For people with criminal records
We’ve posted a number of anonymous examples of bad practice by employers that we’ve challenged as part of our employment project.
These have been posted to our website for employers, which will be fully launched later this summer, and these case studies will help us to support other employers to not make the same mistakes.
We have today published our response to the Government consultation on childcare disqualification
Background
Looking back over the last couple of months, we’ve written up a few examples of the people we’ve helped.
We hope they give a good idea of how we help people.
However, more importantly than our role, we think that these examples show how people with convictions are able to overcome some of the barriers that have been put in their way due to their criminal record.
We’ve posted the examples below as case studies in the support section of our website:
Patricia – Proof of disclosing for employment disputes
Bernadette – Not disclosing on the application form
Alisha – Don’t be too honest if you don’t need to be
We have today published our submission to the Lammy Review.
Background
We’ve just published our update for June 2016.
This months update includes:
The full update provides a summary of:
Read the June 2016 update in full
Best wishes,
Unlock
Notes
The leading charity for people with convictions has defended a Tower Hamlets school employing a convicted killer and called on more employers to hire ex criminals who have become positive members of society. In response to an article in The Independent and on BBC News, Christopher Stacey, Co-director of Unlock, said:
“We speak to people with criminal convictions every day who are struggling to find work many years after they have served their sentence. With over a quarter of people out-of-work having received a criminal record in the last 10 years, it’s in society’s interest to enable people who have offended in the past to become contributors to society rather than burdens on the state.
“With over 10.5 million people in the UK with a criminal record, we need to encourage employers to treat every applicant on a case-by-case basis and not have blanket exclusions towards people with criminal records. That’s why campaigns like Ban the Box, and the recent commitment by David Cameron to apply this approach to the civil service, are so important in changing the attitudes of employers towards people with a criminal record.
“People who have committed crime cannot change the past, but they can focus on what they do in the future. Ian Devlin looks to have done everything he can since he was released from prison to become an active, positive member of society. The school clearly recognised this in their recruitment process. We should encourage more employers to do the same.”
– Ends –
Notes to editors
Last month, the Financial Conduct Authority published an occasional paper on access to financial services. I fed into this work, particularly focusing on the issues people with convictions face in accessing insurance. So it was good to see the authors include an especially challenging section of the report focused at a lack of buy-in to industry guidance.
There was heavy reference to the work that Unlock has done with the Association of British Insurers (ABI), including developing good practice, but highlighted how:
“it is still commonplace for proposal forms to have questions such as “have you ever been convicted””
The ABI guidance states that it is good practice to refer only to ‘unspent’ convictions, so clearly insurers are not doing this.
Although it didn’t name the companies involved, the FCA paper included two anonymous examples of current questions by home insurers and motor insurers.
The poor wording of questions by insurers is a major problem. Unlock’s helpline regularly gets contacted by people using insurance websites and asking us for clarity about what they do and don’t need to disclose. Very often, this is because the insurance company hasn’t made it clear that they don’t need to disclose convictions that are now spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.
This is something we’re looking at. We’ve had one our helpline advisors do some research into the questions asked by insurers, and we’re in the process of pulling this together and analysing the findings.
As an aside, it was good to see a number of other issues featured in the occasional paper, including:
More information
Last month, the Centre for Entreprenuers (CfE) published some brilliant research, From inmates to entreprenuers, looking at the role of setting up businesses and how they can help to break the cycle of reoffending.
We were pleased to support the research by carrying out a survey alongside the CfE which had 158 responses from people with convictions in the community.
As part of the research, 83% said that having a criminal record made it harder to start a business, with 89% saying it made it harder to get insurance for your business.
I was asked to provide a comment for the report. I explained how we know that people with convictions face significant stigma and discrimination from employers as a direct result of their criminal record. Although more work needs to be done on combating this, entrepreneurship is an important alternative that, for some, is the right path towards a productive life as a law-abiding member of society. This research is an important contribution to this area and makes recommendations at both a strategic and operational level to maximise the opportunity that entrepreneurship provides people in achieving their potential.
Written by Christopher Stacey, Co-director of Unlock
Whilst government announcements last month to reform prisons and improve prisoner education are welcomed, much more needs to be done to encourage and support employers to recruit people with a criminal record.
Employers like Timpsons and Greggs have shown that people with convictions can make fantastic employees and that there is actually a business as well as a social benefit in opening up job vacancies to them. That’s why the Ban the Box campaign, led by Business in the Community, has been so important. Similarly, the Employer Forum for Reducing Reoffending (EFFRR) does excellent work, but as Dame Sally Coates noted in her review, it is still relatively small in scale. There’s also the national See Potential campaign led by the Department for Work and Pensions; they have focused in on people with a criminal record in encouraging employers to think differently about how they recruit.
People with convictions are not inherently ‘a risk’. There is a broad range of ‘ex-offenders’ and in our work with employers we emphasise the importance of recruiters not discounting applicants simply because of their criminal record. For those leaving prison, the cost of unemployment strongly translates into increased chances of reoffending.
Reforms to prisons must go hand-in-hand with more work done at a local, regional and national level to encourage and support employers. So-called ‘reform prisons’ will need to focus on the employment outcomes of those released, which is also important. Community Rehabilitation Companies will be an important part of this puzzle too, supporting people as they leave prison or serving their sentence in the community, yet there is little evidence of CRC’s supporting employers in an effective way.
The national work of Ban the Box, See Potential and EFFRR are important in changing attitudes. Regional employer networks, as recommended by the Coates Review, may well be an important connector between national initiatives and individual prisons supporting individuals to find employment on release.
Ever since ‘disqualification by association’ (DbA) hit the headlines about 18 months ago, we have been working to try and scrap the regulations that have had a significant and unnecessary impact on the partners of those with a criminal record.
Earlier this month, the Department for Education (DfE) published a consultation with proposals for change. The deadline for responses to the consultation is 1st July 2016.
Find out more about the consultation, details of what we’re doing and how you can help on our information site.
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