Though background checks are intended to protect vulnerable populations, they often uphold systemic barriers, especially for folks navigating inequities tied to race, income, or mental health. In this blog, guest writer Jose Guevarra explains how goal-based, relationship-centred, and healing-informed screening practices can help to align volunteer screening practices with values of trust, dignity, and inclusion.
By Jose Guevarra
Background checks1 are often seen as a necessary safeguard for organizations working with vulnerable populations. However, when examined through an intersectional lens, background checks reveal deep systemic barriers that disproportionately impact marginalized individuals. By exploring how factors like race, class, gender, and socioeconomic status intersect with structural inequalities, we can uncover how background checks can create obstacles for individuals, predominantly those marginalized in our community.
Intersectionality in Volunteer Screening
Intersectionality highlights how overlapping identities—such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and age—shape a person’s advantages or challenges in society. When applied to volunteer screening, this lens reveals how certain communities face compounded challenges in accessing opportunities. Background checks, which rely on rigid processes, often create barriers that disproportionately impact marginalized communities, limiting access to volunteer opportunities.
Financial Barriers: Who Gets to Volunteer?
While volunteering is often seen as a pathway to community engagement and opportunity, the reality is that it is not equally accessible to all. Many jurisdictions require volunteers to pay for background checks, turning what should be an inclusive process into one that privileges those with financial stability. For individuals from lower-income backgrounds, this added expense—combined with transportation costs and lost wages from taking time off work—can be prohibitive.
This financial barrier is particularly stark when considering who is most impacted by economic hardship. Racialized communities are disproportionately affected by poverty and systemic exclusion and face additional hurdles. Background checks create unnecessary barriers by assuming all applicants have equal access to time, money, and institutional resources—privileges that many equity-deserving individuals may not have. When organizations fail to consider these socioeconomic disparities, they risk reinforcing exclusionary practices rather than fostering accessibility.
Systemic Bias in Policing and Criminal Justice
Background checks depend on police records, which are shaped by historical and ongoing systemic biases in law enforcement. Over-policing in racialized communities has led to a disproportionate number of recorded interactions with police, even when no crime has been committed. These interactions—whether from racial profiling, street checks, or survival-based offenses tied to poverty—can surface in a background check and unfairly disqualify individuals from volunteering.
Take, for example, the history of Starlight Tours, where Indigenous people in Canada were unlawfully detained by police and abandoned in freezing temperatures. These acts of systemic discrimination are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern of policing that disproportionately affects marginalized communities. When background checks rely on law enforcement records, they fail to acknowledge these structural injustices and instead place the burden of exclusion on individuals who have already been harmed by the system.
Criminalization of Poverty and Mental Health
For many marginalized individuals, interactions with law enforcement can be the result of systemic disadvantage rather than criminal intent. People experiencing homelessness, addiction, or mental health crises may have records linked to offenses, such as trespassing, loitering, or failing to appear in court due to unstable housing. These incidents, while not violent or predatory, can still appear on police records and negatively impact a background check outcome.
The requirement to obtain a background check forces individuals to re-engage with the very system that has presently and historically marginalized them, creating psychological distress and reinforcing cycles of exclusion.
In Alberta, background checks may include non-conviction information, such as mental health apprehensions, depending on specific circumstances. This means that individuals who have experienced interactions with law enforcement due to mental health crises might have these incidents reflected in their background checks, even though such interactions are not criminal offenses. The disclosure of this sensitive information can lead to unintended consequences, potentially affecting opportunities for employment or volunteer positions. It’s important to note that policies regarding the inclusion of mental health-related information in background checks can vary.2
Why This Matters: The Cost of Ignoring Intersectionality
Background checks often fail to account for the complex realities of intersecting identities. By continuing to apply one-size-fits-all screening measures, organizations risk alienating the very communities they aim to serve. Rather than creating equitable access to volunteering, these processes reinforce exclusion by prioritizing strict procedures over trust and lived experience.
