injections as a sign of lack of life experience, we know what it means that experience only comes with time and age Try getting jobs when you get older and you'll find out that there's age-based discrimination everywhere, and the younger you look, the higher are your chances of getting hired. Tiger747, you sound like a very bright person and honestly I think you can be successful in various careers, not just medical, since you've been having trouble because of record. Even with medical, moving away to a different state may solve a lot of problems. Smart people eventually figure things out and become successful, no matter how big are the barriers.

Hope you get your license! I can't imagine how helping own husband to come into the US could relate to nursing duties, possibly, unless they're afraid you start smuggling illegal aliens using amublances... :)

The tricky thing about expungement is that often is still requires disclosure not only to BONs, but to special employers like nursing homes or hospitals, and government employers (that's what California "expungement" is about)--you have to answer "yes, dismissed" in CA to certain classes of employers, and "no" to regular employers. Often, it doesn't even matter what you're required to say on application--as the background check using fingerprints will show everything and anything anyway. Expungement is not the same as "seal and destroy" used sometimes. See this note: http://www.kanialaw.com/case-types/criminal-defense/expungement-in-oklahoma.htm

Yeah well, I was born in socialist country (before capitalism came there and impoverished everyone, except few)--we had government healthcare and it was the best. High quality doctors, all surgeries and procedures, like expensive MRI, for example, were available for free, and extended hospital stays for free (hospitals here, in the US, kick people out while they're still very ill and can't take care of themselves... there, hospitals INSISTED on patients staying and begged them to stay until they're fully recuperated). We had free rehabilitative care/physical therapy, and dirt-cheap medications. Here, in the US, when I was a student in one town, I had a surgery and was kicked out, bleeding, without anyone to take me home, I passed out unconscious in a car, still under influence of pain medicines... a nightmare I never forget, it makes my blood go cold just to think of it. I called a lawyer and he said "Yes, I'm very sorry for what happened--this happens here all the time. We can't do anything against them". No one deserving a name "Doctor" or "Human" would sign a discharge for a patient in this condition--but this is OK here, apparently. People after major surgeries are released, only to cause them serious complications from early activity...then taken back for extra surgeries--just guess who profits from this? "Do not harm" basic principle of Medicine does not apply. Americans are too afraid to protest any injustice--because guess what happens if they do? They'll get arrested and have... a permanent criminal record attached to them, that will mess up their future employment. So, people will quietly tolerate a lot of things. As to Bin Laden--he's a well known personal friend of families that had run US government for decades (BBC published happy photographs of family gatherings of Bin Ladens with US governing families), and opium money from Afghanistan that Bin Laden controlled went to pay for tons of US weapons sold to arm Afghans...qui pro quo. I have a $15,000 bill on my credit (luckily, statue of limitations runs out in several months)... from 2 (two) emergency room visits that ONLY involved 2 CAT scans and doctor consultation, nothing else (and I was deemed healthy)--? Yes, anywhere outside the US this would sound like sci fiction.... Even a very poor country like Bangladesh has free healthcare--and even foreign visitors are eligible to get it. And look at the homeless, schizophrenic people that fill LA streets (very aggressive and violent often)... they can not have needed mental health care and terrorize city streets. As to moving outside the US... people with money are already doing it. I know of business people with money--they're taking their funds outside the US, because they expect a meltdown here and generally are planning to leave the country. One thing though, if you move to a developed country, your record is likely to follow you, as they'd require a certificate from police agency and this would have electronic record of every thing attached to fingerprints.

What I think is that with further economic decline pending, it's not an unrealistic scenario that people will be losing more and more rights every month, rather than gaining them. My post was not about legal fight on a large scale, to change the laws, but about a personal choice to go to school and borrow student loans. I think this is quite imaginable, in the future, to see larger amounts of people incarcerated and used for slave labor, actually, in private jails... Also, keeping people's minor criminal records permanently available for employers--this is the way to force more people into economic slavery/low wages/undesirable occupations--a profitable thing... this is essentially a form of illegal incarceration, keeping someone in financial/economic trap, long after they're done with legal system. I read your posts about not being able to find employment in local town with a minor misdemeanor... sounds like you'd do better moving to a bigger town, as I think in big cities small criminal records wouldn't matter that much for non-medical employment. Here, in LA, a lot of people have records.... Personally, I went to school for technical occupation, as employers don't care for your records in these professions, as there's no need to deal with money or customers.

