The current criminal record disclosure rules are unnecessarily harsh and disproportionate – they mean that standard and enhanced DBS checks continue to disclose old, minor and irrelevant offences that often happened decades ago. This means people can feel like they are effectively serving a life sentence for minor offences that they committed in their youth.

The latest blog by Christopher Stacey reflects on last month’s landmark criminal record disclosure hearing.   For people with criminal records, last month was pretty significant. The Supreme Court heard the appeal of the Government, which is arguing that their current approach to disclosing old and minor cautions and convictions on standard and enhanced criminal

The Supreme Court will tomorrow hear the Government’s appeal in a long running case about the disclosure of criminal records. The Government is arguing that their current approach to disclosing old and minor cautions and convictions on standard and enhanced criminal record checks, often decades later, is fair. We disagree. And so did the High

Monica didn’t have a great start in life. She was in care from the age of 2 and she didn’t go to a great school, leaving with no qualifications. Fighting was part of her language – she used violence to settle disputes and disagreements. This worked for Monica amongst her peers, but not when she

Dennis has two minor convictions. The first was in 2004 when he was 17 years old – for criminal damage to a phone box for which he received a fine and community service. The second was in 2012 when he was 25 years old – for common assault after an altercation one evening with another

In 2008, after enduring more than a year of emotional abuse from her partner, the police came knocking on Teresa’s door. She had never had any dealings with the police before and she had no idea why they were there. They informed her that her partner had accused her of assault; she had pushed him

Aged 14 Helen was arrested and received a caution. It was around this time she started binge drinking which began a downwards spiral. Smoking ‘weed’ and drinking heavily at the weekends was pretty much the norm amongst the gang she hung around with and by the time she was 19 a deep depression had overtaken

As part of our work to wipe DBS clean of old and minor criminal records, I wanted to post the details of the Supreme Court hearing. (We’ll update this post with more specific details as and when we have them.) The case is listed to be heard over 3 days, starting Tuesday 19th June. The

We’ve launched a CrowdJustice appeal to help us raise money to pay for our legal costs in intervening in the Supreme Court next month. In June, the Supreme Court will hear the appeal of the Government which is arguing that their current approach to disclosing old and minor criminal record on standard and enhanced DBS checks, often

Unlock, the country’s leading charity for people with convictions, has today published research on the impact of criminal records acquired in childhood and early adulthood. New data in the report, A life sentence for young people, shows that hundreds of thousands of people are being affected every year, and often many decades later, because of

We have recently undertaken an important legal effort to intervene in a Supreme Court case which is due to be heard next month and which challenges the government’s approach to disclosing old and minor criminal records on standard and enhanced DBS checks. The government is arguing that the current criminal records disclosure regime is fair.

Unlock has made a submission to the Scottish Government in response to their call for views on the Management of Offenders (Scotland) Bill. The focus of our response is on Part 2 of the Bill – Disclosure of convictions. Download Unlock’s submission.