Criminal records

A recent study, conducted for the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice, found that 11 million people in the UK have a criminal record and that 75% of employers admit to rejecting a job applicant once a criminal conviction is disclosed (Skills for Care, 2018).

The research suggests that a person with a criminal conviction that is several years old is no more likely to commit an offence than a person without a criminal record (The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, 2019). On this basis, employers are being urged to stop requesting disclosure, via an application form, of any criminal record. The aim is to reduce the number of people who are rejected before their application has been properly considered.

The suggestion that employers should ask about convictions at a later stage in the recruitment process has been welcomed by Ban the Box campaigners. This group seeks to remove the tick box regarding criminal convictions from application forms, arguing that employers are better able to consider a prospective employee's prior convictions later in the recruitment state. The campaign has already had some success in the UK, including the removal of the tick box on civil service job applications in 2016.