Criminal records charity launches website to help employers recruit people with convictions
Unlock, the country’s leading charity for people with convictions, today launches a unique website to encourage and support companies to recruit people with criminal records.
Over 10.5 million people in the UK have a criminal record and many face stigma and discrimination when applying for work, despite having put the past behind them. Unlock’s work with employers over many years has highlighted the significant business benefits of employing people with convictions. Yet recruiters often struggle to understand complex criminal record disclosure legislation and don’t know what they can and can’t do, with policies and processes that often discourage applicants. Although nine out of ten employers have said that they’re open to the idea of recruiting people with convictions, in practice less than 20% say they have knowingly done so.
The new website aims to deal with this by:
Supporting employers in recruiting people with convictions
Helping companies to deal with criminal records fairly
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) – this means that the case will go up to the Court of Appeal. The case is being heard with three other cases that involve the ‘type of offence’ exclusion (which is another area we think needs to change).
The case has been listed to be heard in February 2017 with a judgement expected later in the year.
In the meantime, nothing changes. The current DBS filtering system remains in force. If the outcome of the appeal goes the right way from our perspective, the government would need to look at extending the filtering process.
Although the review has only just been published, the date on the review is November 2015, which seems to reflect when the review was completed. After that point, the DBS appear to have set about responding to the recommendations.
Of particular interest to us was that it was good to see the review recommend that the DBS consider situations where oral representations (instead of just written ones) could be made by those at risk of being barred. This is something that we featured as an update to our information site back in February of this year.
The review also recognised how the letters and factsheets sent out by the DBS are not as effective as they might be in:
encouraging those at risk of barring to participate in the process and to make representations, or
communicating the outcome in a fashion that is both easy to understand and accurate.
The review recommended a ‘mini-review’ and suggested working closely with those who have experience of would be barrees, such as Unlock. The DBS has since done some of this work and we’ve engaged with them to improve the information and communications with those subject to the barring process.
These have been posted to our website for employers, which will be fully launched later this summer, and these case studies will help us to support other employers to not make the same mistakes.
Our response to the Government consultation on childcare disqualification
In January 2016, the Prime Minister asked David Lammy MP to investigate evidence of possible bias against black defendants and other ethnic minorities.
Comment on article in The Independent – “We should encourage more employers to do the same”
The leading charity for people with convictions has defended a Tower Hamlets school employing a convicted killer and called on more employers to hire ex criminals who have become positive members of society. In response to an article in The Independent and on BBC News, Christopher Stacey, Co-director of Unlock, said:
“We speak to people with criminal convictions every day who are struggling to find work many years after they have served their sentence. With over a quarter of people out-of-work having received a criminal record in the last 10 years, it’s in society’s interest to enable people who have offended in the past to become contributors to society rather than burdens on the state.
“With over 10.5 million people in the UK with a criminal record, we need to encourage employers to treat every applicant on a case-by-case basis and not have blanket exclusions towards people with criminal records. That’s why campaigns like Ban the Box, and the recent commitment by David Cameron to apply this approach to the civil service, are so important in changing the attitudes of employers towards people with a criminal record.
“People who have committed crime cannot change the past, but they can focus on what they do in the future. Ian Devlin looks to have done everything he can since he was released from prison to become an active, positive member of society. The school clearly recognised this in their recruitment process. We should encourage more employers to do the same.”
Unlock is an independent, award-winning charity for people with convictions which exists for two simple reasons. Firstly, Unlock assists people to move on positively with their lives by empowering them with information, advice and support to overcome the stigma of their previous convictions. Secondly, Unlock seeks to promote a fairer and more inclusive society by challenging discriminatory practices and promoting socially just alternatives.
We must encourage and support employers to recruit people from prison
Whilst government announcements last month to reform prisons and improve prisoner education are welcomed, much more needs to be done to encourage and support employers to recruit people with a criminal record.
Employers like Timpsons and Greggs have shown that people with convictions can make fantastic employees and that there is actually a business as well as a social benefit in opening up job vacancies to them. That’s why the Ban the Box campaign, led by Business in the Community, has been so important. Similarly, the Employer Forum for Reducing Reoffending (EFFRR) does excellent work, but as Dame Sally Coates noted in her review, it is still relatively small in scale. There’s also the national See Potential campaign led by the Department for Work and Pensions; they have focused in on people with a criminal record in encouraging employers to think differently about how they recruit.
