MINOR criminal convictions should not have to be disclosed to employers, a new Scottish campaign group backed by Richard Branson said this week.
Voluntary organisations recruiting staff and volunteers to work with children and vulnerable adults are amongst those organisations that can easily access details of minor or spent crimes, including childhood convictions, road-traffic offences, or crimes committed decades ago.
Now, Falkirk-based Recruit With Conviction, which is also being backed by Apex Scotland and Scottish Business in the Community, is calling on the Scottish Government to change the law so that only relevant convictions are reported to potential employers.
The move follows a UK Court of Appeal ruling, which found that a full disclosure check was in breach of human rights.
Richard Thomson, director of Recruit With Conviction, has written to Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill calling on the Scottish Government to introduce laws to ensure that not all convictions have to be disclosed.
?While indicators of risk of child abuse are important to prevent the type of abuse which was of greater prevalence during the 20th century, there is a plethora of other useless but deeply personal information available and it is used to unfairly discriminate against people in this century,? said Thomson.
?In fact, there has never been a time in history when criminal record information has been so freely available. This is information about acts of anger, pride or jealousy which were punished and recorded inconsistently and is a source of regret and personal embarrassment for many.
?A third of unemployed people have criminal convictions (excluding common driving offences) and a significant number of graduates, apprentices and working young people acquire a Friday night conviction, which changes their prospects.?
The Court of Appeal case was based on a young man, named only as T, who at age 11 was convicted of two counts of bike theft.
This was disclosed through an English Criminal Records Bureau check to a football club he wished to work for when he was 17 and also during his application to university.
Lord Dyson at the Court of Appeal noted that while disclosing old convictions and cautions is designed to protect children and vulnerable adults, disclosing all recordable offences is disproportionate to that aim.
Corinna Ferguson, legal officer for Liberty, who represented T, said: ?The overzealous CRB system has allowed old, minor and unreliable information to wreck the lives of too many hardworking people in the UK.?
The UK Government has now referred the case to the Supreme Court.
The Protecting Vulnerable Groups scheme in Scotland is reserved to the Scottish Government, however, it is subject to the same human rights laws as the rest of the UK.
Recruit with Conviction was set up last year following evidence that people with convictions are being routinely discounted in the current, highly competitive environment.
Virgin chairman Richard Branson this week recorded a video message for the Recruit with Conviction website, urging employers not to discount people with criminal records.
?We don?t condone crime in anyway,? said Branson. ?But we do believe in second chances.
?The best way to give people a second chance and enable them to rehabilitate and become full and positive members of society is to provide employment opportunities?a job confers self-respect and a stake in society, which is an incentive to change.?
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Human Rights Commission stressed that the case of T is still live.
She said: ?The state has an absolute obligation to take reasonable steps to protect people from real and immediate risks to their life or of serious ill-treatment such as child abuse. However the measures it takes to protect people must be proportionate, including in the degree of their interference with private life.
?It will be important to reflect on the implications of the Supreme Court?s ruling in this case, when it is made, for law and practice in Scotland.?
Want to know more?
www.recruitwithconviction.org.uk
@RWithConviction
Tags: children, MINOR, Richard Branson, Scottish Government, TFN 719 - 1 February 2013Source: http://www.thirdforcenews.org.uk/2013/02/bid-to-end-intrusive-criminal-record-checks/
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