Category: News on policy issues

An update on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act

It’s been just over 3 months since the changes to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 came into force in England & Wales. At that time, we published an updatewhich featured new materials that we’d produced, as well as our updated detailed guidance.

Since that point, we’ve learnt quite a bit about how these changes are working in practice, mainly through cases that have come through our helpline. So we thought it was about time we produced another update, highlighting a couple of important practical areas.

Read this update in full on our Information Hub.

Summary of the update

The importance of getting a copy of your basic disclosure
The way that ‘court orders’ such as restraining orders and SOPO’s can impact on when a conviction becomes spent
The way that ‘compensation orders’ work with Disclosure Scotland and basic checks
The confusion that surrounds motoring convictions
New ‘Easy Read’ guide on the ROA published
Updated ‘ROA FAQ’s’
Send us your examples/evidence

Find out more about all of these in the full update on our Information Hub.

Google’s ‘right to be forgotten’

Information Hub Update

Read this update in full on our Information Hub.

You might have seen in the news recently that Google has launched a system where people can request information be removed from Google’s search results. This has come about because of a ruling on the 13th May by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The case was brought by a Spanish man who complained that an auction notice of his repossessed home on Google’s search results infringed his privacy. The court found in his favour, and this has potentially wide-reaching consequences for search engines like Google.

The ruling only covers the removing of the search results – the information will still exist on the website that published the original article but Google won’t be able to deliver matches to some enquiries that are entered. Deletion of the original information would still be the responsibility of the website owner, and in our experience, it’s very rare that websites agree to remove details relating to convictions (see more in reporting of criminal records in the media).

Information will only disappear from searches made in Europe. Queries piped through its sites outside the EU will still show the relevant search results.

However, many people are still seeing the ruling as a potential way of dealing with the ‘google-effect’ that often haunts people for lots of different reasons, and our Helpline and Forum have already seen this being raised by quite a few people when it comes to past convictions that have been reported online. So the important question for us is whether it will actually help people with convictions?

We’ve published a new section on our Information Hub looking at this, and written a ‘latest update‘ post for our Information Hub. We expect that this information will be regularly updated as we learn more about how the system works in practice.

We’re keen to see how Google are dealing with applications from people with convictions.

To do this, we’re encouraging people with spent convictions to complete Google’s online form, and get a decision from them. Bear in mind that they’re dealing with a lot of applications at the moment, so there might be quite a wait before you get a decision.

Once you receive a decision, please forward it to us to let us know what their decision is and why. You can forward their reply to us by sending it to policy@unlock.org.uk (we won’t share your personal details externally). This will help us to collect evidence of how Google are dealing with requests from people with convictions, and help us to improve the information and advice we’re giving on this issue.

Second chances and ‘invisible punishment’

We’re featured in an article that has been published on thejusticegap.com website on second chances and ‘invisible punishment’.

Unlock on Prison Radio talking about the changes to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act

We’ve recorded a piece with the Prison Radio Association as part of their ‘Outside In’ programme, which is run in partnership with the BBC andgets aired across the prison radio network.

Christopher Stacey spoke about the changes to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and what this means for people serving a prison sentence.

You can listen to the interview below.

We’ve produced a simple guide to the filtering process

This update is taken from our Information Hub

We know how complicated the criminal records process can be.

The ‘filtering’ process that came in in May 2013 has been quite a culture shock to many people who were previously told that all cautions and convictions would come back on standard and enhanced checks.

At the time, we developed a detailed guide on filtering.

But, through our helpline, we’ve been finding it quite difficult to make filtering simple and easy to understand. Also, as part of delivering our training masterclasses, we found that practitioners were forgetting how this fitted within the broader framework for disclosure.

So, we’ve recently put together a simple guide on filtering. This is available as adownloadable A4 document (click the image below).

We hope you find it helpful. Let us know what you think by using our feedback form.

The Disclosure & Barring Service update the question they ask about convictions

This update is taken from our Information Hub

Following our complaint to the Information Commissioners Office which recently led to the Disclosure & Barring Service signing an undertaking to update their application form, we have now had it confirmed by the DBS that their application form has now been updated. A copy of this is below.

As you can see from the above image, the question (e.55) now asks only about convictions, cautions, reprimands or final warnings which would not be filtered. This means that, if your conviction or caution would be filtered at the time of completing the application, you can tick “no”.

