Author: Unlock Admin

Help us to challenge employment discrimination

Work is progressing well to lay the foundations for our project to challenge employment discrimination. We’re now at the stage where we want to start opening out the conversation, to help to shape the project.

This update is the first of what we hope will be an ongoing conversation – with employers, with people with convictions, and with others who have an interest in ensuring that employers have fair and inclusive policies and procedures that support the recruitment of people with convictions.

There’s a number of things we’re working on, and we’re keen to get your input.

Help us develop good practice and resources for employers
Send us evidence of bad practice
How would you like to be treated when applying for work?

Help us develop good practice and resources for employers

One of the key focuses of the project is to support employers in developing good policies and practices. One way we’re going about this by developing a resource centre specifically for employers.

So, we’re going back to basics. We want to make sure that we support employers who choose to consider criminal records by helping them to do so in a way that is fair, inclusive and lawful. However, we also want to challenge the inappropriate use of criminal records and to question the assumption amongst some employers that criminal records checks should always form part of their recruitment process in all circumstances.

To help us do this, we want to know what you think ‘good practice’ looks like.

We’re keen to get the thoughts of a range of people. We’re particularly keen to hear from employers about what you would find useful in helping you in this process. We’re keen to highlight the different ways that employers have tried to make themselves more open and inclusive towards people with convictions. We’re also looking for suggestions of existing resources that you’ve found useful.

We’ve put together a short set of questions, and we’d be grateful if you could spare a few minutes to share your thoughts (you can stay anonymous if you wish).

Complete the online survey here.

Alternatively, you can read the questions here and email your answers and other thoughts on this topic to employer@unlock.org.uk.

Send us evidence of bad practice

Alongside our work to support employers to develop good practice, we’re also on the look-out for evidence of bad practice by employers with regards to the policies and processes that they have in place for job applicants with criminal records.

This could include employers that:

Have a blanket policy of not recruiting anybody with unspent convictions
Carry out DBS checks for roles not eligible for them
Request applicants to provide a copy of their ‘police record’ (also known as ‘enforced subject access’)
Don’t give applicants an opportunity to explain their criminal record

Find out more details here about how to send us examples and evidence of bad practice.

How would you like to be treated when applying for work?

Alongside our survey of employers, we’re also keen to hear from people with convictions about how they’d like to be treated when applying for work.

In particular, we’d like to know what you think is a ‘fair’ way of dealing with criminal records as part of the recruitment process.

To do this we’ve put together a short survey for people with convictions.

You can complete the survey online survey here (you can stay anonymous if you wish).

Alternatively, you can read the questions here and email your answers to employer@unlock.org.uk.

Interesting in keeping updated about this work?

You can subscribe to receive these types of updates by email by signing up to our email updates and choosing to receive ‘News on our work challenging employment discrimination’.

RBS Magazine article – Unlocking a better future

RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) have published an article in their ‘Outside In’ magazine, which explains the work that Unlock did with RBS to open up access to basic bank accounts for people in prison before release.

You can read the article here.

DVLA scrap paper counterpart of driving licence next week

A week today, on the 8th June 2015, the DVLA will be scrapping the paper counterparts for driving licences and issuing photo card driving licences only.

Any new penalty points (endorsements) issued from that time will be recorded electronically only. This information will be held on your DVLA driver record and can be viewed online via the DVLA’s Shared Driving Licence service.

Employers will no longer be able to ask to see the paper part of your driving licence for evidence of endorsements and/or categories of vehicle you are entitled to drive.

However, with your permission, an employer can access the DVLA Shared Driving Licence service. The employer will be able to see details of any ‘active’ endorsements, even if the motoring conviction is spent.

Please note: We have put a number of questions to the DVLA about how this process will work in practice, especially with spent convictions. We’ll update this page with the answers as/when we get them.

What does this mean for people with motoring convictions?

There’s a couple of key points to note:

In the short-term, nothing really changes. As we understand it, the DVLA’s Shared Driving Licence service will continue to hold information for the same length of time as paper licences did. The length of time that a motoring offence stays on your licence is governed by road traffic legislation and will generally be either 4 or 11 years. This is entirely separate to the time it takes for it to become spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.

If you’ve got motoring convictions on your record, it’s more likely that you’ll get found out if you don’t disclose a motoring offence when you’re required to, particularly if the conviction is unspent and you’re applying for insurance, as some insurance companies and brokers may ask for permission to access your driver records from the DVLA’s Shared Driving Licence service to validate any information you provide to them.

