On April 25, the U.S. Equal Employee Opportunity Commission issued new guidelines on the use of arrest and conviction records in hiring. You can access the guidelines, and the EEOC’s Q-and-A, at www.eeoc.gov.

EEOC wants to give people who may have committed a youthful indiscretion (which of us hasn’t?) a better chance to get a job when the conviction should not disqualify the person from a particular job. It also seeks to mitigate the disparate impact of the criminal justice system on minorities.

A 2010 EEOC survey found 92 percent of employers reported using criminal background checks before some hiring; 73 percent reported using them for all hiring. The guidelines do not prohibit the use of criminal background checks. However, they attempt to reconcile use of those checks with civil rights laws. This is nothing new. The courts have been attempting to do this since 1977.

The guidelines do not apply to companies in some industries where the federal government mandates restrictions. For everyone else, if you want to conduct criminal background checks and use those in hiring decisions, you must have a narrowly tailored policy and procedure for screening applicants. The policy should be in writing,