Can you get a job with a prostitution arrest?

April 10, 2012 7:16 PM

Can you get a job with a prostitution arrest?

Nearly seven years old, dismissed but there is no expungement in my state. Craigslist, sting, solicitation charge, high priced lawyer got it dismissed. No other criminal history (or appetite for it) and I've managed to keep it private except for select trusted family. No mug shots or stories online I can find. Yes I made a horrible mistake and believe me, not a day goes by I don't think about it. I've had a great run of being self employed since then, thinking of branching out but am mortified to try anything with a background check. I realize I will not work with kids or have a high level security job with this offense. While this may or may not show up a background check given it is not a conviction and almost out of the 7 year guidelines set by EEOC that applies in most instances, I assume it will and can't get over the idea that this is so icky and stigmatized as to automatically disqualify me. It grosses me out by now, but it happened and I have to take responsibility. I have a MS in CS, I'm good at my job and seem to be in high demand as a programmer on my own. I don't have to branch out, but I have panic attacks about the thought of it occasionally and thought I'd ask the hive: Any opinions or personal experience?

You can email me at [e-mail]

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (20 answers total)

The short answer is yes.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could get a high level security job with the arrest (note, not offense). You have not committed a crime. If you were subject to a government background check, they'd ask about your arrest, but I suspect if you were open about what happened and said what you did here, there'd be no problem. Feel free to memail me if you want more details about this.

I've never seen a business that asks if you've ever been arrested. They ask if you've been convicted, which so far as I can tell from your post, does not apply to you and you can correctly answer "no" to the question. Asking if you've been arrested invites employment discrimination lawsuits. So, HR people tend not to allow it.
posted by saeculorum at 7:21 PM on April 10, 2012 [7 favorites]

Seconding that I've never seen a job application that asks if you've been arrested, only if you've been convicted, and I've never been part of a search or hiring committee that checked on people's arrest records (as opposed to their conviction records), even for jobs involving highly confidential information or for jobs involving direct caretaking of children and vulnerable adults.
posted by Sidhedevil at 7:24 PM on April 10, 2012

I think prison guard jobs ask if you've been arrested. That's the only application I've seen with that. I suspect you're okay.
posted by small_ruminant at 7:26 PM on April 10, 2012

Also, people get arrested for stuff they didn't do all the time. If by some wild chance someone did turn up that you had been arrested, you could truthfully tell them that the charges were dismissed.
posted by Sidhedevil at 7:27 PM on April 10, 2012 [7 favorites]

Also, in my experience software firms are pretty lax about this stuff in general. I've never seen one that drug tested, or did extensive background checks, or whatever. Since it's an industry thats still starved for high-quality talent, it tends to be more forgiving than industries that can afford to turn people away for minor things (talking about jobs at Silicon Valley startups and big firms like Google, Microsoft, etc; those are the kind I have experience with, as opposed to random programmer jobs at non-software companies).
posted by wildcrdj at 7:33 PM on April 10, 2012 [4 favorites]

Once seven years have passed you would not even need to report this on an SF-86/eQIP for a secret or top secret clearance. The questions are (for your situation) any arrests in the last seven years and any convictions (or felony arrests, which I don't think solicitation is) ever. Since you were not convicted, you would report nothing for a secret or top secret clearance investigation once 7 years have passed.

A form for a background check for University employment I got emailed today only has one question regarding criminal history: "Have you ever been convicted of any unlawful offense, other than a minor traffic violation?" To which you could honestly answer 'no'.

You can probably check your criminal record by writing your state's record office and paying a small fee. But I think this is something you need to work out internally, externally I think it is unlikely to affect your future life.
posted by pseudonick at 7:37 PM on April 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

If you ever had an inclination to work as a teacher, you would be able to in most states, even if this were to show up on a background check, which it won't necessarily. It would be worthwhile to get a background check done on yourself, if only so you can see what shows up. You can get the FBI to send you anything they might have on you by following the instructions here.

And... please be kind to yourself, even if your experience with this was icky but it could not possibly have make you icky in any way. You sound like an awesome person, and, I just wanted to mention that.
posted by Blasdelb at 7:59 PM on April 10, 2012 [10 favorites]

I've worked at tech companies where you could probably put 'ran prostitution ring' on your resume and they wouldn't even blink.

I wouldn't sweat it unless you were going to apply for a government contractor or something like IBM, and even then you might be okay.
posted by empath at 8:07 PM on April 10, 2012 [4 favorites]

Can you get a job with a prostitution arrest?

