After being the victim of domestic violence, Julia was moved to a women’s refuge. She was working for an agency at the time but, following this incident, didn’t feel that she was in a fit state to attend work. Despite contacting the agency prior to the start of her shift and letting them know that she couldn’t work, she was dismissed.
Having no job and no money and still trying to deal with the impact of the domestic violence incident, Julia stole money from a relative. When confronted she agreed to pay it back as soon as she’d got a job. Her relative reported the incident to the police and Julia received a conviction resulting in a community order.
Still struggling to find a job after three years, a friend she’d met whilst doing her community service mentioned to Julia that she didn’t think she should be disclosing her conviction still as it was probably spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
After searching online for further information Julia eventually came across Unlock’s disclosure calculator and discovered that her conviction was spent and no longer needed to be disclosed.
Julia said:
“I’d been trying to find out whether my conviction was spent for ages and I couldn’t find what I needed to know on any government website. After I’d found Unlock’s disclosure calculator, I got the information in under 5 minutes. I thought I had to disclose my conviction for 5 years and I’ve avoided applying for any job which asked for criminal record checks. Now I know that I can honestly answer ‘no’ to the question that asks about unspent convictions.”
Lessons
As Julia discovered, out of date information given to her by her probation officer meant that she’d been disclosing her conviction for a lot longer than was necessary. For many people with convictions, government websites are the first place they look when trying to find accurate and up to date information but are often unable to find what they’re looking for. It’s for this reason that Unlock developed the disclosure calculator and we encourage websites such as gov.uk to link to the tool.
Links
Notes about this case study
This case study relates to our disclosure calculator.
Names and details have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.
