Category: Latest

Blog – Westminster Hall debate on the disclosure of youth criminal records

The 28^th March saw a Westminster Hall debate on the disclosure of youth criminal records (read here or watch here). This followed the publication of the Justice Select Committee’s report on the subject, back in 2017. The report itself was a result of the Committee’s inquiry into disclosure of youth criminal records, launched in 2016, and in some ways a follow-up to their inquiry on the treatment of young adults in the justice system.

Bob Neill MP, Chair of the Committee, introduced the debate and thanked Unlock and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice for the evidence we provided. As part of the inquiry, we had arranged a seminar for Committee members and people with convictions to meet and discuss the impact of disclosing criminal records from childhood.

The government had committed to considering the Committee’s recommendations following the Supreme Court’s ruling on the filtering rules.

The debate was well informed and MPs highlighted the effects of disclosure on employment, education, housing, travel and insurance. Key points included:

John Spellar: “Is not there also an overall, macroeconomic issue, particularly as a number of employers are expressing concerns about shortfalls in labour either leading up to or following Brexit? Artificially restricting people from working and, indeed, from advancing is not just bad for those individuals, shocking though that is, but very bad for society and the economy.”

Bob Neill: “Low-paid and unsatisfactory jobs create burdens at every level, so the point is entirely true”.

David Lammy: “Trident – They were the ones who said to me, “Could you put this [criminal records] into your review? We are aware of a group of offenders who reach about 25 or 26 years old and want to move away from their criminal past but continue to reoffend because, as they grow up, they cannot get a job due to the [disclosure] regime that we have.”

This, in particular, resonates at a time when serious youth violence is dominating the headlines. What hope is there of reducing violence if young people with even minor criminal records see that it is impossible for them to get into legitimate, sustainable employment? This has an impact on these young men, their communities and wider society. As Victoria Prentis said:

“Does ruining their lives serve any real, practical purpose for the rest of society?”

The fundamental issue is the purpose of ongoing disclosure, and whether the existing regime delivers on that purpose – or actually hampers other good work going on in the justice system.

As David Lammy said, the Supreme Court judgment provides an opportunity:

“The Supreme Court decision could be interpreted narrowly by the Government, but from reading the report, the Committee’s mood suggests that it is an opportunity, notwithstanding all that is going on in Parliament, for the Government to take a broader view and to review our criminal records regime.

“My view is that there should be a balance between a rules-based system, which is largely what we have, and which is clearly cheaper—that is effectively why we have it, because there is time and one makes a judgment about spent convictions and disclosure—and a system that is slightly more sophisticated and might cost slightly more. There is a question about who pays. In the Canadian jurisdiction, the individuals seeking to get their criminal records looked at again pay for the system. In my view, a parole board, a magistrate or a judge could make the assessment.”

David Hanson has recently published his review into prison education provision in Wales. In the debate, he said:

“We focus in the report on training, employment and through-the-gate services, including prison and youth offender institution training and community rehabilitation companies in adult prisons and elsewhere…but whatever the system does with that training, someone ultimately has to get a job with a public sector body or an employer.”

Ban the Box was supported by all contributors – it’s not a silver bullet, said Bob Neill, but a base on which to build.

The Civil Service has now rolled out Ban the Box across all departments, and Liz Savile Roberts MP asked how many people with criminal records were employed in the Ministry of Justice – more on this later.

David Hanson is a keen advocate for Ban the Box. As he put it:

“The simple idea…is that disclosure happens after the job interview and job offer. The right to refuse is still there, but the judgments are made on the merits of the application and the individual in front of the employer—not on a conviction that may have happened some years ago.”

This is exactly the approach Unlock advocates: ask about criminal records only after an offer has been made (although we know not all Ban the Box employers do it this way).

As David Lammy highlighted, it’s important to understand where Ban the Box sits within reform of criminal records disclosure:

“…the problem with that initiative is, first, that it is voluntary and, secondly, that it is about the recruitment stage? The fundamental point about the work by the Select Committee and others who have raised this issue is that, beyond recruitment, there are questions about whether things should be disclosed to employers in the first place. It would be important for the Government not to lose that principle.”

