NO2ID

please help im a young single mum, who was involved in a dispute which consequently led me to be the victim on a knife attack. the other person got rid of the knife and told the police that i attacked her an must of stabbed myself. now we have both been arrested and are both on bail, while the police are gathering evidence this whole experience has been a big nightmmare for me as well getting pysically an mentally scared i now face the prospect of having no career with 6 months to go on my degree. My solicitor has told me that the cps will probably throw the case out of court i will be glad to be honest if this happens as i dont think i would be able to face my attacker in court. The other person involved wants to also drop the charges, however if I do this will it show up that i have previously been arrested in the past on a crb enhanced form.

In Scotland, an arrest that does not lead to a conviction does not appear on an Enhanced Disclosure. I don't know about England & Wales though.

If its just a normal CRB check then most likely it wont show up.

However it will show up on an enhanced CRBm which can contain hearsay, police suspicions and accusations made against you by any member of the public even if those accusation are untrue and never proven. Not to mention they can also include other police 'soft intelligence' they may have about you such as indications of alcohol / drug use/abuse etc.

Generally you can expect aything & everything to show up on an Enhanced check

KitFox, is it at the Chief Constable's discretion in E&W, or is hearsay automatically included on enhanced CRB checks?

I believe that it is now considered par for course as it were.

Several news sources such as el-reg have uncovered the fact that the police consider it a case of covering themselves. if they dont release all the info they have and someone who shouldnt be is employed then the premise is the police would be accountable. Hence usually for the 'Enhanced' disclosures usually everything is put in right from the start

thanks everyone for the advice, however it seems like i might as well as take a chance an go to court as my career is now in the drains any advice anyone?
Its just that i cant see no way out of this as who would want to employ someone who has been arrested for assualt working with vunerable adults. Ive lost faith in the system now i just feel guilty and i have not even been to court yet

The interesting thing to bear in mind about the additional information provided by the Chief Constable on the enhanced disclosure, at least as far as schools are concerned, is that it should not be treated as a reason not to employ someone. Note, of course, the use of the word "should". When this was pointed out to me I asked the expert on school recruitment what the point was of it if it should not be used as a basis for refusing employment and he explained that it was difficult to see a point but that the "official" position is that it should act as a flag to school that there may be issues that warrant monitoring of the individual should they be employed. It's all a bit of a nonsense really: putting a big red flag on an enhanced disclosure (well, I believe it is in fact an * on the enhanced disclosure certificate) and then saying to schools that they should deflect their eyes from it until the individual is employed.

Hi,
so are you saying more or less it is down to the chief constables discretion to decide on the accusation as to wether or not it should be put on the enhanced crb.

Yep!

From http://www.crb.gov.uk/glossary/glossary_of_terms_-_disclosure.aspx
My bold

Note also the next sentence in the guidance FnCP quoted:

There appear to be occasions where hearsay and guilt-by-association inferences are being passed on in these "additional information letters", which the CRB applicant is forbidden from knowing about. See:

http://forum.no2id.net/viewtopic.php?p=110128#110128

Sorry, didn't want to divert the thread, but this is also worth pointing out.

So is there anyway to challenge information provided "at the chief constables discretion"?

Some allegations from 5 years ago that led to an investigation by the school, police and dfes has just come up on a friends crb enhanced disclosure. The account given by the police on the crb is very biased, innacurate in places and one sided. The person was cleared by the dfes who conducted a 2 year investigation and said that the allegations were "unsubstantiated" and cleared them to teach. they applied for supply work as a way beck into teaching and got this back on their crb but have been offered a full time post in the meantime, for which the crb is pending!!

This info is clearly likely to come up when this new crb comes up?? What is the procedure that the head would ahve to go through? Are they likely to/can they dismiss outright? My friend has all the paperwork, letters from dfes, police which all say the allegations were "unsubstantiated". But what has been put on the crb is all the made up stuff which was never proven and are not based on any witness statements, just things people said, hearsay! There are even alibi's for some of the incidents mentioned which arent on there????

Its soooo wrong, how one person can ruin a career. Any advice??

Based upon the court ruling that allowed such information to be inlcuded into CRB reports I would say your really out of luck with regards to challenging it.

The CRB folks are protected from legal challenges by the 'in good faith' precedant, in that they are only suppliers of information and not the originators of the information which they recieve and pass on in good faith.

Good luck doing anything against the police as they can claim security / secrecy rights to the information to prevent its release into the courts and public records.

Having said that, you really ought to see a lawyer if you think they are passing on information that is incorrect/biased/false etc. I just dont think you'll be able to do much about it though.

any advice on the procedure that a head would have to go through? Could they sack them straight away on recieving the disclosure??

A CRB check is a condition of employment as far as schools are concerned and currently are not applied retrospectively. So, if someone is already working for a school and was employed prior to the mandatory introduction of CRB they can not be forced to have one and thus can not be sacked. This will change with the ISA in 2011 when employees who have not been CRB checked will have to apply for ISA registration.

