Story Type: Views & Reviews

UK versus the USA – The Criminal Records Debate

I have a older sister, a Green card holder, who resides in the USA, and I’ve travelled there many times pre the 9/11 attacks.

I am deeply proud to say that as a reformed and rehabilitated law abiding ex-criminal with spent convictions, I have considered going back to the states to see my sister many times, but have increasingly felt that the visa application may possibly be a step too far. I have convictions that are felt by the Americans to be just too serious to allow me the chance to see a close family member and have a 2 week holiday. Thankfully, as an EU citizen I travel everywhere in Europe with my wife, without fear of being asked about my past, or having to obtain a visa or have a criminal records check. The Unlock forum has hundreds of questions in regards to the USA and holiday visa’s, and it seems a major talking point, and sadly a very upsetting issue for many people.

Thinking about the flip side, I started to wonder, how Americans cope with having possible restrictions placed upon them whilst travelling the world.

It’s obvious from research, that US citizens need to also apply for a visa for visits to the UK if they have a criminal record, but I have not found any actual details on what crimes the British consider serious or not, and how hard it actually is to get into the UK from the USA if you have a criminal past.

Moving on from the visa debate, and knowing first hand how hard it can be to get a job with a record, faced with ever increasing employers that stipulate high level DBS checks, I wondered how the Americans addressed this issue.

Wow, I was in for a shock.

As of 2011, 65 Million US citizens had a recorded criminal record. That’s a crazy 1 in 4 people. More people in fact than the whole population of the UK (2014). The US National Employment Law Project website highlights this issue, and the problems faced by Americans looking for work.

On a serious note, it’s really no different being in the UK or the USA, as both countries face the same problems with travel visas and employment issues.

I have put my travel plans on hold to the states, and I will continue to enjoy the freedom I have as an EU British citizen to travel everywhere in Europe without any restrictions.

The world is a massive place, and rather than think about the places I am not allowed to go to, I’d rather think about all the marvellous other places that I can.

By Peter* (name changed to protect identity)

DBS checks ruin lives

Our eldest son texted us this morning with the great news that after a lot of hard searching he had been offered a job, as a dental technician. An hour or so later he followed this up with the devastating news that the offer had had to be withdrawn as his DBS check showed that he had been convicted and given a conditional discharge for carrying a bladed object quite a few years ago now.

This ‘bladed object’ was a tiny penknife at the bottom of his rucksack that he used the dig any stones out of his skateboard wheels. To give you some idea of how innocuous it was; he won it at a children’s seaside arcade a few years before, when we were on a camping holiday. Although the blade was only 2 ½ inches long it locked and this led the police to charge him. Being away I was not able to attend court and to my horror he pleaded guilty. Although the offence is ‘spent’ it remains on his record forever and I am sure that this is not the last life opportunity that will be denied him because of it.

Young people lives are being blighted forever due to the most minor infringement of laws they probably have no idea they are even breaking. My son is very shy, quiet and the last person you ever suspect of being a ‘criminal’. I have just spoken to the man who offered him the job and he was very sad not to be able to take him on as he was ‘ideal’ for the job. Apparently the General Dental Council will not register anyone with a conviction like this, no matter how minor or that it is ‘spent’.

By Mike* (name & details changed to protect identity)

Regulated by the FCA on a life licence

Since about 10 years ago, I have been employed full time by a nationally recognized registered Charity, as a Specialist Debt Caseworker. About a year before I started, I was released from prison on license after serving 22 years of a life sentence for murder. I remain on license of course and my conviction will never be spent.

My role as a Debt Caseworker is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. This is a legal requirement of my employer and it is their responsibility to ensure that those they employ meet the required professional standards to fulfill their role which serves the best interests of our clients. My role includes working with vulnerable people, occasionally visiting people in their homes and taking responsibility on occasion for cash sums held in trust on behalf of clients to pay for their fees connects to particular insolvency procedures such as bankruptcy. It also involves liaising with partner agencies, particularly representatives of the Local Authority and negotiating with creditors regarding my clients’ finances.