People with convictions are not inherently ‘a risk’. There is a broad range of ‘ex-offenders’ and in our work with employers we emphasise the importance of recruiters not discounting applicants simply because of their criminal record. For those leaving prison, the cost of unemployment strongly translates into increased chances of reoffending.
Reforms to prisons must go hand-in-hand with more work done at a local, regional and national level to encourage and support employers. So-called ‘reform prisons’ will need to focus on the employment outcomes of those released, which is also important. Community Rehabilitation Companies will be an important part of this puzzle too, supporting people as they leave prison or serving their sentence in the community, yet there is little evidence of CRC’s supporting employers in an effective way.
The national work of Ban the Box, See Potential and EFFRR are important in changing attitudes. Regional employer networks, as recommended by the Coates Review, may well be an important connector between national initiatives and individual prisons supporting individuals to find employment on release.
Help us to scrap ‘disqualification by association’: The government are consulting on changes to the childcare disqualification arrangements
Ever since ‘disqualification by association’ (DbA) hit the headlines about 18 months ago, we have been working to try and scrap the regulations that have had a significant and unnecessary impact on the partners of those with a criminal record.
Earlier this month, the Department for Education (DfE) published a consultation with proposals for change. The deadline for responses to the consultation is 1st July 2016.
Find out more about the consultation, details of what we’re doing and how you can help on our information site.
Unlock in prison!
In February 2016, we were invited by Plias Resettlement to visit Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville prisons to present workshops on criminal records and disclosure (they deliver the National Careers Service contract there). The aim was to look at the ongoing effects of a criminal record, how this can affect a person’s ability to reintegrate into society upon release from prison, and how to overcome these.
‘We recommend the workshops that Unlock deliver; they are informative, relevant and provide people with convictions with up to date and accurate information that enables them to move on with their lives.’ PLIAS Resettlement, 2016
Plias gave us a fairly flexible brief in running a 2-hour workshop. This is where the idea behind our Top 10 things to know about a criminal record came from (which we developed at the same time). We wanted to keep things simple, but wanted to cover some of the key areas of life that people need to be aware of.
Our 1st workshop at Wormwood Scrubs (photograph courtesy of PLIAS with permission from the prison)
The result was a new ‘Moving on with Conviction’ workshop. The idea being that we would highlight 10 key areas which we think, from experience of running our helpline, are important for anybody with a criminal record to know about, with plenty of opportunity for questions.
We had about 20 men come along to the classroom in the education department at Wormwood Scrubs. With a relatively small number of people, we were able to make the session very interactive with lots of questions and answers and many of the men shared their own personal experiences. Some comments after the event were:-
I think workshops like the one today should take place more often – enlightening
Very positive approach and really well presented
Full of confidence from the first one, we headed off to Pentonville a couple of days later. This one was quite different; it took place in the large prison chapel with around 70 men turning up. The size of the room and the number of people meant that the session had to be far more ‘controlled’ which made it difficult for too much interaction. Initially, this made it quite difficult to engage with the group.
We recognise how hard it is to take any positives out of being in prison and it’s easy to think that a criminal record will prevent you being able to move on successfully in the future. It was clear that many of the men in Pentonville felt this way.
Explaining to the group that there were may employers out there that were willing to give people a second chance and highlighting how 50% of Unlock’s staff and trustees had a criminal record seemed to endorse the positive message we were trying to put across.
From then on, the atmosphere in the room seemed to change, with the session becoming more upbeat. Comments from the men included:-
I understand a lot now about jobs and how to disclose
I felt the event was done very well under pressure
We are grateful to the support of Plias in covering our costs in preparing and delivering these sessions. We’ve come away with some ideas of how we might be able to do more of these in the future, as it’s clear to us that many people in prison are simply not made aware of things they need to be alert to in dealing with the impact of having a criminal record once they’re released.
We use cookies where necessary to allow us to understand how people interact with our website and content, so that we can continue to improve our service.
We only ever receive anonymous information, and cannot track you across other websites. Find out more
