For people with criminal records
Last week, the Government published their Draft Protection of Charities Bill, following the consultation they held earlier this year.
This paper sets out the Governments plans.
We’re continuing to raise a number of issues that we addressed in our consultation response, in relation to how people with convictions are treated.
We’ve just published a summary of the recent updates we’ve made to our Information Hub.
You can read the summary on our Hub here.
Business in the Community’s Ban the Box campaign, which Unlock actively supports, has reached its one year anniversary. It was launched in October 2013 in response to widespread and costly discrimination against people with convictions who are seeking work.
So far 24 employers, with a combined UK workforce of over 200,000, have committed to support the campaign. They assess jobseekers on their skills and abilities first, taking criminal convictions into account later in the recruitment process. This gives candidates equal opportunity to get to interview based on their competency for a role rather than excluding them because of an unrelated conviction. And employers benefit from a wider pool of diverse talent and contribute towards reducing the estimated £11 billion annual cost of re-offending.
But when 1 in 5 unemployed jobseekers has a criminal conviction, much more must be done to ensure that a tick box approach is not blocking them from work. Ban the Box isn’t about positive discrimination, or removing disclosure altogether. It is the first step that all responsible employers can take to level the playing field for people with convictions whilst still protecting themselves from risk.
“In the last year, we’ve seen real benefits to individuals who are simply trying to do the right thing by getting a job and becoming taxpayers. The employers who have signed up give people with convictions the confidence to apply” said Christopher Stacey, Co-Director of Unlock. “People with convictions simply want a fair chance to provide they’re the best person for the job, and that’s what Ban the Box is all about. And the end result is that employers have the best possible opportunity to recruit the best people. But people with convictions continue to face widespread blanket attitudes by many employers. That’s why, in the year ahead, we’ll be doing to more to encourage employers to support this campaign. We’ll also be doing more to work alongside employers to help them to develop and implement positive recruitment practices.”
“Business has a huge opportunity and responsibility to make the workplace more accessible to ex-offenders that simply want to contribute their skills to society” said Catherine Sermon, Employment Director, Business in the Community. “24 pioneering firms have banned the box and ask about convictions later in the recruitment process – sending the message that they value applicants’ skills and potential over past mistakes. If just 5% of UK private sector employers followed their lead, over a million roles would be more accessible to ex-offenders. Now is the time to dramatically improve the life chances for the huge numbers of people with convictions and make fair consideration of criminal convictions the norm.”
You can find out more information about Unlock’s support for employers here.
Visit www.bitc.org.uk/banthebox for more information about Ban the Box. Follow the campaign at #BantheBoxUK
Today, the Guardian has published an article on Google’s response to the ‘right to be forgotten’.
In response to a particular example on their website, Google said: “A man asked that we remove 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 this conviction has been spent. The pages have been removed from search results for his name.”
On the 18th September, Radio 4’s ‘The Report’ broadcast an edition which focused on the ‘right to be forgotten’.
In particular, they look at some particular cases that relate to people with criminal convictions.
You can listen to the recording here.
Earlier this week, there was a film launched by Staffordshire and West Midlands CRC about disclosing convictions to employers.
We helped them out with some of the content, and they mentioned Unlock and our Disclosure Calculator, which is good to see.
You should be able to watch the film below, and there’s more details about the video on the SWM CRC website.
Let us know what you think – feel free to comment at the bottom of this page!
Making Your Past Pay – Help with disclosing previous convictions to employers from SWM Probation on Vimeo.
We’ve just published a summary of the recent updates we’ve made to our Information Hub.
You can read the summary on our Hub here.
A common message we get from people with convictions is that they think it’s impossible to find (and keep) work in ‘regulated’ roles, industries and sectors.
Likewise, in our work with employers, there are lots of myths from employers, thinking that they can’t employ somebody with a conviction, because their industry or sector is ‘regulated’ in some way.
Technically speaking, there is rarely a rule that prevents people from being employed in a particular role; it’s usually up to the discretion of the employer or regulator, depending on the sector of work.
We want to highlight what other people have done, so that this will give confidence to both people with convictions, and employers in particular sectors.
So we’re putting a call-out for examples of individuals who have been employed in some of the common ‘regulated’ industries and sectors. We want to show people that it is possible. We also want to show other employers how they could go about things better by learning from others.
We’re looking for people to get in touch with us who have convictions and who have been employed in sectors where it is more common for ‘DBS checks’ to be done. This includes:
We’re keen to hear about other examples from other sectors too – the list is potentially endless!
Find out more about what we’re looking for, and how to help, here.
We regularly get asked how many people have unspent convictions.
Since the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act was amended in March 2014, the number of people whose conviction is unspent is expected to have reduced significantly, but nobody really knows by how much.
So, as a first attempt, we’ve pulled together some data which tries to do this, and the key findings are below.
We are interested in hearing about the efforts of others to better define the number of people with unspent convictions. Please send your thoughts to policy@unlock.org.uk or comment on this post below.
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