My role also entails me representing clients in the County Court before District Judges, arguing before the Court why it should consider suspending Possession action on client’s property or suspending the execution of a Warrant of eviction due to mortgage or rent arrears.

My employer is fully aware of my background as I was required to disclose it at interview. I have been assured since that I was offered the role on merit, having been able to demonstrate to the interview panel a history of volunteering during the latter stages of my imprisonment and the first year of my freedom, as well as being able to persuade the panel that my years in prison had given me the time to reflect on my life, the course it had taken and the steps I’d taken to turn my life around.

As part of the recruitment process a CRB was requested which was sent centrally to the charity for whom I work. It revealed not just the murder but also a history of petty offending throughout my adolescence. The charity centrally sought assurances from my specific employer that I had disclosed but the final decision to employ me was left at the discretion of my employer.

By Philip* (name & details changed to protect identity)

Why don’t the job centre and work programme know what they’re talking about?

I’ve just come back from my latest meeting with my work programme advisor. That experience, and others recently, have driven me to write about the failures that I think are contributing to the difficulties that people with convictions face.

Okay, so I’ve got convictions. The most recent, seven years ago, was fairly serious – I was sent to prison for a few months. But since then, I’ve tried my best to rebuild my life and provide for my family. I’ve had a few jobs since then, but for various reasons, they’ve not worked out.

So, I’ve been unemployed for a couple of years now. My first ‘frustration’ came from the Job Centre. As soon as they found out that I had a criminal record, their attitude towards me changed completely. To be fair, that’s how I found out about Unlock, but annoyingly, they didn’t really know what Unlock did – they said that Unlock could help me find a job. It seemed like they just wanted rid of me, so were clutching at straws to ‘pass me off’. I’m glad I found out about Unlock, as I’ve learnt so much about what I do and don’t have to disclose, and how to go about disclosing to employers, but it annoyed me that the Job Centre thought they could simply wash their hands of me like that. Even worse, when I went back armed with the knowledge I’d got from Unlock, they looked at me clueless. They clearly didn’t know much about the rules on disclosure. I’ve since learnt that the job centre office I went to had an ‘ex-offender lead’ – what a joke she was! She hadn’t had any training on disclosure – apparently, the job centre can’t afford it (so she said)!

Then, eventually, I moved onto the work programme. I’ve was full of hope and optimism. It quickly drained away. As soon as I told my advisor about my record, they pretty much told me I’d never find an employer than was willing to give me a chance, and that I may as well just do enough that’s needed to keep me receiving my benefits!

This paints quite a bad picture, I know. I guess what I’m keen to be clear about is that I’m somebody who wants to work. I don’t want to be claiming benefits. I’m willing to take anything. I don’t think I fit the mould of being ‘work-shy’ and picky about the work I do – I just want people to look beyond my criminal record.

The Job Centre and Work Programme should be there to help me do that – words fail me when trying to describe how much I feel let down by the people who are there to help me. Organisations like Unlock do a fantastic job, but it’s not the job of a small charity to find work for the 10 million people in the UK who have a criminal record. The Job Centre and Work Programme need to step up to the plate! I’ve suggested to both my job centre work coach and my work programme advisor that they go on the Unlock training on disclosure – I’ll wait and see if they know what they’re talking about the next time I see them!

By Andy* (name & details changed to protect identity)

Job hunting with a criminal record – New York Times Editorial

This was originally published by The New York Times. See the bottom of this post for more information.

There is no dispute that far too many Americans carry the burden of a criminal record — at least 70 million, by recent estimates — or that the easy accessibility of these records in the information age imposes debilitating obstacles, especially when it comes to finding a job.

The harder question is what to do about it.

Employment is, after all, an important factor in keeping people out of the criminal justice system, yet, in a struggling job market, employers are often tempted to turn away anyone who appears to pose even the slightest risk. Thanks to the proliferation of companies offering instant online background checks, a vast majority of employers now run such checks on all job applicants. They can, and do, refuse to hire people on the grounds of an arrest itself — let alone a conviction.