The problem is not the license... I know I could get a license, say, in FL, without trouble with that misdemeanor. The problem is getting a job... Officially, it's legal everywhere for a nursing home to deny employment to a person with a felony; off the books, unofficially, the same rule applies to misdemeanors, with any medical facility. There's too much fear of lawsuits. I looked at one medical publication recently, and they recommended that if a medical office hires any administrative (!) personnel that has any conviction to...inform *coworkers and patients that a person has conviction and give them option not to deal with that person*. Sounds like lynching, no? Like making someone wearing big scarlet A? Imagine working in such conditions. This is like hazing and I imagine could drove a person to suicide. This should be illegal. Not only BONs would have to change, the employment laws as well. They'd need to establish a rule after how many years people can not be asked about certain convictions. It used to be that if you moved to another county and didn't list your old county address... no one would find out about minor misdemeanor convictions--moreover, courthouses would destroy misdemeanor records after 5 years (at least in Los Angeles). Now, it all goes to Federally maintained electronic criminal record tied to fingerprints--and misdemeanors and felonies stay on forever, even the slightest offence. Even just an arrest without conviction is visible, so if person was innocent--it doesn't matter, their arrest will pop up with every fingerprinting. I don't see the laws changing to protect people... It's usually the minorities who're most affected and they don't have upper hand. Nobody cares because unemployment is high and others are only glad to have people removed from the candidate pool. Well, this attitude of society WILL back fire on everyone... just see what's happening in TX now with Group One. Medical personnell get permanent bans from employment for any little disagreement with a supervisor or for quitting job, being put in central database as "offenders" and permanently blacklisted... So, wait, Big Brother times are just starting, not even close to what it'll be in the future.... My prediction it will take at least 10-15 years for Americans to wake up and fight back for their privacy and dignity. I went to software engineering field... was hired recently--no problems because of my misdemeanor, but they still did background check, even for that software position, though it had nothing to do with money handling or patients.

I have an old misdemeanor battery conviction (let's just say the "battered" party was a huge, pumped-on on steroids male 3 times bigger than me, who assaulted and grabbed me leaving giant bruises--and I spit on his sleeve for that I got battery charge. That person just happened to have the right buddies). They only got me to plea no contest because public defender didn't care and wanted to quickly be done, and promised "full dismissal" if I accept the deal and plea no contest. But California "dismissal" is nothing... it stays on record forever. I decided not to fight and try to get nursing or occupational therapist degree, even though this would have been my dream....I see people posting even with felony backgrounds and being advised to keep fighting and find school that accepts them. Well, if someone already got a degree and especially is tied by student loans, surely they better fight. But otherwise, I think an advice to "pursue your dream" is very dangerous and worthless. Nobody in this world cares about "your passion for nursing"--you get branded as a criminal for life and since that moment you get a conviction, it begins to define you, if you're in certain occupation. I believe one should NOT fight and try to pursue school in nursing with background problems. So, far, laws had been only tightening and the means to check backgrounds (electronic means) had been getting more perfected. Databases grow and grow to accumulate every minor offense, to make it visible to everyone. Should we expect laws to relax? NO. The economy will not be recovering--anyone with brains had already figured it out; on a long run, economy will be going downhill and competition for jobs will be fierce--do you think people with criminal backgrounds will be given more chances in medicine? No, not really. Quite the opposite. Also, I expect the state rules to become more strict. It will make sense for them, as with economic problems and no money to fund healthcare, the competition for these jobs will be high and there will be no shortage. Even if there's shortage--they can always import foreign nurses, that's what they had been doing. Some states have more relaxed rules right now, but I fully expect them to catch up with the rest; this had been general tendency with all states. Even if you eventually get a job... you'll have to live in fear of being extra scrutinized or even accused of things, because they know of your background; will possibly expect to be the first one to be to laid off, etc. Plus, the need to expose your past to strangers all the time and explain that you're not an elephant, while it's you who's often the victim in these "crimes", even though you got convicted. Always being looked down by "goody toe" ones who think they're better than you because they have no record, being put down, humiliated, having your dirty laundry exposed every time, denied--this truly is poison to life. That's why I think people shouldn't make a reckless decision to invest years of life into school and end up in debt they likely can not pay off.

Wait till hunger and homelessness riots start here too much injustice. They want to throw people out on the streets, take away their homes and life, because of minor conviction many years ago?--huh, you say even convinence stores started the witch hunt? Forcing people into unhealthy, toxic occupations to work somewhere at a factory, destroying own health.... That's why I went to school for engineering, having a misdemeanor conviction for spitting on a person 3 times bigger than me who assaulted me by grabbing me and bruising me, while I was a small, fragile girl, I figured I don't want to live in constant fear of government and explain to every fool and hater why I had a problem and let them dig in my past, poison my life and leave me out of work after putting me down. This, however, made me a very bitter person--having to go for profession I have no love whatsoever (have talent for it, just no love). Now I'm wondering if I should find a way to leave the country...