There were many other excellent points made but I want to turn now to the responses from Edward Argar, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, on behalf of the government. The government has yet to formally respond to the Supreme Court’s judgment in the cases of P and others. No formal response was forthcoming here either, instead the Minister said:

“We work closely with the Home Office to give these things proper consideration. Although that judgment has been handed down, the order behind it has not yet been sent over to us. We await that order. When it is received, it is important that we are speedy and timely in addressing it.”

The Minister agreed that employment is a crucial factor in reducing reoffending – which costs 15bn a year on some estimates.

“…employers should not regard the disclosure of a criminal record as an automatic barrier to employment. A balanced judgment should be exercised, having regard to factors such as a person’s age at the time of the offence, how long ago it was, and the relevance to the application or post in question.”

Unfortunately, all the evidence shows that employers do regard a criminal record as a barrier to employment. This point was made several times during the debate, and also by Lord Kerr in the Supreme Court judgment. Given the government’s efforts to get prisoners into work on release, and their manifesto commitment to incentivising employers to recruit people with convictions, it seems odd to not acknowledge the real difficulties people face in gaining employment.

Perhaps the Minister’s perception is skewed by the apparently impressively inclusive approach of his own department. In response to Liz Savile Roberts’ question on the number of people with convictions employed at the Ministry of Justice, he said:

“My understanding is that of those people with a previous conviction who applied through the approach that has been taken in the civil service since 2016, 92% subsequently secured employment, which is a positive outcome.”

That certainly seems like a positive outcome. However, there doesn’t appear to be an official source for that figure, and we would welcome publication of the data because it’s important to understand this is context, such as the numbers it involves, what types of criminal records, how long ago, and why the 8% were refused.

I was pleased to see that the Minister agreed that the judgment – and the actions that must follow – creates an opportunity to consider the Committee’s recommendations for reform of the criminal records system. I hope this will mean that the Ministry of Justice (along with the Home Office) taken an holistic view of the current regime, its aims and the evidence, and look to make changes that benefit individuals with convictions, their communities and wider society.

Written by Christopher Stacey

Find out the latest on reform of the criminal records regime in our policy section on DBS filtering.

Spring 2019 Newsletter – What we’ve been up to

Today we’ve published our spring 2019 newsletter.

The newsletter provides an update of the news at Unlock in the last three months. It’s sent to everyone who’s on our public mailing list, and we hope it’s a useful way of keeping up to date with what we’ve been up to.

Read: Spring 2019 Newsletter

Previous newsletters are available online. You can receive future newsletters direct to your inbox by signing up to our mailing list.

A new video about our work

We’re really pleased to be able to share a new short video that explains a little bit about Unlock, the work that we do and why it is so important in helping the millions of people in this country who have a criminal record.

You can watch the video below (or it’s available on YouTube and in the footer of this website).

We’d like to thank the RG Foundation for their support in producing this.

Request for participants (now closed) – Understanding the influence of an early life criminal record on adult life courses

Update – The request for participants is now closed. See the message below from Nicola, the researcher:

“Thank you to everyone who has been in contact with me with their generous offer to take part in my PhD research. I have been overwhelmed with responses and now have enough participants that fit the criteria, so the call for participants is now closed. This closure is based entirely on my capacity as a postgraduate researcher working alone on this project. I would like to thank everyone who has responded so positively and I will be working with Unlock to provide updates on the research as it progresses.”

Original request for participants

Unlock is pleased to be supporting the following research.

Nicola Collett, a PhD student at Keele University, is currently researching the potential influence of a criminal record acquired between the ages of 10-25, later on in adulthood.

She would like to talk to people aged 25 and over, to see what they have to say about their experiences of living with a criminal record relating to one or more non-custodial sentence(s) or out-of-court disposals attained between the ages of 10-25. This may include, but is not limited to, cautions, conditional cautions, fines, behaviour orders and suspended sentences. Experiences may be positive or negative. For some, it may be experiences are neutral. There is no upper age limit for this research.