You can find out more about completing a criminal record check application.

How do you know if you conviction or caution will be filtered? The DBS should be including guidance with the application form. We have also produced a simple guide and a detailed guide that should also help.

Unlock complaint leads to ruling that the Disclosure and Barring Service breached the Data Protection Act

We’re pleased to report that the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has today issued a press release which sets out their ruling that the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) has breached the Data Protection Action after failing to stop collecting information about criminal conviction data that was no longer required because of a filtering regime that was introduced in May 2013.

The DBS hadn’t updated their application forms, and so although the ‘filtering’ process meant that certain cautions and convictions are no longer disclosed on standard and enhanced checks, the DBS were still asking whether applicants had “ever been convicted of a criminal offence or received a caution…” as part of their application form. The result of this was that employers were finding out information which they weren’t entitled to know about.

We made the original complaint to the ICO in September 2013, after our helpline had received a number of calls about this problem. In particular, we highlighted two cases where individuals had disclosed information they no longer needed to disclose, but had subsequently had their offers of employment withdrawn. The two cases are explained in more detail below.

Christopher Stacey, Co-Director at Unlock, said; “We’re pleased to see that the DBS has responded to this issue by updating their application form and improving their guidance to applicants. It is important that people with convictions are able to understand what they do and don’t have to disclose during the recruitment process, and the DBS have an important part to play to make this clear and easy to understand.”

“It remains difficult for people to find out whether a caution or conviction that they have is eligible for filtering, and we would like to see the DBS respond to this issue by introducing a system which allows individuals to obtain a copy of their DBS certificate before they start applying for jobs or volunteer work, so that they can be confident that they’re disclosing the appropriate level of information. We would also like to encourage employers that are entitled to carry out standard and enhanced checks to make sure that they look at their own recruitment processes and make sure that they are only asking about cautions and convictions that would not be filtered by the DBS”.

Brief details of the cases that formed part of our complaint to the ICO

Case One
An individual ticked ‘Yes’ to the question because the question hadn’t changed, and they didn’t see the accompanying guidance. To them, it was clear what question they were being asked, and so despite their conviction being one that would be filtered, they ticked ‘Yes’ which meant, because they handed the form back to the employer to submit, they had disclosed they had a conviction to the employer. The employer asked further questions about this, and decided to withdraw the job offer.

Case Two
An individual ticked ‘Yes’ to this question because they were not sure whether their conviction would be filtered. As there was no other means of definitively finding out whether it would be filtered or not, they erred on the side of caution and ticked ‘Yes’, believing that, if it would be filtered, it wouldn’t matter what they put. It turned out that their conviction was due to be filtered, but because they had ticked yes, their employer got to find out when they handed the form back, and subsequently decided to withdraw the job offer.

-END-

Notes to editors

Press/media
More information relating to the filtering process is available here.

Raising awareness in prisons of changes to the ROA

We’re continuing our efforts to raise awareness of the changes to the ROA, but this time we’ve been focusing on prisons.

Firstly, we wrote a news piece for the March 2014 edition of Inside Time. A copy of the news piece is below.

We’ve also recorded a piece for the Prison Radio Associations’ ‘Outside In’ programme, which is done in partnership with Radio 4 and recorded by former prisoners. A copy of the audio will be available here shortly.

Criminals get better insurance – but not speeding motorists

The Telegraph’s Money section has published a very interesting article about the changes to the ROA and how these do (or don’t) impact on people with motoring offences.

We spoke with the journalist as she was developing this piece, although we’re not specifically referenced.

This article highlights a number of issues that we’re taking forward as part of our ongoing work around the ROA.

You can read the article here.

Raising awareness of the changes to the ROA

In the last couple of days, we’ve been very busy. We’ve been working hard to raise awareness of the changes to the ROA.

Yesterday (10th March) we appeared on BBC Breakfast.

We also took part in a number of regional radio discussions, including BBC London, BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC Leeds, BBC Coventry, BBC West Midlands, BBC Merseyside and BBC Kent.

We also worked with ITN News to provide them with a case study of somebody who’s convictions became spent as of yesterday. This was briefly featured in their lunchtime news programme.

More broadly, we wrote an article for Open Democracy (The right of offenders to get back on track) and an article for Criminal Law and Justice Weekly (Changing laws on disclosure)