Highway Patrol upgrades background check process

School districts in Missouri will now have greater access to employee criminal records.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol recently upgraded its background check website to allow for completely digital transactions.

The Department of Education no longer has to use mail to submit and get results of fingerprint information.

“Basically, you would set up your account information on there and then your results would be on here,” said Captain John Hotz with the Highway Patrol.

Checking employee backgrounds used to take 7-10 days, but with new upgrades, the process can now take less than a day, and in some cases, less than an hour.

“It’s a lot more efficient for the schools, also more efficient for the patrol and everybody else involved.”

Users are able to create and check their Machs account whenever they want and school district officials have access to a handy new feature called “Rap Back Notifications.”

It alerts them when one of their employees commits certain crimes.

“For example, they get arrested after their background check is complete and its a printable offense. Then the school would actually get that information as well.”

A printable offense is any crime that requires police to take fingerprints.

Once that information is added to a teacher’s criminal record, the school district will automatically notified.