In a bid to boost employment rates among former offenders, the Justice Minister is proposing to dramatically cut the period in which they are obliged to tell potential employers about their criminal past.
The changes, which would be included as amendments in his Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, are the first to be put forward for nearly 30 years and are intended to be applied retrospectively.
They would affect hundreds of thousands of offenders who have either been convicted or served time over the last five years.
Justice Minister Lord McNally said that the reforms would remove some of the barriers that currently prevented former criminals from getting work. “Criminals must be suitably punished for their crimes. But it is no good for anyone if they go to jail and come out and then can’t get an honest job and so turn back to crime again,” he explained.
The aim was to give offenders who had served their sentence “a fair chance of getting back on the straight and narrow, while ensuring safeguards are in place to protect the public”, McNally added.
The proposals, which are the brain child of Justice Minister, Kenneth Clarke, are likely to set him on another collision course with Conservative backbench colleagues who have already expressed distain for his liberal views on rehabilitation versus custodial sentences.
More proportionate balance
His suggestions would result in the convictions of prisoners who were given six to 30-month sentences being spent after only four years rather than the current 10. Short-term prisoners who had served sentences of up to six months would likewise no longer have to declare that they had a criminal record after just two years instead of today’s seven.
Hundreds of thousands of people who had been subject to fines or ordered to serve community sentences would also be covered by the reforms and see their records cleared after one year rather than the current five.
At the same time, the changes would raise the threshold for sentences that are never spent from two and a half to four years, with the rationale being that sentences are now much longer than when the period was first fixed in 1974 under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
Employers’ lobby group, the Confederation of British Industry, backed the move.
Katja Hall, its chief policy director told the Guardian: “These changes could help more offenders who have served their sentences get jobs, assisting their rehabilitation. This benefits not only the offender, but also the taxpayer and wider community by reducing the costs of repeat offending.”
While it was crucial that serious crimes were disclosed, the proposals offered a “more proportionate balance between the seriousness of the offence committed and a prospective employer having the right information to assess the risk”, she added.
