For people with criminal records
Today we have published our submission to the review of youth justice.
Our submission focuses on criminal records, disclosure and young people.
Background
We have today published the written response we have submitted to the Work and Pensions Committee Inquiry into the support for ex-offenders.
Background
In February 2016, we were invited by Plias Resettlement to visit Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville prisons to present workshops on criminal records and disclosure (they deliver the National Careers Service contract there). The aim was to look at the ongoing effects of a criminal record, how this can affect a person’s ability to reintegrate into society upon release from prison, and how to overcome these.
‘We recommend the workshops that Unlock deliver; they are informative, relevant and provide people with convictions with up to date and accurate information that enables them to move on with their lives.’ PLIAS Resettlement, 2016
Plias gave us a fairly flexible brief in running a 2-hour workshop. This is where the idea behind our Top 10 things to know about a criminal record came from (which we developed at the same time). We wanted to keep things simple, but wanted to cover some of the key areas of life that people need to be aware of.
The result was a new ‘Moving on with Conviction’ workshop. The idea being that we would highlight 10 key areas which we think, from experience of running our helpline, are important for anybody with a criminal record to know about, with plenty of opportunity for questions.
We had about 20 men come along to the classroom in the education department at Wormwood Scrubs. With a relatively small number of people, we were able to make the session very interactive with lots of questions and answers and many of the men shared their own personal experiences. Some comments after the event were:-
I think workshops like the one today should take place more often – enlightening
Very positive approach and really well presented
Full of confidence from the first one, we headed off to Pentonville a couple of days later. This one was quite different; it took place in the large prison chapel with around 70 men turning up. The size of the room and the number of people meant that the session had to be far more ‘controlled’ which made it difficult for too much interaction. Initially, this made it quite difficult to engage with the group.
We recognise how hard it is to take any positives out of being in prison and it’s easy to think that a criminal record will prevent you being able to move on successfully in the future. It was clear that many of the men in Pentonville felt this way.
Explaining to the group that there were may employers out there that were willing to give people a second chance and highlighting how 50% of Unlock’s staff and trustees had a criminal record seemed to endorse the positive message we were trying to put across.
From then on, the atmosphere in the room seemed to change, with the session becoming more upbeat. Comments from the men included:-
I understand a lot now about jobs and how to disclose
I felt the event was done very well under pressure
We are grateful to the support of Plias in covering our costs in preparing and delivering these sessions. We’ve come away with some ideas of how we might be able to do more of these in the future, as it’s clear to us that many people in prison are simply not made aware of things they need to be alert to in dealing with the impact of having a criminal record once they’re released.
Written by Debbie Sadler, Advice Manager
You can find out more about our fair access to employment project here or get in touch with us.
Practical self-help information can be found on understanding your criminal record and disclosing to employers.
Working with other organisations is important to us. It often means we can achieve more than by working alone or we can help other organisations to achieve more themselves. For example, we:
We also provide open-access to a vast amount of information and resources through our websites. These websites are set up primarily to support people with convictions as part of the range of support we provide directly to individuals. However, we want as many people to benefit from our resources and we encourage organisations to use them as part of the delivery of their own work.
We are, however, seeing a rise in the number of enquiries from service-providers received by our helpline, which is set up and funded to provide support for individuals themselves.
That’s why we’ve published a document which explains our approach to working with other organisations. The aim is to clarify what support we can offer other organisations and how it can be accessed.
You can download our approach here.
We’re delighted to announce that Unlock’s criminal record disclosure training has been endorsed by the Probation Institute. It also means that we’re now a Probation Institute Endorsed Learning Provider.
Commenting on the news, Christopher Stacey, Co-director of Unlock, said:
“Those working in the probation sector are one of the key audiences for our criminal record disclosure training. We know that, historically, probation officers have had very little training on supporting their clients with the complex laws around criminal records and how to practically deal with disclosing their criminal record to employers and others.”
“The main reason we deliver training to probation providers and other organisations that deliver front-line services is so that we improve the quality of the support provided to people with convictions. We know from the feedback that we get that the training is high-quality and relevant to probation providers. We hope that this endorsement process will enable us to work with more probation services to help them to more effectively support their clients with the disclosure of their criminal records.”
Savas Hadjipavlou, Chief Executive of the Probation Institute, said:
“We are very pleased that the partnership between Unlock and the Probation Institute announced last October is producing results and particularly delighted that Unlock has become a Probation Institute Endorsed Learning Provider. Our endorsement arrangements support those working in probation enabling access to relevant and high quality training that can contribute to their continuing professional development”
We’ve just published our update for April 2016.
This months update includes:
The full update provides a summary of:
Read the April 2016 update in full here
Best wishes,
Unlock
Notes
A child who has offended in England and Wales is shackled to the mistakes of their past by a criminal record system which is punitive, and holds them back from reaching their full potential, according to a report released today by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice (SCYJ).
The report, which reviews criminal record systems in over a dozen countries, finds England and Wales to be an outlier in the extent to which it ties children to past offending.
“A child in England and Wales is not only more likely to acquire a criminal record, but this record will affect them for longer, and more profoundly, than in any of the countries reviewed”
said Penelope Gibbs, Chair of the SCYJ.
“A child who has shoplifted a couple of times will suffer the disproportionate penalty of not only having the offences recorded for life, but also having to disclose it at key points – such as entering university or applying for certain jobs, such as a teacher, or a police officer. No other country reviewed inflicts such tough penalties on a child who offends.”
The far reaching effects on a child go well beyond their sentence. Children with a criminal record face stigma and discrimination in accessing education, training, employment, travel and housing and these obstacles can follow a child into adulthood impacting adversely on their life chances and their ability to reintegrate positively in to society.
In 2013/14 over 60,000 cautions and convictions – all with criminal record implications – were handed out to children in England and Wales. These records will have to be disclosed for many years, and some forever.
The SCYJ is launching a campaign today calling for radical reform of the law on childhood criminal records. Its recommendations include shorter rehabilitation periods, expanding the current filtering system, and wiping the slate clean after ten years.
Christopher Stacey, Co-director of Unlock, in supporting SCYJ’s campaign for reform, said:
“There are over 10.5 million people in the UK with a criminal record, with the vast majority of these being obtained when people are young. Every day we’re contacted by people who are facing stigma and discrimination because of offences they committed when they were under 18. This directly impacts on children’s chances long into adulthood, often for the rest of their lives.”
“Children that commit crime need to be rehabilitated and our youth justice system is supposed to be specifically designed to not impose retributions. However, when it comes to criminal records, the system treats children in a very similar way to adults.”
“There are many parts to the criminal record disclosure system that are disproportionate and unnecessary. A specific attempt to ensure that criminal records do not blight the lives of children is long-overdue. That’s why we’re actively supporting the campaign launched today. The recommended changes would result in a fairer and more calibrated system.”
Today we’ve published our Spring 2016 Activities 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 2016 Activities Newsletter.
You can receive our newsletters direct to your inbox by signing up to our mailing list.
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:
Mia – Travel abroad whilst on licence
Jamie – You can be forgotten – Success when applying to Google
Connor – Finally accepted into university
Anne – Should a criminal record prevent the award of a PhD?
As the development of our website for employers continues, we’ll no longer be posting news specifically for employers on the main Unlock website. Instead, we’ll be posting directly onto the news section Recruit!, our website for employers.
You can continue to find the news about our Fair Access to Employment project on this site, and there will be occasions where similar posts will appear on both sites where the news relates to both employers and other groups.
As always, to receive any or all of our news updates direct to your email inbox just sign up to our mailing list.
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