Do you fit the following criteria?

Aged 25 or over
Received one or more non-custodial sentence(s) or out-of-court disposals, aged 25 or younger
Currently living in the Midlands or North West England

If you choose to take part, you will be interviewed by Nicola twice, for approximately 60 minutes each time. For your convenience, interviews will be conducted in your local area.

Participants will be offered a £10 voucher at the end of the second interview to thank you for your time, and for sharing your experiences with Nicola.

A personal response to today’s Supreme Court ruling

Elli has been actively involved in our work to push for changes to the DBS filtering rules and she featured in a BBC Newsnight piece that aired the night before the Supreme Court hearing started in June 2018 (watch again). Here, she responds to the news about the judgment in that case…

I’m pleased with the Supreme Court ruling and am hopeful that the government will change this system that holds back adults from work because of mistakes in youth.

Imagine being told that something reckless you did when you were an 11-year-old would impact the rest of your life?

At 19, I knew precisely what I wanted to do – to teach. My first step was to get some experience working with children so I applied to volunteer with a charity. This was the first time I read the words I now dread seeing on an application, “all volunteers are required to have an Enhanced DBS Disclosure”. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant, so happily awaited the paper back.

When it finally arrived, the enormity of seeing two criminal records, there in writing, hit me. I had forgotten all about that sorry episode when I was fresh out of primary school. Now though, panic coursed through me. How was I going to get into university? How was I going to tell the charity? How was I ever going to move on? How would I even get a job?

Arson. ABH (Actual Bodily Harm). On paper, two of the most severe offences a person can commit. Yet there they are. On the piece of paper which has to go to every future employer. Fortunately, in this instance, I was lucky. I was able to explain that the cautions I had were mistakes from when I was a child. 11 and 15 years old.

Like most children, I was impressionable and pushing boundaries. Fire is simply fascinating to a child. I had just started secondary school when a friend and I were playing with a lighter in the girls’ bathroom and set a toilet roll alight causing a small amount of damage. I was arrested (yes, arrested as an 11-year-old) for Arson – not criminal damage as my parents were told it would be – and told that the reprimand that I was given would come off when I turned 19. This still seemed harsh but was reasonable enough as it simply would be forgotten about when the time came.

A few years later in a different school, after months of being bullied, I was involved in a fight with another pupil in the school playground. The mother of the other pupil called the police rather than let the school deal with what it was – a cat fight between two teenage girls – where the only damage was some loose hair and few scratches, not to mention the embarrassment. I was arrested for Actual Bodily Harm (as was the other pupil) and encouraged by the police to accept the reprimand rather than fight it in court as it would come off in five years. Again, taking the advice of the police seemed appropriate as there would be no long term consequences.

Now approaching 30, and a qualified English teacher, I have faced hurdle after hurdle because of the childhood mistakes I made. From nearly being thrown off my teacher training course midway through when the university found out I had a criminal record, to countless job applications not even reaching interview stage. On the rare occasion I got to an interview stage, I have had to clarify my criminal record – constantly dragging up an embarrassing, irrelevant and juvenile piece of my past – to potential employers, strangers to me.

Fed up of working zero hour contracts with little stability, my husband and I made the decision to teach abroad at an international school last year. This will be our indefinite future because there is no guarantee that every time I apply for a teaching job in the UK, that my application will not go straight in the bin as the criminal record box is ticked – it is often just a box on the first page. They are not to know that this happened when I was a child, and I am given no chance to put the record straight.

Although my offences are reprimands they will never be filtered off under the current system because they are considered violent crimes. All this despite them being more than half my life ago.