People with criminal records often face all manner of entrenched and unjustified prejudice. Studies have found that job applicants who reported having a criminal record were 50 percent less likely to receive a callback or job offer. And, as with virtually every part of the criminal justice system, the effect was more pronounced when the job candidate was black.

Over the last five years, according to a recent report by the Vera Institute for Justice, 23 states have passed more than three dozen laws aimed at sealing or expunging criminal records for certain offenses so that low-level offenders do not continue to suffer for relatively minor transgressions. The convictions that may be sealed commonly include misdemeanors like disorderly conduct, shoplifting, or, in some cases, low-level drug possession.

The laws generally impose a waiting period of several years from the end of a sentence before a convicted person may ask a court to seal his or her record.

But record sealing, however well-intentioned, is not an optimal solution. For one thing, trying to keep anything secret in the 21st century is no sure thing. Anyway, sealing laws regularly include significant exceptions, leaving criminal records available to law enforcement and the courts, as well as to certain employers who are legally required to perform background checks.

Also, record-sealing laws do not and cannot address the underlying problem of overcriminalization. Many of the misdemeanors the laws single out should never have been prosecuted in the first place. Does it make sense that a 21-year-old who is caught, say, driving without a license will then be burdened by a criminal record that trails him and keeps him from getting jobs into middle age?

A better approach, though admittedly longer term, is to emphasize the need for a change in attitudes about people with criminal records. So-called ban-the-box laws now on the books in about a dozen states and many municipalities require employers to consider applicants more fully before asking about their criminal history. Some states offer employers tax breaks or reduce their legal liability for hiring applicants with a conviction in their past.

In the end, everyone benefits when people with criminal records are not shut out from the opportunity to be productive members of society.

This content originated from: The New York Times, Editorial Board (2015), Job Hunting with a Criminal Record

Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/opinion/job-hunting-with-a-criminal-record.html [Last accessed 19th March 2015]

Forgiving v Forgetting – From the US

This was originally published by The Marshall Project. See the bottom of this post for more information.

In February of 2003, a much younger Barack Obama rose before the Illinois State Senate to introduce a new piece of legislation that, he said, contained a compromise. The bill would help job-seekers who had long ago been convicted of a nonviolent crime (or two, at most) overcome the barriers to employment that came with having a criminal history. But the bill would do so without expunging their records.

Instead, Obama’s bill would create a final, years-later stage on the timeline of these ex-offenders’ cases. They had already completed the stages of arrest, booking, indictment, plea bargaining or trial, sentencing, incarceration and/or probation. Now, ex-felons who had stayed crime-free for a few years would be eligible to come back to court and, in a full-blown hearing before a judge, attempt to “prove” that they had been rehabilitated.

Any ex-offender who succeeded in doing so, Obama announced, would be granted one of two new legal documents, the Certificate of Good Conduct or the Certificate of Relief from Disabilities. The certificate would represent an official assurance to employers – though, again, short of full expungement – that the ex-offender should no longer be judged for his or her crimes. More concretely, the good conduct certificate would make the ex-offender eligible for a range of municipal jobs, including in the public schools, the transit system, and the parks; the certificate of relief would remove barriers to a range of licenses, from real estate to barbering, cosmetology, and mortician’s licenses. Finally, any private employer who hired the now officially rehabilitated ex-offender would be insulated from liability suits claiming negligent hiring.

Obama’s bill was passed and went into effect one year later. Ever since, the granting of so-called Certificates of Rehabilitation has become an increasingly popular compromise version of full expungement in courts around the country. Between 2009 and 2014, nine states and Washington, D.C. began issuing the documents, also called CERTIFICATES OF RELIEF,recovery, achievement, or employability.

“These certificates are a remarkably dynamic new option,” says Kari Hamel, a civil legal aid attorney in North Carolina who is working to make the certificates – available in that state since 2011 – more accessible to more people with criminal records. “It’s a way of showing employers that the crime someone committed probably wasn’t committed yesterday. It makes what has happened since the crime a fully official part of that person’s record, for all employers to see.”

