‘Non-conviction’ information doesn’t clarify much, says Equalities Minister

By Jane Fae Ozimek

Writing in her local paper, the Hampstead and Highgate Express, Ms Featherstone starts with a sobering tale of a young black boy picked up by the police for the appalling crime of playing hide-and-seek on the grounds of a local hospital. No action ensued. But, of course, the record of the fact that this boy had been picked up – the “soft information” – would remain on file pretty much forever, and the result of a brief and innocent youthful jape could blight his entire life.

Ms Featherstone is naturally not too happy with this. She writes: “The Home Secretary and I have commissioned an independent review of Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks. Obviously if someone is charged and convicted you would expect that information to remain on the police database – and it does. But in the area of ‘soft’ information (ie non-conviction information) at present this remains on the database too.

“And ‘soft’ information varies – anything from the above incident of playing Hide and Seek – to the sort of ‘soft’ information about Ian Huntley – the murderer in the Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman murder in Soham.”

She goes on to argue that it’s possible we over-reacted to the horrific events in Soham, coming up with a system where some nine million adults might have ended up on a national vetting and barring database. Time for some balance!

The government – as per the coalition agreement – is therefore now reviewing the Vetting and Barring scheme, with a view to scaling it back: the process of setting the terms of reference is under way.

Well, not quite.

An instant uber-frothy write-up of this story by the Mail on Sunday suggests that cutbacks in the CRB scheme are already a done deal, with parents no longer required to get checked before helping out in schools, and details of offences committed by new partners also far more limited than current schemes would make them.

The Home Office doesn’t quite see it like that. A spokesman there told us last night: “No review has yet been announced. Nothing is official.”

He then relented and admitted that even if nothing was yet official, the move was in the coalition agreement. It is the sort of thing that might be brought forward in this Autumn’s great repeal Bill – so we could do the math ourselves as to the likely timing for a consultation on that issue. The Minister might just have used the “wrong tense”.

It is to be hoped that the consultation will look beyond child protection, taking some time also to consider the legal and cultural consequences of New Labour’s machinations. Despite the Bichard Inquiry, it is highly unlikely that the Vetting and Barring scheme would have done much to stop Ian Huntley. His contact with his victims was secondhand, through a partner with a clean CRB record.

Meanwhile, an increasing reliance on “soft information” (aka hearsay) and its second cousin, behavioural scoring, has done much to legitimise the singling out of individuals who fail to conform. It has been given legal justification by the Pinnington case, in which judges ruled that even where police placed little reliance on “soft information” they held, they must still pass it on to a prospective employer.

A further green light for state surveillance was provided by the Court of Appeal last October, when three senior judges ruled that the police were perfectly entitled to carry on holding on to conviction data for as long as they wished – in fact, for up to 100 years – thereby driving a coach and horses through both data protection and legislation around the rehabilitation of offenders.

Two further thoughts that the Minister might care to insert into her consultation process.

The Independent Safeguarding Authority was hailed as a means to inject professionalism into the debate, but it owed as much to former Education Secretary Ruth Kelly’s embarrassment at finding her department too closely involved in the decision-making process, as it did to any real need for such a function. It was a prime example of ministerial buck-passing masquerading as statesmanlike wisdom.

What about the nine million who now won’t all need to be vetted? As El Reg has consistently argued, the end total, even under the reduced scheme announced by Ed Balls, was always going to be far greater, given the cultural drive towards “proving” one’s innocence. We reckoned between 14 and 16 million.

Without clear signals from government, that cultural imperative towards fearfulness, so assiduously fostered by New Labour, is still there, and is a key reason why so many employers not required by law to CRB-check their employees have started to do so. The recent case of a parent banned from a school sports day for not having a CRB check is just one instance of that culture.

At last, perhaps, the tide has started to turn – but it may yet need more than a little help from government to make sure it stays turned. ®

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Bungling officials have labelled 15,000 innocent people as criminals in the past six years.

The blunders by the Criminal Records Bureau, a Home Office agency, amount to around seven smears every day.

The victims discovered they had been branded sex offenders, violent thugs or fraudsters when they had a CRB check before a new job. Many went through lengthy appeals to clear their names.