The sad reality is that I am one of the lucky ones. I have had a supportive background, gone to good schools, lived in a nice cul-de-sac, and I am white. I have met countless others from broken homes, people growing up in the care system, who have not been so lucky – purely down to misfortune where they haven’t had the chances. These are the people that are sorely needed in the public sector – be it social care or teaching – where their experience would benefit so many others who find themselves in the same shoes. Surely that’s what we want as a society, and particularly from a justice system? To prevent these things happening. To educate and rehabilitate. To not judge, and to give second chances. Surely the primary aim for the justice system is to reduce crime and reduce reoffending. By giving these people jobs, it could go a long way.

Now that the Supreme Court has rules that the scheme as it applies to childhood warnings/reprimands is disproportionate, I hope that reforms of the justice system can be made – for the betterment of so many people, and indeed British society as a whole.

Find out more about Unlock’s campaign to wipe DBS checks clean of old/minor records, including our response to the Supreme Court judgment.

Unlock response to Supreme Court judgment on criminal records disclosure regime

Unlock, the leading charity for people with convictions, has today responded to the judgment of the Supreme Court on the criminal records disclosure regime. The charity provided an intervention to the court to highlight the unjust consequences of the current regime and the alternative, fairer systems available.

Commenting on the judgment, Christopher Stacey, co-director of Unlock, said:

“We welcome today’s judgment by the Supreme Court. Unlock intervened in this vital case to help the court understand the importance of the issues. We are pleased the court has ruled that two aspects of the criminal records disclosure scheme are disproportionate and in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights; in particular, the blanket rules which require the automatic disclosure of all convictions where a person has more than one conviction, and the requirement that some childhood cautions be disclosed indefinitely. This is an important ruling which stands to affect many thousands of people with old and minor criminal records who have been unnecessarily anchored to their past.

“Today is a crucial step towards achieving a fair and proportionate filtering system that takes a more calibrated and targeted approach towards disclosing criminal records. Recent reviews by the Law Commission, Justice Select Committee, Charlie Taylor and David Lammy MP have all stressed the need to look at the wider criminal records disclosure regime. It is now time for the government to act. We strongly urge the government to take prompt and considered action on the filtering system, as well as committing to carrying out a fundamental review of the wider criminal records disclosure regime.”

In the last 5 years alone, over 1 million youth criminal records were disclosed on standard or enhanced criminal record checks that related to offences from more than 30 years’ ago. The current system has multiple, harsh consequences which can have damaging effects on individuals. It deters people from applying for employment, and causes high levels of stress, anxiety and feelings of shame and stigma for those who do apply. The current regime acts as an additional sentence that often runs for life. It desperately needs reforming.

While certain offences clearly should be disclosed to employers, it is plain common sense that a fair system should not unnecessarily blight the lives of people who are trying to get on in life by disclosing old, minor and irrelevant information which holds them back and stops them from reaching their potential.

Some of the shortcomings of the current filtering system have today been recognised by the Supreme Court. The court described the rule for disclosing multiple convictions and its impact on individuals as ‘capricious’ (para 63). The inclusion of youth warnings and reprimands in the disclosure regime is described as a ‘category error’ and an ‘error of principle’ (para 64).

A fair, proportionate and flexible filtering system should be developed which protects the public without unduly harming the ability of people to move forward positively with their lives. The Supreme Court accepted that a fair system can be based on rules and pre-defined categories. We believe it is possible to develop an acceptable system which operates principally with automatic rules, but these must be the right rules with the right outcomes. There are a number of practical steps that the government can take which we would support, including:

Removing the ‘multiple convictions’ rule and so enabling more than one conviction to be filtered
Reducing the list of offences not eligible for filtering
Creating a distinct system for the disclosure of criminal records acquired in childhood, and taking a more nuanced approach to those acquired in early adulthood.

Crucially however, we believe that the system must have a discretionary filtering process with a review mechanism which could be accessed by people whose criminal records do not benefit from the automatic filtering rules. Although the Supreme Court did not consider this to be necessary for the regime to be in accordance with the law, we believe this is vital to allow some cases to be considered on a case-by-case basis, to ensure that the rules do not operate unfairly. We urge the government to take this opportunity to look at introducing such a scheme that incorporates lessons from other similar schemes, like that in Northern Ireland.