“That’s the key,” she adds. “Rehabilitation is absolutely a part of a person’s history of trouble with the law, it’s just the second part, the positive part.”

Paul Biebel, the presiding judge for Chicago’s criminal court, agrees that the certificates are a promising new option. “Only over the last few years have we seen more of these coming through the court,” he says of the certificates, “but I feel very strongly that they are an additional tool in a judge’s toolbox to evaluate people. We judges are prepared to send people to prison. But now, if the evidence proves rehabilitation, we also have a tool for redeeming people.”

The new certificates have burst onto the scene amid emerging bipartisan consensus that the consequences for committing low-level nonviolent crimes – including the collateral consequences, such as DIFFICULTY GETTING A JOB years later – should not be interminable. The Redeem Act, a bill sponsored by Senators Cory Booker and Rand Paul that would expand expungement for crimes committed as a juvenile, has picked up steam in Congress. President Obama, meanwhile, has highlighted the issue of the long-term impact of criminal records, particularly through his MY BROTHER’S KEEPER initiative.

This consensus is rooted in the fact that between 70 and 100 million Americans have an arrest, charge or conviction in their pasts. And, with the rise of the Internet, even a minor run-in with the law has been transformed from a temporary experience into a permanent one. This does not mesh well with the American ideal of self-reinvention.

Yet despite the emerging agreement that many ex-offenders deserve second chances, not everyone agrees that these new certificates are the best way to go about providing redemption.

Sharon Dietrich is one such critic. Dietrich is a civil legal aid attorney in Philadelphia and the author of “One Strike and You’re Out,” a report on the collateral consequences of criminal records, and she believes full expungement is always preferable to certificates. “Forgetting,” she says, “either by expunging someone’s record altogether or by permanently sealing it, is a much better solution than forgiving, which is what these certificates claim to do.” The certificates are a “weak compromise,” she adds, because they “rely on employers to do the right thing. But most employers will ignore the document that says you’ve been rehabilitated, and focus instead on the part about how you were arrested.”

Supporters of the certificates argue that “forgetting” is a pipe dream. For one thing, law enforcement agencies often resist expungement, because it purges the record of information that might be useful in future investigations.

James Jacobs, a professor of law at New York University and the author of “The Eternal Criminal Record,” says that even if expungement were more available, it would be a kind of “fraud” in the age of the Internet. “Expungement is not amnesia,” he says. “The information remains out there on the Internet. These private background check companies [such as HireRight and First Advantage] have no incentive to remove expunged or out-of-date information.” Background checks on job applicants areFREQUENTLY INACCURATE even without expungement, he said.

For these reasons, Jacobs argues, ex-offenders are better off if they are equipped with an affirmative document, like a certificate, with which they can respond when employers inevitably find something damning on the Internet.

Then again, certificates are not useful at all if ex-offenders – and employers – do not know about them, or do not know who is eligible. And even once ex-offenders know about the option, the process of affirmatively filing for a certificate is extremely complex. The burden to prove rehabilitation is on the applicant, not the prosecution. To be successful requires gathering documents from multiple agencies, letters of support from community members, and proof of sobriety, then arranging all of it into a narrative that demonstrates “rehabilitation.”

In other words, the success of these certificates depends heavily on local lawyers, primarily from CIVIL LEGAL AID organizations, taking a grassroots approach to informing people about what certificates are available and how to file for them.

In New York, for instance, one of the few states to begin offering the certificates before Illinois, an average of only 261 per year were issued between 1995 and 2005. Between 2007 and 2010, as civil legal aid organizations started educating ex-offenders about the certificates, that number shot up to 2,040 per year.

More recently, two of the most robust approaches to making these new certificates more accessible and understandable are underway in Illinois and North Carolina.

In Chicago, Cabrini-Green Legal Aid has led the effort to inform people about the certificates. CGLA operates a Help Desk at the downtown Chicago courthouse, as well as a dial-in hotline, to educate ex-offenders about the certificates and get them started with the application process. And, according to Cynthia Cornelius, CGLA’s director of client and community services, the organization has recently begun to meet with and educate local employers. “None of this works unless employers know what these certificates are,” she says, “and why they should respect job applicants who have earned the certificates.”