So lawyers, in order to become licensed, have to pass a character and fitness evaluation in their state. They can and do ask for all sorts of way-beyond-the-pale things that you would NEVER be asked for under pretty much any other circumstance. You can be required to explain your mental illnesses, your credit score, your tax returns, any private thing. You have to give them your full address history dating back years. You have to give them all sorts of random records about yourself. And you have to give a complete, truthful, and utterly candid response to anything that they ask.

I am just telling you think because I want you to know that people with prostitution arrests have passed their character and fitness evaluations and become licensed as lawyers. PLENTY of them have. People with MURDER convictions have also done so. In this particular situation to (maybe over-)summarize it, their first concern is honesty. Prostitution isn't an offense that calls into question your honesty (unlike forging checks for example.) And if you are honest ABOUT it, that is important to them.

So to answer your question about whether or not you could ever get a job with a prostitution arrest, I know that, at least, it would not necessarily stop you from becoming a lawyer.

More importantly, I want to tell you please, please don't be so hard on yourself!!!! I'm talking about this:

can't get over the idea that this is so icky and stigmatized as to automatically disqualify me. It grosses me out by now

For whatever it's worth, I do not find this to be "icky" or "gross" at all. I just feel horrible for you that you feel that way. Things that are disgusting and gross to me are things like abusing children, harming animals, misleading nations into unjust wars, cheating elderly people out of all their money, things like that. You didn't harm anyone. You are fine. You didn't profit off of the actual fucking Holocaust like IBM did (and then went on to profit from apartheid in South Africa). It sickens me that IBM is perfectly "respectable" in our society but yet someone like you who never hurt anyone is feeling so ashamed. It's just ridiculous.

And to be perfectly honest I think if any human being were to judge you they really have a lot of nerve. Nobody who has ever enjoyed porn, has the right to judge ANYONE for sex work. If they make that judgment then they really have a lot of unmitigated gall and hypocrisy. Techie guys aren't exactly known for abstaining from the porn so just remember they have no right at all to judge anyone else on the topic of sex work.

And please just remember that everyone has their own skeletons in their own closets. You would be really shocked at who has them and what their skeletons are. EVERYONE has them, remember that.
posted by cairdeas at 8:23 PM on April 10, 2012 [20 favorites]

I assume you are in the US and I'm not, but I wouldn't rule out working with children either, if you are interested in that path. If Mark 'Chopper' Read can pass a 'working with children' check, I think you should be fine. Regardless, you have never been convicted of an offence so, from a legal standpoint, have never committed an offence. Unless you are specifically asked about arrests (which would be a huge risk from an HR perspective), you have no obligation to mention it.
posted by dg at 8:26 PM on April 10, 2012

You might consider talking to a lawyer in your jurisdiction about other avenues of removing the arrest from your record. Perhaps you already have, but just because expunction is not an option doesn't mean you can't seek a pardon, or petition LEDS or whatever state service your law enforcement folks use to take the record of the arrest off the books. Consult the state bar in your jurisdiction and ask for an attorney that does that sort of work.

This is not legal advice, I'm not your lawyer and I don't do expungements.
posted by Happydaz at 8:34 PM on April 10, 2012

You'd pass the checks we do at my employer - I don't know for sure about the police department; they might ask about mere arrests, but we certainly don't. The security clearance form I had to fill out when I took the Foreign Service exam also didn't care about arrests - and that form wanted me to remember every single place I've ever lived in as an adult, and the exact dates I spent outside the country.

I didn't quite pass the oral portion - I would have loved to know what they would have done with the answer "I've lived within 100 miles of the Canadian or Mexican border for 90% of my life and we used to wander across for lunch back when you didn't even need ID to get back to the US, so I have no clue."

As far as I'm concerned, you don't even have a duty to disclose it. Oh, and I'm no fan of prostitution or even sex outside of monogamous marriage, and even I don't think you should see yourself as permanently damaged goods from this. You made a mistake, you know it, you haven't repeated it, it's done. What more can people ask of you? We don't do the lifetime of self-flagellation thing anymore, and thank goodness for it. Even Albert Speer was able to find work, for heaven's sake.
posted by SMPA at 8:35 PM on April 10, 2012

If you ever apply for a position in law enforcement, they may aske you if you've ever been charged with a crime. In my former jurisdiction, I know they hired a number of people with not-great-looking charges on your record. It shouldn't be a big deal.
posted by craven_morhead at 10:38 PM on April 10, 2012

