As part of our fair access to employment project we’re gathering information on employers who have carried out standard or enhanced checks where only a basic is legally permitted. For some jobs, employers are allowed to consider cautions and spent convictions (unless they have been filtered). Employers recruiting for these jobs are legally permitted to

As part of our fair access to employment project, we are gathering evidence of employers’ approaches to people with criminal records. We work with employers to develop fair policies and practices and highlight good practice. Ban the box is a key part of helping people with convictions get back into the workplace, and we have

It’s fair to say 2020 has been a year of major change – and we’re only halfway through. Whether you’ve been adapting to home working, learning a new skill, or embracing your natural hair, we’re all dealing with change. That can be challenging but there’s a sense that this moment is a portal to the

Nicola Collett, a PhD student at Keele University, is currently researching the potential influence of a criminal record acquired between the ages of 10-25, later on in adulthood. Following on from her last update in September 2019, Nicola writes here about how her research is progressing. I am delighted to be sharing another update on

Covid-19 and the social distancing measures introduced to help control it are creating challenges for all of us. For people with criminal records, these challenges can be particularly difficult to overcome. Since the UK went into lock-down, we’ve been contacted by many people with criminal records – those with criminal records in the community, people

Lawrence contacted us concerned that a crown court had provided information about his spent conviction without the proper authority. Lawrence had a spent conviction from 12 years ago which could still be found on the internet. His local residents’ association had used the information they found online to request a Certificate of Conviction from the

Going Forward into Employment is a government wide scheme providing employment opportunities in the civil service for people from a range of backgrounds. Prison leavers are one of the groups that can benefit from the scheme, and so far more than 30 people have taken up a civil service post after release. The Going Forward

Yesterday, the Department of Justice (DoJ) in Northern Ireland announced it was making changes to what is disclosed on standard and enhanced criminal record checks, in response to the Supreme Court ruling in January 2019. The criminal record checking process in Northern Ireland (administered by AccessNI) is separate to that in England and Wales (administered

It’s about a decade since we first started work on developing an online tool to help people work out if they need to tell employers and others about their criminal record. It was around 2009 when we started to receive an increasing number of calls to our helpline from people wanting to know if –

The Charity Commission has refused more than half of the applications it has received from people with criminal convictions who wish to serve as trustees or senior managers, prompting Unlock to call for a review. In an article published on the Civil Society website, Christopher Stacey, co-director of Unlock, said he was concerned about the

Together with the charity Transform Justice, Unlock has launched the #FairChecks movement to help push for a fresh start for the criminal records system. In this programme, Woman’s Hour’s Jenni Murray, talks to two women who have experienced problems with having to disclose their criminal records and to Unlock’s Policy & Practice Lead, Rachel Tynan.

Supreme Court ruled one year ago that disclosure and barring service rules breach rights DBS system continues to unlawfully breach rights of people with multiple minor convictions and childhood cautions. A year after the UK’s highest court found current rules on criminal records checks breach human rights laws, Unlock, Liberty and Just for Kids Law