But making the certificates a useful option is not only about education, it is also about representation. So, in a statewide effort called SECOND CHANCES,sixteen of the Illinois’ largest law firms have partnered with CGLA, supplying hundreds of pro bono lawyers to help process petitions for certificates.

Down in North Carolina, the first step was to make the certificates available under the law, as Obama did in Illinois. Despite the anti-progressive climate in the state legislature, says Bill Rowe, chief counsel of the North Carolina Justice Center, securing “certificate legislation” was politically feasible.

“Democrat or Republican, we all know someone here in North Carolina with a minor mistake holding them back,” says Rowe, “and minor mistakes are the types of mistakes we’re talking about forgiving with these certificates, not major mistakes. It’s not a ‘them’ issue, like some of the other divisive issues in the legislature; it’s an ‘us’ issue.”

With the certificates in place, the next step was getting the word out. Hamel, the civil legal aid attorney, explains that Legal Aid of North Carolina operates mobile legal clinics deep in the Blue Ridge mountains, informing the people there about the certificates. Before each clinic, Hamel notifies the local newspapers in the towns where she is headed, asks the radio stations to broadcast PSAs, and contacts local domestic violence shelters and V.A. centers to get people to come out for the clinic.

To bring employers on board, Hamel has help from Ben David, a local D.A. in Wilmington, North Carolina, who has convened the Hometown Hires program. David meets regularly with hundreds of the top employers in southeastern North Carolina to convince them to hire people with criminal records, especially people who have these certificates.

“This is about working on criminal records,” David says, “which takes a lot of time, because it’s about the long-term, not just the open-and-shut part of the case. But as a D.A., I feel I should take active steps to stop prosecuting folks who are just trying to get jobs, and these certificates and the other new options, I think, are a way of stopping the endless prosecution of job seekers.”

But in the end, says Jacobs, even with robust information campaigns, certificates are “not a magic bullet.”

“If everyone gets a certificate,” he says, “then the certificate has no credibility, and employers won’t respect it. So we can’t give certificates to people who don’t deserve one.” But the hard truth, Jacobs says, is that a considerable fraction of people with criminal histories do not deserve a certificate, because they “are still struggling with drug addiction, mental illness, and tremendous deficits. They are not rehabilitated to the point of deserving a certificate, but they do deserve our help.”

In other words, rehabilitation for most ex-offenders requires actually working with them while they are being rehabilitated, not just rewarding them afterward if they can do it on their own.

“Finding a route back to where some of these people have never been,” says Jacobs: “That requires more than just a certificate.”

This content originated from: The Marshall Project

Available at https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/03/17/forgiving-vs-forgetting [Last accessed 20/03/2015]

Second Hand – Giving somebody a second chance

Having developed a new hobby of ‘upcycling furniture’ I’d wandered into my local charity shop having seen a fantastic pine chest of drawers in the window, ideal for customising for my spare bedroom. Fantastic, lovely heavy piece of furniture, no damage, no woodworm – it’s mine.

As I handed over my £25 the gentleman who served me started chatting to me – ‘That’s a nice old bit of furniture, they don’t make stuff like that anymore. Once it’s been sanded down to take all that old varnish off it will come up a treat’.

It was only as I was about to say goodbye that it suddenly dawned on me that I’d parked my car at my office, a fifteen minute walk away and there were double yellow lines outside the shop, stretching for about a mile. I explained the situation to the sales assistant who told me that the charity shop had a car park at the back of the shop and I could bring my car around and park it in there. Alternatively, parking restrictions outside the shop were lifted after 5.30pm and so I could come back then. I told him that I had to get back to the office to see a client but I’d be back at around 5.30ish. He told me that although he usually finished at 5pm, he’d wait around and give me a hand carrying the chest out to my car.