Our Freedom Of Information probe found the CRB coughed up an incredible £290,000 last year alone in “apology payments” to the worst-affected victims.

Most of the bungles involved CRB checks being mixed up, or incorrect details being given out by staff.Others involved police releasing information which was recorded wrongly when an offence was committed.

This is the effect of large-scale state bureaucracy on society. It’s being reflected by the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), it would be reflected through the National Identity Register, and it’s downright sinister. Supporters of the government’s authoritarian agenda insist ‘if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about’, but evidence such as this keeps coming up to prove otherwise. Using a contracted-out agency to determine for employers and voluntary organisations who’s worthy and who’s not worthy in society will inevitably skew the entire basis of human relationships, and make what might otherwise be minor administrative errors catastrophies for those affected by them. It’s shameful how prepared this government has been to reduce people down to mere statistics on databases, when the evidence has been that the databases are inevitably incompetently managed and frequently abused. Far worse though has been the extent to which people have bought into the database state in the name of convenience, given the extent of the misery it’s responsible for.

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Nursery worker Vanessa George and her accomplices Colin Blanchard and Angela Allen face lengthy jail terms after admitting a string of sex offences yesterday.

The three – who had started a bizarre relationship online – met for the first time in the dock at Bristol crown court, where they pleaded guilty to abusing young children and sharing the images of that abuse with each other.

It also emerged there had been online discussion between the three about abducting a child. Officers believe this may have been nothing more than a fantasy but expressed relief that finding and catching them had halted any nascent plots.

A serious case review has been launched to look at how George, previously considered a stalwart of her community in Devon, was able to abuse children. There have been calls for the use of camera phones in nurseries to be looked at again and for more checks to make sure workers do not get such easy and private one-to-one access with children.

(via ScoobsChris)

This isn’t a post about how unusual child abuse conducted by women is. I want it to be abundantly clear that Vanessa George passed her Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check and she almost certainly would have passed the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA)’s Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS). This whole case makes a mockery of the Home Office’s strategy of child protection – expecting a database or a bureaucracy to detect an abuser who doesn’t have a criminal record, and who has probably become skilful at concealing their behaviour is lunacy. Instead these three were able to commit their horrific crimes against children because:

“The nursery was not run properly. The problem was there were about 10 staff and they are all good friends – so standards got really slack.”

Parents knew standards were slack, the nursery was run poorly and then there’s Ofsted, which said after George’s arrest:

“Ofsted was unaware of the recent allegations about a member of staff at Little Ted’s Nursery in Plymouth which we understand has led to its immediate closure.

“We have had one recent complaint relating to the nursery. This complaint was not of a level that would require police involvement and did not relate to the content of the allegations made public today.

“Ofsted is investigating this matter in line with our normal procedures and it would not be appropriate to comment further until the outcomes of that investigation are complete.”

Could children’s services or the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board have stopped this? Maybe not, but it’s an indication of just how many services are out there tasked with safeguarding children, who actually have involvement with children, and even they weren’t able to detect this abuse until it was too late. Expect the ISA, with its starting presumption that everyone‘s a paedophile, to do any better will end in disaster for the genuinely vulnerable.

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The Register has noticed that the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) is looking into using biometric, ID card-based data for its disclosure process:

Proposals to use ID cards are being quietly developed alongside official “research” into how to incorporate fingerprint data into employment background checks, which was alluded to in the Criminal Records Bureau’s most recent business plan.

“This research is still in the early stages of feasibility and several options are being considered as part of this work, including options for the use of ID card data and fingerprints,” a CRB spokeswoman said.

“We really are in the very early stages of looking at the possibility of introducing biometrics into the Disclosure service. It would therefore be inappropriate to comment or speculate on any detail as yet.”

Forget for a moment the false dawn of biometrics, does anyone really think this won’t happen, considering how desperate the government is to find new, underhanded ways to compel people into having ID cards? Despite what Alan Johnson would have you believe, the government’s identity strategy is dependent on everyone having an ID card. And as the Register points out, the Independent Safeguarding Authority’s (ISA) impending Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) will put enormous extra pressure on the CRB, who will no doubt look for the most seductive solutions to reduce their already appalling error rate.

Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security – if you don’t want this nightmare scenario, then it’s time to join NO2ID.

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