National police checks are a must for employers to verify the candidate’s character integrity and safeguard the workplace. Therefore, making it one of the vital steps in the recruiting process. It helps organizations to make an informed hiring decision. Thus, companies are often involved in carrying national criminal history checks of the potential candidates.

Routine criminal background checks have become frequent and more prominent lately. A national criminal history check will show a person's background information up until the point the check was performed. However, it would not contain the record of a criminal offense that occurred after the police check.

Hence, institutions are more interested in knowing the latest police clearance status of their employees. However, this proposes a state of confusion for candidates and leave them with questions such as:

• Does a police check expire?
• How to know whether my national police check is not out-of-date?
• What is the validity period of National Criminal History Checks?
• How long does a police check last?

Well, over 80% of the Australian employer’s believed to have carried ‘Nationally Coordinated Criminal History Check (NCCHC)’ on the potential candidates.

As we have seen above, Australian police checks are optimally considered better if they are of recent time.

All right! Let’s get the first thing clear.

National Police Check Do Not Have Set Validity Date

Criminal Background Checks or rather police clearance certificates do not come with any validity period or have any expiration date.

National police checks are ‘point-in-time’ checks, and they are considered valid at the time of issuance. The reason for not having an expiration date or official period of validity mentioned is because it cannot account for any crime or offense that might happen on a future date.

Therefore, in case of applying for a new job, your employer will decide whether the old national police check will be valid or not. It is totally at the company’s discretion to accept police clearance of the past 3, 6, or even 12 months.

The plausible reason is that a person might undergo a behavioral change during his/her Thus, job applicants should carry a recent criminal background check or a police clearance certificate to accelerate and aid the hiring process.

Do keep in mind that National Criminal History Checks are consent-based checks; thus, an employer must have formal permission before proceeding.

KONCHECK, a flagship brand of Konze Enterprise Pty. Ltd is an accredited body of ACIC to carry national police checks Australia-wide.

Get yours done today and win your employer’s trust instantly!