As promised, back I went that evening. As he carried the chest to the car and I attempted to clear the boot to accommodate my new bit of furniture we got chatting. I told him that I’d opened my own ‘letting agency’ about a year ago and that the business had really started to take off over the last 6 months. I asked him about his work at the charity shop. He seemed so much younger than all the other people working in there and was the only male. I must say, I was intrigued by this young man (who I later found out was called Nigel).

He told me that he’d been volunteering in the charity shop for about 15 months, originally it was because he had to and now because he wanted to. He’d received a conviction for ‘fraud’ and been given a prison sentence but just before release, he was able to go out on a ‘temporary licence’ and volunteer in the charity shop. He’d volunteered for the last 6 months of his sentence and when he was released, he’d continued to volunteer. He told me that ‘his ladies’ in the shop really looked after him and as he didn’t have a job and had few prospects, there was nothing stopping him continuing to volunteer.

‘Where you working before your conviction?’ I asked. ‘Oh yes’ he said ‘Would you believe it, I was a Business Manager for a large corporate organisation. I earned good money, had a wife and child, lovely house and drove a nice car and I was a stupid ******. I had a new secretary at work, she was young, pretty and made me feel important. At the time my wife had just had the baby and I really seemed to have dropped down the pecking order. I couldn’t believe this young girl was interested in me and I became totally infatuated. I wanted to impress her, buy her nice things and take her to nice places. To fund this, I started to ‘borrow’ money from my employers.

The inevitable happened – my wife found out and left me. I took time off work with depression and then the company’s auditors found out about the money. I was sacked and ultimately charged with fraud. What a mess, still it could be worse. Although my wife and I are divorced now, she has started to let me see my son. All I want now is to get back into work so that I can help support my child and hopefully rent a flat so that he can come and stay with me at weekends – I’m staying with mates at the moment so he can’t do that.

Wow. I’ve got to say I was truly shocked. I’d never met a ‘proper criminal’ before although I’d read plenty of newspaper stories about ‘convicts’. I’d always wondered what gave these people the right to just take what didn’t belong to them when I had to work so hard for everything I had. I’d read about people in prison having TV’s and Play stations and it certainly didn’t sound to me like they were being punished.

Nigel was a real person though – stupid he may have been but I remember when I gave birth to my daughter. If I’m honest, for a while she did become the focus of my whole world – perhaps my husband had felt neglected to. Did a TV and a Playstation make up for being separated from your child – definitely not. He’d been punished, why couldn’t he just start again. His wife seemed to have forgiven him, couldn’t society do the same. This guy’s talent was being wasted, I’m sure he’d be an asset to somebody.

Lightbulb moment!!!!!! He’d be an asset to me. I’d been looking for ages for somebody to help with the administration of my business. I’d placed an advert with the job centre but to be honest the people they sent really didn’t seem that interested in working. I’d put an advert in my local supermarket but hadn’t had one response. Would it be too much of a risk taking on a ‘fraudster’. What if he did the same to my business? How could I protect myself? What would the other staff say? My head was spinning. ‘I’m looking for an administrator’ I said ‘Would you be interested in coming along for an interview next week?’

The interview went well. Nigel was skilled, knowledgeable and totally motivated. He already had some ideas for better utilisation of the systems we had in place. I wanted to offer him a job but when I spoke to friends and family they all told me to avoid him like the plague. ‘The business is too new, you just can’t afford to take the risk’ my husband told me. But I knew I wanted to give this guy a second chance and all I needed was somebody to tell me that I was doing the right thing.

I came across Unlock doing a Google search and decided to give them a ring. I knew they helped people with convictions but would they be able to help me. ‘They’ll just tell you to employ the bloke’ my husband said ‘You can tell they’ll be on his side’. I explained my dilemma to the Unlock Helpline. They talked through the job and Nigel’s convictions. As my husband said, they were all for me giving Nigel a second chance but they also helped me to more practically assess any risks so that by the end of the conversation I knew that I’d be offering Nigel a job but I also knew that I’d done everything that I could to protect my business.