To align volunteer screening practices with principles of equity and inclusion, organizations must consider alternative approaches. An intersectional approach encourages us to look beyond one-size-fits-all options like background checks. Instead, organizations might consider exploring alternative screening practices that build trust and address systemic inequities.
Goals-Based Approach to Volunteer Screening: This method focuses on intentional, role-specific, and inclusive screening. It ensures that screening aligns with the actual risks and responsibilities of a volunteer role, rather than defaulting to unnecessary background checks that create barriers.3
Relationship-Based Screening: This screening emphasizes empathy, human connection, and mutual understanding. By fostering trust and open communication, organizations can build stronger, more collaborative relationships with volunteers, ensuring that screening processes both support inclusivity and safety.
Healing-Centred Practices: Recognize the impact of past trauma on individuals navigating background check requirements and offer alternatives that prioritize healing and dignity
Eliminate Financial Barriers: Implement fee waivers or subsidies to ensure that cost is not a deterrent for low-income individuals.4
Towards a More Inclusive Future
Background checks were designed with safety in mind, but their current implementation often reinforces systemic barriers. By adopting an intersectional lens, we can uncover the ways in which race, class, and socioeconomic status shape access to volunteering opportunities and take steps to address these inequities.
Nonprofits have the opportunity to lead by example, creating screening processes that honour the complexities of individual experiences and uphold the principles of equity and inclusion. It’s time to rethink background checks and embrace alternative methods that foster trust, amplify diverse voices, and build stronger, more connected communities.
Additional Reading
- RCMP retains mental-health related record beyond necessary timeframes—privacy concern—mere existence of these record in police database still poses risk
Police Record Checks in Alberta
- Some police record checks have the potential to disclose “non-conviction information.” That is, they have the potential to disclose information regarding police interactions that did not result in any criminal charges (like criminal offence allegations and mental health apprehensions).
- Local and federal police databases, however, store not only a history of criminal convictions but also details about mental health apprehensions, 911 calls, casual police contact, unproven allegations, withdrawn charges and acquittals (“non-conviction records”).
- Police records can include details of alleged incidents where no charges were laid, apprehensions under provincial mental health legislation,
- Police records contain private and personal information that when disclosed release information about mental health problems, withdrawn charges and acquittals, incidents where no charges were laid. When information like this is released, it can impact the lives of those individuals.
- Background checks can reveal mental health apprehensions, withdrawn charges, stays of proceedings and acquittals. Even though those individuals were never found guilty, their information is going to be revealed on a police record check.
- In this blog, ”background checks” include Police Information Checks, Criminal Record Checks and Vulnerable Sector Checks. ↩︎
- Mental health-related interactions with law enforcement should not automatically be included in background checks unless there is a demonstrated history of violent behavior or threats toward others. In Alberta, the Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police (AACP) Police Information Check Disclosure Procedures specify that mental health occurrences, including suicide attempts, are not disclosed unless they involved violence or threats against others. The policy attempts to strike a balance between privacy rights and public safety. ↩︎
- Learn more: A Goals-Based Approach to Screening ↩︎
- Apply for the VSC Fee Waiver. ↩︎
About Jose Guevarra
My name is Jose Guevarra, and I am in my fourth year of Sociology, minoring in Psychology. My academic journey has primarily focused on research-related fields specifically looking at social programs and services among the marginalized community. Alongside my degree, I am also pursuing an Applied Social Science Research Certificate and a Community Service Learning Certificate. My interest in research and analytics stems from a class that introduced me to evidence-based data, which emphasizes making informed decisions through factual and reliable data collection and analysis.
While being a full-time student, I work as a casual guard at the University of Alberta Hospital. My role involves patient (security) watch for individuals who are at risk of harm to themselves or others. This includes ensuring their safety and de-escalating potentially volatile situations to help maintain a secure and controlled environment for both patients and staff.
Outside of academia, I am always open to learning new things. My hobby is trying out new hobbies. I began a tradition of learning a new skill every year, and it allowed me to explore a variety of interests—from building a pc, snowboarding to sewing. A fun fact about me, my current next goal is to achieve something that’s been on my bucket list for years—getting my skydiving license!