Volunteers seeking a vulnerable-sector check from police will continue to pay $12 for online requests and $20 for in-person requests when presenting a letter from a volunteer organization.
Meanwhile, amendments made to the Police Record Check Reform Act means, as of April 1, criminal records checks and criminal record and judicial matters checks can be accessed for free when done in person, but cost $9.95 plus tax when it’s requested online.
“The majority are vulnerable-sector checks,” said Barrie police records manager Nicole Lees. “The nature of most volunteer work is dealing with vulnerable people — children, the elderly.”
The background checks involve a search of police records often used as part of a screening process for volunteering.
In 2017, Barrie police introduced a $12 online administrative fee for criminal record checks, provided through a third-party company called Forrest Green Solutions.
In January 2020, a $20 in-person fee was introduced and the online charge remained at $12.
According to a report presented to the police services board on Thursday, there was concern that if the police service was prevented from charging the online fee it would have to move back to in-person volunteer checks or it would have to reimburse Forrest Green Solutions for the online administrative fee.
That fee still applies for the vulnerable-sector checks, which represents the bulk of the requests.
There remains some concern, however, that people making those requests may instead try to take advantage of the free criminal record checks.
“It will be interesting after a year goes by to go back and look at the numbers and see if there was an increase” in the criminal records checks requests, said Lees.
In 2021, Barrie police received 940 requests for vulnerable-sector checks, 168 for criminal record checks and 74 for criminal record and judicial matters checks while in 2020 there were 857, 140 and 36 requests respectively. That was down from the 2,909, 227 and 92 requests made in 2019.