It was the best decision I’ve ever made. Nigel’s been with me a while now and has transformed the organisational side of the business. In lots of ways the relationship I have with him is very different from the one I have with my other staff. Nigel is ‘an open book’; I know everything about him and trust him implicitly. I think he truly has my company’s best interests at heart and has made my family and friends eat their words.

I know it’s easy to be judgmental and hard to take a risk but sometimes it’s worthwhile looking a little deeper and giving somebody a second chance.

By Lisa* (name changed to protect identity)

Is honesty the best policy after you’re arrested?

So far, I haven’t got a criminal record. I’ve been arrested, I’m under investigation by the police and I’m on bail. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, I’ve been told different things by the police and my solicitor so I’ll just have to wait and see. As a result of my arrest, I lost my job which has had a massive impact on the family income and also on my self-confidence.

I know that the police investigation can go on for a while and I realised a little while ago that I couldn’t just sit around waiting for things to happen to me. I needed to get some purpose back into my life, a reason to get up in the morning and more importantly – a salary.

A couple of weeks ago, I managed to find a new job in a sales office. Not my dream job but at least I was earning and not just sitting around at home. The working hours didn’t conflict with the time I needed to sign on for bail so it all looked good.

I’d been working there for about a week when the Managing Director approached me. He’d seen my CV, noticed that I had a finance background and asked me if I would consider becoming his accountant . This came as such a shock that I told him I needed to have a think about it and would let him know.

I went home, spoke with my family and decided that I could:-

Say nothing and take him up on his offer
Say nothing, decline his offer and continue in the job I was doing
Tell him the truth

I picked the 3^rd option although I knew that legally I didn’t have to say anything – after all, I haven’t been charged with anything.

Unfortunately, the next day the MD wasn’t in but one of the supervisors was and she asked me whether I had made a decision. Well, I took the bull by the horns and told her the truth. She looked pretty shocked, told me it was the first she had heard of this and said that as the MD wasn’t around I should go home. She said she’d speak to him over the weekend and would give me call to let me know ‘what they were going to do with me!’

I worried about it all over the weekend and a week later I still hadn’t been contacted. I had convinced myself that they didn’t want me back. Although I knew that I’d done nothing wrong, I didn’t really want to work somewhere that I wasn’t wanted. I’d tried to be honest, I’d made a stupid mistake but it seemed that honesty just didn’t pay.

Well, the following week the MD rang me. He wanted to know lots of details about the case (it was pretty intensive stuff and I got really upset as I was explaining it to him) and he told me that ‘although it wasn’t a deal breaker for him’, he would need to seek further advice and would get back to me with his decision.

Great news – he did come back to me. He told me that I was wasted in the sales office and that he wanted to offer me a more admin type of role. He actually created a new job especially for me and I am absolutely loving it. I’m so relieved that I’ve got a job without having to fear that somebody will find out or I may say the wrong thing. I’ve certainly got a job up until my court case and, all being well, I’ll get some sort of community order which will mean that I can carry on working when all this is over.

Just goes to show, there are employers out there that are willing to give people a second chance and I’ll be doing everything I can to repay the trust that has been placed in me.

By Hannah* (name changed to protect identity)

Banning the Box and the Demands for Disclosure – Part 1

It’s a sobering thought when you’re sat there, faced with three strangers you’ve never met: the panel at your job interview has more information about your criminal record than a jury would if you were on trial. And, in a capitalist economy where we all have to earn a living, employers are every bit as powerful an influence on your life as judges.

In a criminal trial, the jury is not allowed to know if you have a previous conviction. This is to make sure they aren’t prejudiced against you so that you get a fair trial. Research with mock juries has shown that jurors are likely to believe a defendant guilty if they know the defendant has been convicted a similar crime in the past. So it’s probable that interview panels are more likely to believe people with convictions might commit a crime while they’re employing them if they know about previous convictions. But, with one in five unemployed people having a criminal record, how are they supposed to get a fair interview if they’ve already had to disclose their convictions to the potential employer on their application form?