During 2015, many insurers will roll out the MyLicence service, a database containing the driving history of every licensed driver in the UK. MyLicence will give insurers independent access to your driving records including all endorsements, penalty points and driving convictions. It’s our understanding at this point that MyLicence will not share the details of spent convictions (even if they’ve not been removed from your licence).

Remember – you do not need to disclose spent convictions to an insurer, even if they remain on your driving record.

What next?

If your motoring conviction is spent, we suggest you check your record online at the DVLA’s Shared Driving Licence service.
If your spent motoring conviction is still recorded on your DVLA online record, please send us the details by email.

Our view

Online access to motoring offences is still relatively new, and we’re watching closely how this works in practice. We have been told by the DVLA that ‘MyLicence’ will not share spent convictions (once it starts being used more widely). In the meantime, it’s not clear how the DVLA Shared Licence record will work in practice.

We’re continuing to push for the DVLA to ensure that they do not share the details of spent convictions.

To help us with this, we’re particularly keen to hear from anybody who has convictions for drink or drug driving, where the offences are recorded by the DVLA for 11 years. Are these still available on your DVLA Shared Licence record once they are spent?

Given what we know about the DVLA in sharing spent convictions on paper driving licences, we expect this latest development to increase the number of cases that come to light where the convictions are spent but an insurance company or employer becomes aware of them.

For more information

Practical self-help information – Our guidance on motoring convictions and the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is worth a read.
Our policy work – The sharing of spent motoring convictions by the DVLA is a policy issue that we are working on – you can find out more information here.
Discuss this issue – Read and share your experiences on our online forum.

Get involved

Help us to add value to this information. You can:

Comment on this update (below)
Send your feedback directly to us
Discuss your views and experiences with others on our online peer forum.
Share your personal story by contributing to our online magazine, theRecord

The Justice priorities of Unlock

Christopher Stacey has written a piece for Russell Webster’s blog, which has been published today. We have provided a copy of the text below. The original is available here.

Christopher Stacey, Co-Director at Unlock – for people with convictions, is the latest to set out his top three priorities for the new Justice Secretary Michael Gove. You can follow @unlockcharity

1 MAKE FURTHER CHANGES TO WHEN CONVICTIONS BECOME SPENT

Reforms in 2014 to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act made a huge difference to thousands of people with convictions. However, they don’t go far enough. I would establish a system that involves an individual case assessment, which enables people sentenced to more than 4 years in prison to demonstrate how they’ve rehabilitated in the community, allowing their convictions to become spent.

A similar system would be open to those who have not yet reached the time-limit required by law. I’d also clean up the many technical anomalies with the current law which came about as a result of the reforms, such as how motoring convictions have a default 5 year rehabilitation period, and the ridiculous way that ‘ancillary’ court orders often lengthen the rehabilitation period for a particular conviction.

2 ESTABLISH A ‘WIPE THE SLATE CLEAN’ POLICY

As things stand, a criminal record is for life, no matter how old or minor. This is despite knowing that, in particular, young people make mistakes when they’re young. In essence, young people should be allowed to fail. Ways to properly and fully ‘wipe the slate clean’ for minor offending should be established.

Recent measures to ‘filter’ minor disposals for certain types of employment checks are limited and only came about due to legal challenges. I would establish a system that makes sure old and minor convictions and cautions are not disclosed on criminal record checks. This would apply to multiple convictions, more offence categories than currently covered by filtering, and would apply to prison sentences too.

3 LEAD FROM THE FRONT BY ‘BANNING THE BOX’ ACROSS GOVERNMENT

Alongside changes in government policy, there’s a role for more proactive and positive business practice when dealing with the recruitment of people with a criminal record. For example, the ‘Ban the Box’ initiative aims to deal with a common problem amongst mainstream employers – the use of ‘tick boxes’ about convictions on application forms as a way of determining an applicants’ suitability.

The approach of this initiative enables people with convictions to put themselves forward first and foremost on an equal playing field and competing for jobs on their skills and merit. Early indications show the potential for such positive practice to be adopted as a matter of routine, and I would work to embed this into recruitment practice across all Government departments and agencies. I would also look to follow the US example by looking to write this kind of practice into employment law.

‘Right to be forgotten’ – One year on

The Telegraph has published an article which looks at the impact of the ‘right to be forgotten’ 12 months on from the original court decision. Interesting extracts can be found below, but the full article is available here.

Since then, Google claims to have processed 253,617 requests to remove 920,258 links, and approved just over 40 per cent of those requests. In the UK alone, the company has received 32,076 requests to remove 126,571 links, and approved 37.5 per cent.

