Appeal against High Court ruling on disproportionate criminal records disclosure scheme scheduled

Since the High Court ruling in January, which found that the current criminal record disclosure scheme for standard/enhanced checks was disproportionate, lots of people have been asking us what would happen next. We’re now in a position to say that the Government has appealed against the High Court ruling (which to some extent we expected) –
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New research into impact of childhood criminal records and launch of campaign

              A child who has offended in England and Wales is shackled to the mistakes of their past by a criminal record system which is punitive, and holds them back from reaching their full potential, according to a report released today by the Standing Committee for Youth Justice (SCYJ).
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Disproportionate criminal records disclosure scheme declared unlawful by the High Court

Press Release – 22nd January 2016 The High Court has today declared the Government’s criminal records disclosure scheme incompatible with Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. The judgment relates to the rule that anyone who has more than one conviction on their criminal record – regardless of the minor nature of the offences, how
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Unlock supports legal challenge to disproportionate criminal records disclosure scheme

The High Court will tomorrow hear a legal challenge, with the support of Unlock, to the Government’s criminal records disclosure scheme. There are two cases being heard on Tuesday 8th December, both focusing on how the system forces people with more than one conviction to disclose them forever when applying for areas of work that involve standard or enhanced
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Unlock responds to Scottish filtering consultation

In September, the Scottish Government announced a consultation on a Remedial Order that they’d brought into force on the 10th September. This, in practice, brought into force a filtering process that applied to standard and enhanced checks processed by Disclosure Scotland, similar to the filtering process operated by the Disclosure & Barring Service. Although our
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Response to Department of Justice Northern Ireland Consultation

We’ve submitted our written response to the consultation by the Department of Justice Northern Ireland on plans to introduce a filtering review process for criminal record checks in Northern Ireland. Broadly, we support the plans, but urge the Northern Ireland Assembly to go further, in the same way that we continue to urge the UK Government to
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Article in Inside Time on ‘filtering’

We’ve written an article for Inside Time on the ‘filtering of convictions. You can read the article here.
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Do you have a caution or conviction that can never be filtered?

The filtering rules set up following Supreme Court’s judgment in R (On the application of T and another) [2014] UKSC 35 mean some cautions and convictions can be filtered from standard and enhanced DBS checks after a period of time. Convictions for specified offences, custodial or suspended sentences and multiple convictions could not be filtered.
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People shouldn’t be written off for life because of past mistakes

Our Christopher Stacey has written a piece for the blog Left Foot Forward, arguing that the requirements for life-long disclosure of minor cautions are disproportionate. You can read the article here.
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Supreme Court rules that minor cautions and convictions shouldn’t be disclosed on criminal record checks, and the filtering process remains

The Supreme Court has today ruled on a landmark case, referred to as T. The full judgement can be downloaded here: [2014] UKSC 35.The two individuals involved in the case had originally appealed against the decision to disclose details of their criminal records in job applications. The individuals had been issued warnings and cautions several years ago,
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Unlock article on TheJusticeGap about ‘filtering’

We’ve written an article for The Justice Gap, arguing that the ‘filtering’ process doesn’t go far enough. You can read the article here.
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The Disclosure & Barring Service update the question they ask about convictions

This update is taken from our Information Hub Following our complaint to the Information Commissioners Office which recently led to the Disclosure & Barring Service signing an undertaking to update their application form, we have now had it confirmed by the DBS that their application form has now been updated. A copy of this is below. As you