Some employers make sure that interview panels aren’t shown your disclosure so that they aren’t prejudiced. Many do not. And many small firms don’t have an HR dept., it’s just the boss, your application form, you and your record. So it’s impossible to remove prejudice. And that’s exactly why ‘Ban the Box’ action is crucial.

The practice of employers seeking a disclosure is very common, according to one survey carried out for British Industry in the Community (BITC) it’s a staggering 73%. In response, one year ago, BITC supported by Nacro, Unlock and others, launched the UK’s own Ban the Box campaign, #bantheboxuk.

The idea is to work with employers to get them to remove the criminal convictions question (‘the box’) from application forms and only ask about convictions at a later stage in the process – this varies depending on the employer, but many instead ask at interview.

So, imagine being in an interview in your forties and being quizzed about the worst and most stupid thing you did in your teens. Does that seem like a reasonable interview question to you? No? Well, that’s exactly the kind of situation people with convictions face every day.

Emotionally, it can be a truly gruelling process. Even the most well-meaning of employers, like charities who work with the disadvantaged, walk you back through the worst time in your life, get you to talk about what was going on for you at the time, assess your level of regret and remorse then thank you very much for your honesty and show you the door. If they don’t give you the job, there was absolutely no need for them to put you through that or for them to have that information. It’s an invasion of privacy of the highest order, and many people who’ve been through it never again seek work from employers who behave that way.

If employers ask about records on application, it means everyone who applies needs to make a disclosure, even though only one person – the successful candidate – ever really needs to. All the other applicants and interviewees are just members of the public with no legal obligation to disclose or undergo a DBS check. Their offending isn’t relevant to the employer because they are not employed, and are not going to be. So they should be able to exit the recruitment process with their privacy and dignity intact, shouldn’t they?

This is Part 1. More to follow….

You can read more about Ban the Box at http://www.bitc.org.uk/programmes/ban-box

Leeds United owner disqualified, but only until conviction becomes spent

There was an interesting article published in the FT recently. What I was particularly interested by was the fact that the disqualification was (rightly) limited until the conviction becomes spent, which since the changes to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act was reformed in March this year, only takes 1 year for a fine (previously 5 years).

“Leeds Utd owner disqualified by Football League

Massimo Cellino’s ownership of Leeds United is again under a cloud after the Football League announced it had decided to disqualify him once more.

Leisure Industries Correspondent Roger Blitz reports the Italian had previously been disqualified in March under the league’s owners and directors test, after he was found guilty in Italy over non-payment of import duties on a boat, and fined €600,000.

He appealed that Football League ruling back in April, after a QC ruled it was “not conduct which would reasonably be considered to be dishonest”.
But the QC said that if the Cagliari court which convicted him of the offence subsequently issued a reasoned ruling which was such that Mr Cellino’s conduct would reasonably be considered to be dishonest, he would be subject to disqualification.

In a statement, the league said:
“At its meeting last week, the board considered the reasoned judgment of the Italian court against Mr Cellino, having successfully applied to the Italian courts for its full disclosure. The board considered detailed legal advice and agreed unanimously… that Mr Cellino is subject to a disqualifying condition under the terms of the test.”

Mr Cellino has 14 days to appeal.

The judgment of the Italian court has not been published in Italy, so the league is not making its contents public, the league said.
League chief executive Shaun Harvey did not take part in the vote because he was previously a Leeds director.
The league said the disqualification would run until March 18, 2015 – four months – since that is a year from the original court decision. Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders act, convictions are spent within a year.
Leeds said it was taking legal advice but noted that “nothing has changed” since the April decision to clear Mr Cellino. It said:
The steps that the League wishes the club to take – to remove Mr Cellino only to re-appoint him in three months’ time – will be destabilising for the club, its supporters and sponsors and cannot be in the best interests of any party.”

This content originated from: Financial Times (2014), Leeds owner disqualified by Football League (2014), The probation trust that’s now employing ex-offenders as mentors

Available at http://www.ft.com/fastft/243962/post-243962 (Last accessed 18th December 2014)