大多数时候，我们将犯罪背景调查视为了解一个人刑事定罪的工具。由于未经定罪的逮捕记录无法证明某人犯罪，因此许多州 禁止在就业决定中使用这些记录。如果某人的记录中有未决指控会怎样？ 

在大多数情况下，未决指控将显示在犯罪背景调查中。与逮捕记录一样，悬而未决的指控并不证明一个人已被定罪或被判有罪。然而，由于案件仍在审理中——而且定罪仍有可能——这些信息可以在背景调查中公平地报告。允许雇主在手头工作的背景下考虑这些信息。 

待决指控出现在犯罪背景调查中的速度将取决于雇主使用的背景调查。由于大多数刑事指控和定罪都是在县法院级别进行的，因此 县刑事检查 将始终首先反映未决指控。法院间歇性地向州存储库报告，这意味着未决指控可能需要数周或数月才能出现在州检查中。

在某些情况下， 当雇主进行犯罪背景调查时，州检查中列为未决指控的内容 甚至可能已经解决。多辖区数据库背景调查也是如此 。

由于这些原因，将县犯罪历史检查作为就业犯罪背景检查的一部分总是明智的。侧重于候选人在过去几年中居住或工作过的地区的县检查通常会提供该人犯罪历史的最深入和最新版本。

至于未决指控是否是取消工作资格的理由，雇主需要根据具体情况做出决定。在某些情况下，如果候选人有某些未决指控，雇主在法律上有义务搁置申请。例如，银行不能雇用有待处理的洗钱指控的人。取而代之的是，银行必须要么雇用其他人，要么等待法院清除候选人的所有指控，然后再继续雇用。

在其他情况下，雇主可能会决定候选人的未决指控表明存在就业风险。例如，一家餐馆可能不会雇用有待处理酒驾费用的人作为送货司机。

bar the use of these records in employment decisions. What happens if someone has a pending charge on his or her record? 

In most cases, a pending charge will show on criminal background checks. As with an arrest record, a pending charge is not proof that a person has been convicted of or found guilty of a crime. However, since the case is still open—and since a conviction is still possible—this information can be reported fairly on a background check. Employers are allowed to consider this information in the context of the job at hand. 

How quickly a pending charge shows up on criminal background checks will depend on the background check that the employer is using. Since most criminal charges and convictions are entered at the county courthouse level, county criminal checks will always reflect a pending charge first. Courts report into state repositories intermittently, which means that a pending charge might take weeks or months to show up on state checks.

In some cases, what is listed as a pending charge on a state check may have even been resolved by the time an employer is running criminal background checks. The same is true for multijurisdictional database background checks.

For these reasons, it is always wise to order county criminal history checks as part of employment criminal background checks. County checks that focus on the areas where a candidate has lived or worked within the past several years will often present the most in-depth and up-to-date version of that person’s criminal history.

As for whether a pending charge is grounds for disqualification from job consideration, employers need to make that decision on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, employers are legally obligated to put applications on hold if a candidate has certain pending charges. For instance, a bank cannot hire someone with a pending money laundering charge on his or her record. Instead, the bank must either hire someone else or wait for a court to clear the candidate of all charges before moving forward with hiring.

In other cases, employers may decide that a candidate’s pending charges indicate an employment risk. For example, a restaurant likely wouldn’t hire someone with a pending DUI charge as a delivery driver.