It sounds good about the situation in Illinois... however, the OP should think hard if she'd go into the field with a conviction--because even if Illinois is lenient now... doesn't mean it later won't go the route almost ALL other states went--no jobs with felony conviction and often no licensing. I wouldn't invest serious money and time/get in debt over something that can be so easily taken away by changing law.

Indeed, this country had turned into a giant police state, where corrupt wealthy rob the poor, without reprecussions. I know of a nursing student, young guy, who lived with a woman 10-years older than him who already had a child (the child lived with her mother). She came to LA from Sacramento apparently to engage in working in Media industry, as it turned out... She seduced that guy in his early twenties and lived off him, in his apartment. Eventually, he broke up with her and she had to leave (his) place. So, the last night she stays there (asked him to let her stay)... guess what happens? She files RAPE charges, and he's in jail--no money to post bail, he's a poor student and his mother is a poor immigrant. Wrongfully accused, jailed and ruined. One should be very careful about what kind of people they hang out with, if they're in medical field.

That's a thing that my record isn't that "clean"--there's NO real expungement in the state of California! They offer you to plea no contest to something you're not guilty of lying to your that your conviction will be "removed", but in reality CA "expungement/dismissal" only allows you to say "No" on applications to private employers not associated with healthcare---the conviction WILL show up, forever, on your DOJ report (with a notation "dismissed")--there's no way to seal and destroy, really. Moreover, one (idiot) attorney told me that one has to always answer yes to convictions question even if it's been expunged. How's that? I mean I *withrew* my guilty plea and entered not guilty and my conviction was set aside (attorney wanted me to pay him of course, but I can spot liar attorneys....) So, yes, "clean" record doesn't exist in CA after expungement--it will show up as "dismissed". Of course, it's much better than a plain conviction on record. But also, apparently, applying to government organizations for work or, in some opinions to any job that requires licensing (aka nurse, OT, PT, etc) one ALWAYS have to say "Yes, dismissed" in the " have you been convicted" question.

I want to know if hospital/nursing home facilities are asking for arrest records/charges or actual convictions? My conviction had been expunged, so I have no conviction, but since arrest record is impossible to seal (CA)--would facility employers see the arrest on fingerprint check/FBI check?

I don't understand why my previous question was deleted, while this board if full of similar types of questions. My question has nothing to do with BON, I'm well-aware that expunged misdemeanor has to be disclosed to BON. I want to know if it is charges or actual convictions that hospitals and nursing home employers want to know about. Because expunged misdemeanor is No conviction--but the past charge from arrest doesn't get erased. So I want to know if fingerprinting that is usually requested by facilities reveals just convictions or also charges.

Hello. I have a misdemeanor that was expunged. I asked a question on this board earlier asking about this, and I got a reply like "why do you even want to compete with those without criminal record in this market?". The thing is my misdemeanor was expunged and I don't have to answer "yes" to "Have you been convicted?". But what I wonder is: the arrest should still show up on finger prints card/check?--or does fingerprint card only address convictions, not arrests? In general, since my conviction shouldn't show on background check, would hospitals/nursing homes find out bout the arrest and initial charge?

Does it make sense to call BON or they don't give information until you actually apply for a license? Apparently, according to California BON website I don't have to disclose an arrest that resulted in no conviction/no charges filed. However, I had 2nd arrest later, for misdemeanor assault, and plead nolo contendre--that was dismissed after 1 year probation and I had to plea nolo contendre to infraction "disturbance of peace" instead. It doesn't show on my regular background check at all I think. Do I have to disclose a dismissed conviction and would this bar me from RN license in California?

Yeah I thought so--even if licensed, this create a problem with hiring

I was thinking of switching to nursing career (I have engineering degree, but hard to find work), and healthcare isn't new to me, as I have a lot of experience as CNA, but have a criminal background issue that's holding me back. How to find out if I'd be allowed to obtain a license? I mean before I'd spend a lot of money and time on RN education. I contacted the licensing body but haven't heard back (it's been a week). Should I call them? I had 2 arrests, one (6 years ago) was without any charges filed, and another (4 years ago) was reduced to infraction disturbance of peace. Should I just give up thoughts about nursing career? Or, would someone at the Nursing Board be able to let me know in advance if I can count on being licensed?