Examples of removal requests include:

A man requesting the removal of a link to a news summary of a local magistrate’s decisions that included the man’s guilty verdict. Under the UK Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, his conviction has been spent (approved)

In Britain, 183 people have reportedly complained to the UK’s data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), after Google denied their requests to remove links.

The ICO has agreed with Google’s conclusions in around three quarters of these cases, but there are 48 cases where the ICO believes Google “hasn’t got it quite right”.

Google has been asked to review these cases, and in many cases has reversed its decision, according to the ICO. However, the search company faces possible legal action from the ICO if the remaining cases are not resolved.

“We’ll be looking to resolve the remaining cases through discussion and negotiation with Google, though we have enforcement powers available to us if required,” said ICO deputy commissioner and director of data protection, David Smith.

“The European ruling is about providing individuals with a suitable mechanism for getting information which is no longer accurate or relevant to be removed from a search engine’s results page. If there is a clear public interest in the information remaining available then it will stay there as many complainants to our office have discovered.”

New project – Fair Access to Employment

We are delighted to report that Unlock has been awarded a three-year grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation that will enable us to deliver a programme of work that will challenge the discrimination faced by people with convictions in getting employment.

This marks the beginning of a significant area of work for Unlock, enabling us to focus on addressing a number of key issues that combine to unfairly exclude so many people from moving on in their lives.

Building on our track-record of working with Government, employers and other sectors, our approach will aim to ‘support and challenge’. It will also play to Unlock’s strengths as an independent advocacy charity in holding organisations to account and speaking truth to power.

Commenting on the news, Christopher Stacey, Co-Director at Unlock, said “We know from people with convictions that finding and keeping employment is the biggest problem they face as a result of having a criminal record – often many years after they were convicted. This project will enable us to actively challeng some of the unfair treatment that people with convictions face, as well as supporting employers and others involved in recruitment processes, to make sure that people with convictions are treated fairly.”

“Our focus will be to make sure that employers understand that the people we’re encouraging them to open their doors to are those that could be potentially fantastic employees, yet at the moment they’re missing out on these people because of the policies and practices that they have in place. We’ll also be doing a lot of work to improve and challenge processes used by employers to carry out criminal record checks, such as the Disclosure & Barring Service and Disclosure Scotland.”

More details about the project are available at unlock.devchd.com/policy-issues/employment-discrimination

END

Notes to editors

Press/media
Unlock is an independent award-winning charity, providing trusted information, advice and support for people with criminal convictions. Our staff and volunteers combine professional training with personal experience to help others overcome the long-term problems that having a conviction can bring. Our knowledge and insight helps us to work with government, employers and others, to change policies and practices to create a fairer and more inclusive society so that people with convictions can move on in their lives. Our website is unlock.devchd.com.
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation aims to improve the quality of life for people and communities throughout the UK both now and in the future. They do this by funding the charitable work of organisations with the ideas and ability to achieve positive change. The Foundation is one of the largest independent grant-makers in the UK. They make grants of £30 – £35 million annually towards a wide range of work within the arts, education and learning, the environment and social change. They also operate a £26 million Finance Fund which invests in organisations that aim to deliver both a financial return and a social benefit. Their website is www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk.

Read the latest posts and stories on theRecord – January to March 2015

We’ve published a roundup of recent articles that have been posted on theRec0rd, our online magazine for and by people with convictions.

Read the summary of new posts here.

Government response to disqualification of trustees

Today the Government has responded to the Joint Committee report on changes to the disqualification of trustee – their response can be downloaded here.

Looking beyond re-offending: criminal records and poverty

Christopher Stacey argues that rehabilitation for the convicted must mean proper access to opportunities.

To read his recently published article for Criminal Justice Matters , please continue

Financial Inclusion Commission report published

Today, the Financial Inclusion Commission has published it’s report.

Unlock provided oral evidence and written evidence to the commission.

The report makes a series of recommendations, including on banking, insurance, savings and credit.

The report highlights how:

Nearly two million adults in the UK do not have a bank account
Financially excluded people pay a ‘poverty premium’ of £1,300 each year
An estimated two million people took out a high-cost loan in 2012 as they were unable to access any other form of credit
Up to 8.8 million people are over-indebted
13 million people do not have enough savings to support them for a month if they experienced a 25% cut in income
50% of households in the bottom half of the income distribution to not have home contents insurance
15 million people report one of more signs of financial distress
Having the whole population of the UK making full use of the world’s most advanced financial services systems makes economic as well as social policy sense.

Our contribution to this work is to ensure that the specific issues surrounding criminal records are considered. In particular, our evidence focused on the way that criminal records are treated by insurance companies, as well as the difficulties people can face opening a bank account.