UK judge to rule against CRB disclosure for minor offences

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I've been saying that this is a disgrace for years now. The Criminal Records Bureau database is consigning many otherwise decent people to the scrapheap and is leading to otherwise good people being needlessly denied jobs.

The other point I want to make is obvious and it hasn't been raised by anyone: the CRB check discriminates against UK workers who have grown up under this system. Very few EU countries have a criminal checking system that's anywhere near as thorough as ours, and that's only referring to the countries thast even have them in the first place. So an immigrant worker coming from Lithuania, or Romania, or Slovenia (and that's not counting immigrants from undeveloped and/or dangerous countries) for example could have committed serious crimes back in his home country but these will not be known about to a UK employer. He gets the job, whereas a British worker who committed a minor offence unrelated to the job ten or twenty years ago doesn't get the job because of the system.

To be honest, I think CRB checks need to be radically cut back only to refer to the most serious offences or where there is other hard evidence. Anything else (especially hearsay 'evidence') could well be false or even malicious lies.

The civil servants and the government in general hate the idea of giving up their precious database state though, so that will never happen.

The police, the courts and the government have done a very good job of destroying the UK's economy. For as long as they define almost everyone as criminals and process them through a costly bureaucratic system, they ensure that money continues to be poured down a drain.

You make a good point about the system being biased to British people born here. Also it is stupid to be checking if people had warnings or convictions that are now spent. The CRB should take into account the Rehabilitation Act which states spent convictions needn't be declared to an employer.

I am fed up of the general paranoia out there in industry and government. They look for the negatives in everyone.

good

if criminal records aren't checked, then how are people in charge of their employees meant to keep a track over them? the whole point of this system is not to record failure but to pick up on past criminal activity within a close proximity and to recognise when something is clearly very wrong .
Actions are encouraged through motivation and a decent structure and not just trying to create hate crimes thoughout the system which we have. a person who is going to work with the vulnerable or needy have to get one because otherwise they would be undermining the law which humanises our infrastructure.

The point of it is that it's telling people about offences that aren't serious or relevant many, many years from conviction.

Would you want a cannabis offence when you were 19 to be on your record when you were in your thirties?
Would you want being drunk and disorderly offence in your early twenties when you puked up and made a nuisance of yourself to be hanging over you in your early forties?
Would you want a theft conviction from when you were 17 to prevent you from becoming a school governor in your late forties?

That's sort of the point, in that the CRB is being used in an overcautious way. The people using them want people who have no criminal records or blemishes on their livelihood whatsoever. If you have made silly mistakes as a teenager or you have done something idiotic in your early twenties, this sort of crap will follow you around forever. I don't think that's fair or justified, personally.

I can understand that serious sexual offences or recent offences for theft or other criminal activity should be available to potential employers, but there has to be a chance for people to redeem and rehabilitate themselves. If we don't allow this crucial feature of the justice system to work, we risk consigning a lot of otherwise decent people to the margins of society, and in effect making it harder for them to reorganise and make up for previous bad deeds.

This is good news. The current system is ridiculous. "Spent" convictions should either not show up, or only show up in very specific circumstances- I'm not sure what circumstance exactly, but there may be some where otherwise irrelevant convictions may be worth flagging up with an employer. Maybe a DUI conviction at 17 isn't relevant for a 30 year old teacher but is for a 30 year old lorry driver.

What I'd quite like (although it is way too expensive to be practical) is some kind of counterpoint to the Criminal Record, listing mitigating factors.

I think most rational people blame the global financial crisis caused by the American banks rather than CRB checks. And it isn't remotely "almost everyone"- most estimates say 20%, though that's still high.

Finally... does anyone think there's potential for a business to make a lot of money appointing skilled people who just happen to have a criminal record? That would probably be the best solution, make business realise that most convictions don't stop people being effective workers