More broadly, there is an overwhelming case for a fundamental review of the criminal records disclosure regime. Reviews by the Law Commission, Justice Select Committee, Charlie Taylor and David Lammy MP have all concluded that there is a need to look at the wider regime. The criminal records disclosure system and the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 are increasingly unfit for purpose and is open to abuse by employers and others. We encourage the government to take this opportunity to commit to carrying out a fundamental review to address these systemic issues.

Enver Solmon, CEO of Just for Kids Law, said:

“We are delighted that the Supreme Court has upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal in favour of our client and are proud to have secured a landmark judgement that will benefit thousands of children issued with cautions each year, a shocking disproportionate number of whom are from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds.

“Our client should never have been given a criminal record that stays with him for life. The judgement makes clear that the disclosure of reprimands and cautions, the legal equivalent of a slap on the wrist, is disproportionate and damaging to the future rehabilitation of children preventing them from moving on from their past. A parliamentary inquiry reached the same conclusion nearly two years ago when it stated that children were being unfairly denied a second chance. There is now an overwhelming view shared by the higher courts and MPs that the government should act immediately to ensure no child who is given a caution ends up with a criminal record that stigmatises them for life. The government should also now conduct a wide-ranging review of the entire criminal records disclosure regime for children and and young people.”

Corey Stoughton, Advocacy Director of Liberty, said:

“P made a mistake a long time ago and has been unfairly punished ever since. Using overly broad bureaucratic rules that deny people meaningful careers by forcing them to to carry a scarlet letter for life is both cruel and pointless”

“Today’s court decision holds the promise of a fresh start for thousands of people who deserve a second chance. The Government must finally reform this arbitrary scheme”

Notes

Unlock is an independent, award-winning national charity that provides a voice and support for people with convictions who are facing stigma and obstacles because of their criminal record, often long after they have served their sentence.
There are over 11 million people in the UK with a criminal record.
Unlock’s website is unlock.devchd.com.
High-resolution images for media use are available from Unlock’s Flickr account.
More information about our policy work on the DBS filtering system is available here.
Unlock’s report, A life sentence for young people, was published in May 2018 and can be downloaded at https://unlock.org.uk//youth-criminal-records-report/
Unlock has published a briefing on the DBS filtering process – available to download at https://unlock.org.uk//wp-content/uploads/misc/DBS-filtering-Briefing-May-2018.pdf
Unlock was represented in these appeals by Salima Budhani and Theodora Middleton, Bindmans LLP, and barristers Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC and Jesse Nicholls, Doughty Street Chambers.
Unlock’s intervention in the Supreme Court can be downloaded at https://unlock.org.uk//wp-content/uploads/misc/1-Gallagher-2-P-G-W-Unlock-Case.pdf
The judgment was handed down on Wednesday 30^th January 2019. Press summary here.
Press and media coverage of the judgment can be found here.
Warnings and reprimands are now known as youth cautions.

About the cases before the Supreme Court

These appeals consist of 4 cases: P, G, W (appeals from the Court of Appeal of England and Wales) and Gallagher (an appeal from the Court of Appeal of Northern Ireland). Unlock intervened in the case.

In all four cases, the Government appealed, having lost in the Court of Appeal. There are summaries of the cases on Unlock’s website – https://unlock.org.uk//policy-issues/specific-policy-issues/filtering/cases-challenging-dbs-filtering-system/

The current filtering system

The Police Act 1997 created the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS – formerly the Criminal Records Bureau), which provides details of a job applicant’s previous convictions to prospective employers. For certain types of work, particularly work with children or vulnerable adults, the standard or enhanced certificates issued by the DBS used to list all the job applicant’s previous convictions.

However, in 2013, the Government amended this scheme following a Court of Appeal ruling (T v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester) to introduce a “filtering” process. Single convictions for non-violent, non-sexual offences that did not lead to a custodial sentence (including a suspended one) will be “filtered” (i.e. not disclosed) after 11 years (five-and-a-half years if the person was under 18 at the time of the offence).