Since the CRB check is a condition of employment it is not a case of sacking as the employment contract would not have been in force as one of the conditions would not have been satisfied.

It is also worth reiterating that according to a school's recruitment specialist the information on the enhanced CRB provided at the discretion of the Chief of police that is not associated with convictions should not be used as the basis for refusing employment. The difficulty with this, of course, is proving that the reason that employment was refused was because of the disclosure on the enhanced CRB rather than numerous other legitimate reasons.

We cannot give advice on individual cases. You have done the right thing by talking to a lawyer. And anyine in a similar situation should talk to a lawyer who specialises in the topic - organisations such as CAB may be able to direct you to one.

As a general point, do note, that the way the current vetting and barring schemes operate, being aquitted by a court is not deemed to leave you in the clear, any more than having the charges dropped does. Because of the peculiar consequences of reduction in police discretion and changes in the criminal justice system over a decade or so, many victims of assault can expect a counterallegation and to be arrested. So one bureaucracy effectively stimulates spurious allegations, and another demands that any allegation whatsoever has consequences for the person accused.

The long term consequence in a rational world would be for CRB checks to be recognised as empty bureaucracy and widely ignored, but that seems to be being pre-empted by bringing the barring that would otherwise be neglected under bureaucratic control. Nevertheless, the effects are so mad, random and deadening on civil society that the system simply cannot be sustainable... can it?

I believe that's the case. Amazingly, even people who have NEVER been accused of any crime and have NO criminal record can be tarred with this system. I know of a case where a man with no criminal history who was detained by the police (not arrested) under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 had this fact disclosed on an ECRB check, even though he was not accused or suspected of committing any offence, but was thought to be suicidal by the police officers in attendance.

I have also heard rumours (don't know if they are true) that the ECRB check would disclose that a person has had a Mental Health Act Assessment where the police were brought along by the psychiatrist/social workers to act as muscle. (This happens if its believed that a patient may get aggressive should they be detained in a Mental Hospital under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983 - which can be for up to 6 months). Of course, if the patient is totally compliant and the police are not needed and wait down the street in case they are called (which is what usually happens) then it is clearly unfair to disclose this occurred on their ECRB check.

Hi everyone,
Just thought I should let you all know how I am getting on. The case was dropped due to no evidence and even though the police said I could still go to court. It would be 50/50 chance of winning, so I decided to drop everything and get on with my life. In the meantime I finished my degree and went for 3 jobs disclosing the arrest to the 1st job interview who stated to me that I did not have to declare whta I told them as I was not charged, convicted, cautioned, or warned. I did not really want the job so continued to keep my options open. Anyway to cut a long story short, I now have just been offered my dream job and on the interview they asked me.... Did I have any convictions, cautions, pending allegations ect.... and I said NO!! However I now have to fill in a enhanced crb and find myself in the same situation as I was in the begining. Will this jepordise my offer of employment? should I tell them now about the past arrest or wait till the crb comes back? I am a very honest person and would like your views on this.

Surely the real obscenity associated with this state of affairs (manifestly absurd and irrational though it undoutedly is ...) is that there is very little real scope to challenge it.

Sorry but I think this is the wrong place for advice on what you are facing. The Citizens Advice Bureau may be your best bet.

Hiya,

I've noticed that your last post was written about a year ago. How did you get on? Did you get the job? I am in a similar position like you were then and I am also worried than the arrest (which is not my fault) and the pending investigation will show up on my enhanced CRB which I am currently waiting for. I am absolutely gutted for this situation. Pleas let me know. thanks. Twenty two

Good day. i wonder, when a crb or enhanced crb are done, should you also get a copy of it sent to your home? Thanks.

Yes, a copy is sent to your home address but the tittle-tattle gossip section aka 'soft information' can be withheld and sent only to the requester.

I had a bad upbringing and got into trouble when i was 13/16. I then started work and cleaned up my act and worked hard for the next 15 years. I then went back to taking drugs as a relationship ended and other things. But basically i started doing things i am not proud of. But again i got my life back in order i spent quite a bit of money retraining. And again started getting my life in order. I became a surveyor in the damp industry and then went on to get a job surveying properties for solar. The company applied for a crb check. I had already been working there for over 4 months before it came through. So they then found some other reasons to sack me they got a list of things together. None any worse than any other of the surveyors. In fact it showed i was quite good when compared to other surveyors who had started at the same time as me. In fact i had been to some of their jobs to gather more information or correct bad or wrong information. So out of the surveys i did which where an average of 5 per day for 8 months. I only had 4 that i was told at my dismissal meeting that where wrong or had to be re-done not a bad average. But i was sacked because of my crb check. I was also told this was the reason by my line manager. (In confidence of course) so the crb check showed that i had problems but that i was not a threat to any vulnerable people. And had i disclosed that at the start i would never had got passed the first stage so the people out there that say be honest are living in cloud cuckoo land

So when is the tribunal?

Obershnaus - Can you be a little more specific?