Should private employers have a right of access to criminal history record information in order to make employment decisions about applicants and employees? This book addresses both legal and operational questions relating to the use of criminal justice data for private employment and decision-making purposes. The informative, non-prescriptive report is in three parts. Part 1 describes current actual practice among private employers in obtaining and using criminal history records. In addition to describing employer conduct, this part of the report describes the current thinking concerning the extent to which a criminal history background is predictive of an individual's work performance. Part 2 provides an overview of statutory and case law that bears on employer access to and use of criminal history records. This part of the report looks at (1) the legal principles, including privacy law principles governing the disclosure of criminal history records to employers; (2) state statutory law provisions; (3) employer liability for collection and use of such data; (4) employer liability for collection or use of criminal history data; and (5) employers' common law duty to hire safe employees. The report turns in Part 3 to an analysis of policy considerations. Presented are the policy considerations that support employer access as well as those that support restricting such access. The analysis turns on two key variables: (1) the nature of the criminal history record; and (2) the nature of the job in question. (KC)