The filtering process does not apply if a person has more than one conviction – regardless of the minor nature of the offences or the person’s circumstances at the time.

Support for reform

The Law Commission, in its review of criminal records disclosure and non-filterable offences (published January 2017), said: “Given the vast array and magnitude of the problems identified by our provisional assessment of the disclosure system as a whole, there is a compelling case to be made in favour of a wider review. Our conclusion is that the present system raises significant concerns in relation to ECHR non-compliance and, what may be considered to be, the overly harsh outcomes stemming from a failure to incorporate either proportionality or relevance into disclosure decisions. An impenetrable legislative framework and questions of legal certainty further compound the situation. This is an area of law in dire need of thorough and expert analysis. A mere technical fix is not sufficient to tackle such interwoven and large scale problems.” See https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/criminal-records-disclosure/
The House of Commons Justice Select Committee, in its report into the disclosure of youth criminal records (published October 2017), concluded that the aim of the youth justice system was being “undermined” by the system for disclosure of youth criminal records “which instead works to prevent children from moving on from their past and creates a barrier to rehabilitation.” See https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmjust/416/41607.htm
In his review of the youth justice system (published December 2016), Charlie Taylor, who is now Chair of the Youth Justice Board, said “It remains the case that a criminal record acquired in childhood can have far-reaching effects that go well beyond the original sentence or disposal. Certain sentences will never become spent, and certain convictions or cautions will always be disclosed when an individual seeks employment in a particular field. A key principle underpinning my approach to the review is that children who break the law should be dealt with differently from adults. In my view the current system for criminal records lacks a distinct and considered approach to childhood offending.” See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-the-youth-justice-system
David Lammy MP, in his review into the treatment of, and outcomes for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the criminal justice system (published September 2017), said: “It must be recognised that a job is the foundation for a law-abiding life for ex-offenders, but that our criminal records regime is making work harder to find for those who need it the most. The system is there to protect the public, but is having the opposite effect if it sees ex-offenders languishing without jobs and drawn back into criminality. A more flexible system is required, which is capable of recognising when people have changed and no longer pose a significant risk to others.” See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/lammy-review-final-report

Case studies

Anita (not her real name). When she was 11, she was playing with a lighter in the girls’ bathroom at school and set a toilet roll alight causing around £100 of damage. She was arrested for Arson and told that the reprimand she was given would come off her record when she turned 19. Then after months of being bullied in secondary school, she was involved in a fight. She and the other pupil were both arrested for Actual Bodily Harm. She was encouraged by the police to accept a reprimand rather than challenge it in court and was told it would come off her record in five years. Now nearly in her thirties, she’s a qualified English teacher. However, not only was her record not removed like she was told it would be, but her two reprimands come up on enhanced DBS checks and will do under the current DBS rules for the rest of her life. The hopelessness of trying to find work has led her to working abroad and to bouts of depression and anxiety.

Michael (not his real name). When he was 17, Michael was convicted of theft of a coat from a market stall. He was fined £30. Ten months later, 23 days after turning 18, he was convicted of stealing a motor cycle and driving without insurance. He was fined £50 and sentenced to 24 hours at an attendance centre. That was 36 years ago; he’s come a long way since then. He’s now in his fifties. However, Michael’s long-forgotten past has come back to haunt him and he’s concerned about his work as a finance director. He could lose his job and a career that he’s worked hard for.

Under the current filtering system, Anita and Michael’s criminal record will be disclosed on a standard or enhanced DBS check for the rest of their lives. That’s what we’re trying to change.

More case studies can be found in our youth criminal records report and in our briefing on the DBS filtering regime.

Supreme Court to issue judgment on landmark criminal records disclosure regime case on Wednesday 30th January

On Wednesday 30^th January at 9.45am, the Supreme Court will hand down its judgement in the case of R (on the application of P, G and W) and R (on the application of P) v Secretary of State for the Home Department and others.

