Text Size
Print
Email
International News
- Text Size
- Print
- Email
UK Criminal Record Searches: Proportionality Restored
It is probably a bit premature to use the term "landmark ruling" to describe the court of appeal's judgment on the scope of the criminal records check system introduced by the Blair government. The judgment, after all, is being appealed by the Home Office to the supreme court, which may overturn it. Even if the appeal court's view is upheld, it could be some considerable time before the necessary new legislation is introduced. The landmark is therefore only a provisional one. But it is a big one nonetheless.
The ruling matters on two levels. The most immediate is that it rights a wrong done to people who have committed relatively minor criminal acts, sometimes as juveniles, which continue to blight their chances in an unreasonable way in later life. In one of the cases before the court, a 21-year-old man was refused a place on a university course in which he would have had contact with children because criminal record checks revealed that he had been given warnings by the police about two stolen bicycles when he was 11. In another, a woman in her 50s was turned down for a job working with vulnerable adults after checks showed she had been cautioned for stealing a packet of false nails from a chemist 10 years earlier.
The appeal court's key finding is that the criminal record checks process, which requires all convictions and cautions to be revealed, is disproportionate to the legitimate policy aim of protecting children and vulnerable adults. This is a vital restoration of balance. Ever since the passing of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act in the 1970s, some convictions can be exempted from disclosure, and deemed to be spent, after a specified period. If the rehabilitation of offenders is to be meaningful – and, driven by the high cost of prison, this government has given welcome priority to it – this is a crucial safeguard for the individual. The court of appeal was correct to say that the right to privacy should override the obligation to disclose all convictions and cautions in appropriate circumstances. The ruling is a welcome restraint on the appetites of the overmighty state in criminal record keeping.
The ruling has a broader political importance too. A decade ago, David Blunkett overreacted to the Soham murders by calling for an indiscriminate system of criminal record checks. Hundreds of millions of pounds were invested in a system that carried out millions of checks, not always relevantly or reliably, in an attempt to reassure the public and the media that something tough was being done. The unfairnesses covered by the judgment were a direct result. The appeal court ruling restores the vital element of proportionality, which Labour should never have discarded and which Theresa May should now restore.
2024 The Background Investigator. All Rights Reserved.