Fingerprints and privacy

Legislators on the Criminal Justice Committee want to know how many convictions in what categories were turned up in Maine’s fingerprinting program of teachers and school staff. It is a reasonable request, but an illegal one, so far – the law is clear that such information is confidential, as Attorney General Steve Rowe properly concluded. Legislators are preparing to change that, but as they do it is imperative for the reputations of school staff and the continuation of the program that they clearly define that reporting on individual staff members or on data that that would allow lawmakers or anyone else to identify individuals is out of bounds.

Committee members already have said that they are not looking for individual criminal histories, but it is too easy to see how additional statistical information will lead the Legislature in exactly that direction. Say, for instance, the committee’s proposed changes to the fingerprinting law are ap-proved and the Department of Education is directed to supply statistics on the types of crimes that were committed by the staff that had been fingerprinted. A tiny number either this year or in the next couple of years will concern child abuse.

The next natural questions that surely will be asked by lawmakers are: At which schools were the convicted teachers or staff and are the children they came in contact with un-harmed? They are questions most parents will ask as well, and when they demand answers, the confidential nature of the fingerprinting program could be sharply eroded if lawmakers start requiring detailed identifying information to a portion or all convictions.

The current debate over fingerprinting started when the committee was inadvertently informed that 1,324 of 29,000 checks conducted so far turned up convictions on crimes ranging from misdemeanors to child abuse. Lawmakers were not told how old these convictions were, whether they were pertinent to the job of the convicted or whether they fell into the category that would deny the license to teachers. The conviction rate, by the way, was about half that of the rate in the general public.

Lawmakers should be interested in the results of this or any program it funds. But keeping identifying information out of legislative reports is important for a couple of reasons. There is, of course, no reason to humiliate a teacher because of a minor infraction 20 years ago – besides being unfair, such a policy could drive good and needed teachers from education. And having government officials gather large amounts of embarrassing data on public employees for no other reason than to assure themselves that they can is an over-reach of power and far different than a specific school department looking into the background of a specific applicant for a job.

The committee has a duty to find out whether the public money being spent on this program is well-invested, but it can fulfill that with merely two figures: total number of convictions and total number of licenses denied as a result. If it probes further it will quickly defeat the purpose of the fingerprinting law. Any amendment to the law this session should make clear that the Legislature’s interest ends where individual privacy begins.