The criminal records disclosure scheme has twice been ruled unlawful – but instead of putting in place the urgent reform that’s so desperately needed, the Government chose to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court.

The case was heard in the Supreme Court in June 2018. For the first time in Unlock’s history, we intervened in the case because we wanted to help the Supreme Court understand the importance of the issue, the failings of the current system, and how it could be changed for the better. We believe the current filtering system that applies to standard and enhanced criminal record checks doesn’t go far enough; it is blunt, restrictive and disproportionate.

We hope that the Supreme Court will reject the Government’s appeal. We stand ready to work with the Government to reform and implement a system that takes a more calibrated and targeted approach towards disclosing criminal records.

Our response to the judgment will be on our website – at unlock.devchd.com/filtering – once the judgment is published on Wednesday. We’ll also be tweeting using the hashtag #dbsfiltering.

In the meantime, you can read a blog about the Supreme Court hearing from our co-director, Christopher Stacey, which gives an interesting overview and some reflections on when the case was heard in June 2018.

And whatever the outcome on Wednesday, we will be calling on the government to fundamentally re-look at their position on the criminal record disclosure regime.

Please help us with this work by supporting our campaign to wipe DBS checks clean of old/minor criminal records.The money we raise will go towards our campaign work to make sure the government takes action. This will take our time and resources over the coming months – crucial if we are to make most of the opportunity and get the best possible outcome for people with old and minor criminal records. We really need your support to do this!

Unlock’s co-founder, Bob Turney, becomes a patron

We are extremely delighted to announce that Bob Turney, one of Unlock’s co-founders, has joined us as a patron.

Bob had served twenty years in various prisons then gone on to gain a degree in Forensic Social Work. By 1997, he was enjoying a career as a Probation Officer, yet time and time again was coming across people who were struggling to reintegrate back into society despite their best efforts to put their offending behind them. There was, he believed, a need for an organisation that could support them and the idea of founding one was formed.

Unlock was launched in 1999. It went on to gain charitable status in 2000. However, with growing demands on his time as a probation officer and with a growing family, Bob felt it time to take a back seat and make way for full-time staff to take the charity forward.

Writing in theRecord in 2017, Bob describes his own experiences of ‘going straight’ and his role in the founding of Unlock. He was by then a patron of the Longford Trust and had been attending the Trust’s annual lecture and award ceremony in 2016 when much to his delight, Unlock was awarded the Longford Prize. The event provided a wonderful opportunity for him and Unlock to re-connect and we are thrilled that he again pledged to support our work saying, “I am really grateful to all the staff and volunteers at Unlock for the vital work they are doing in helping people to cast off the baggage of their past. My time with this wonderful charity was incredibly rewarding and I am so happy to see it going from strength to strength.”

Welcome back Bob!

Julie Harmsworth

Winter 2018/19 Newsletter – What we’ve been up to

Today we’ve published our winter 2018/19 newsletter.

Read: Winter 2018/19 Newsletter

Previous newsletters are available online. You can receive future newsletters direct to your inbox by signing up to our mailing list.

Google settles out of court with individual who has spent conviction, in the UK’s first ‘right to be forgotten’ case involving criminal records

The problem of spent convictions appearing online is a real and significant problem for many people.

Two individuals with spent convictions brought claims against Google for refusing to de-list search engine results that contained details of their now spent convictions. The cases, the first in the UK on the so-called ‘right to be forgotten’, had a judgment from the High Court in April this year. One case was successful (NT2) and the other one failed (NT1).

The one that failed had appealed to the Court of Appeal and the case was due to be heard today, the 20^th December, but the appeal has been withdrawn as the case has been settled. This could be because Google has agreed to de-list. It could be because NT1 has decided not to proceed with the appeal.

We will be doing more work in early 2019 to better understand the implications of the High Court judgment from back in April.

As it stands, we continue to suggest that people with spent convictions apply to Google and other search engines if there are search results that link to articles with spent convictions. If the request to de-list is refused, we encourage people to raise a formal complaint with the ICO and we’re still collecting evidence of responses to these types of requests.