For what it's worth, my husband works for a major high tech company, and recently had a background check done on him at the request of a major banking industry client, as part of their security procedures before assigning him to the job. It was pretty intrusive, but it's worth noting that the questions related to criminal matters asked only about actual convictions, not arrests, and only within the last seven years.
posted by skybluepink at 10:48 PM on April 10, 2012

Not sure my opinion's useful, but, yeah, I don't find it icky or gross either, FWIW. Not in the least.
posted by small_ruminant at 11:19 PM on April 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was worried for years about past major financial issues of my ex-husband haunting me in background checks. Believe it or not, I coincidentally found myself applying for -- and getting -- a job with the behemoth company that does much of the background checking around the world (among lots of other stuff)! All the things I worried about never came up, or weren't what they were concerned about.
posted by thinkpiece at 8:11 AM on April 11, 2012

Normal jobs, at normal companies aren't actually allowed to ask about arrests (or have them come up on background checks). Since ARRESTS tend to happen more (proportionately) to certain races than others, data about them can be misleading. Only Convicted crimes will show up on a normal background check run by any employer.

There must be a BFOQ (Bona Fide Occupational Qualification) for asking about arrests before you can do it. Police/Prison work, Security Clearances, Jobs with Ethical considerations, those sorts of things are allowed to ask.
posted by magnetsphere at 10:35 AM on April 11, 2012

For tech companies especially, I really wouldn't worry very much. I've only ever been asked about such things once, at a Fortune 100 employer where I had indirect access to large amounts of customer data, and I don't believe they actually ran the background check I gave them permission to perform. They were much more interested in making sure I wasn't trading the company's stock except in accordance with specific policies.

Smaller tech companies are pretty unlikely to ask at all, let alone ask specifically about arrests, let alone care.
posted by zachlipton at 11:18 AM on April 11, 2012

I recently had to go through an FBI criminal background check for my social service job because our grant funding required it. I have been arrested numerous times for civil disobedience (as well as a couple of other less noble things), but, like you, never convicted of anything. My FBI background check contained no information on any of those arrests, even though 2 of them were in DC.
posted by hworth at 5:02 AM on April 12, 2012

Anon, I don't know if you ever still come back to this thread, but I was thinking about you and I wanted to say one more thing. I was worried about you because in your post it seemed like you have a lot of shame over the arrest and feel like everyone will see it as marking you as unfit for certain things (you gave work with children as an example). So let me tell you about something that happened to me when I was a child.

When I was a child, I had an extremely conservative, "traditional" stay-at-home mother who attended church a minimum of 3 times per week and did not even wear pants, only dresses. To the outside, she was the "perfect" Leave-it-to-Beaver type of mom, but behind closed doors, she was sadistically abusive to me and my sister.

There were a lot of intelligent, professional, well-off people in my community (parents of my friends), who knew or suspected what was happening, and they helped me by letting me spend a lot of time in their homes. But nobody ever confronted my mother directly. Which, as an adult, I do understand, but was bewildered by at the time...

One of my friends had a working-class single mom who did not fit in at all with the other parents, and was whispered and gossipped about by them. My mom referred to her as "the drunk" because she occasionally had a beer. My mom also did not let me sleep over at her house with my friend her daughter, because "she always has that man spending the night over there, and who knows what he might do." ("That man" was her steady boyfriend of 5 years.)

One day, when I was 12 and weighed around 80 lbs, I got backhanded so hard I was knocked to the floor. I ran outside and over to this friend's house (it was the closest one to my home) with the handprint still on my face.

My mom called to demand that I come back. I said no and my friend's mom said she wouldn't make me. Then my mom said that was fine, that my friend's mom could just take custody of me and just be stuck with me forever. My friend's mom said that would be fine too. She fed me dinner. Later on in the evening she asked what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted to go home but I was afraid to. She said she would go with me and lay down the law to my mom first.

And that is exactly what she did, she walked right in to the home of this "upstanding" woman who made no secret of looking down on her, and told her in no uncertain terms that her behavior was unacceptable.

She was THE ONLY PERSON in my entire childhood who ever did that for me. The only one, among the dozens of people who suspected or knew what was happening.

Many years later I found out that she had been supporting herself that entire period of time by stripping and, I was told, by escorting.

She is one of the best people I ever knew in my life, and I would trust her with anything, including any hypothetical children I might have in the future. A prostitution or sex work arrest, in itself, would not cause me to think badly in any way about someone's suitability for work with children.
posted by cairdeas at 10:43 PM on August 29, 2012 [6 favorites]