Police role vetting forms

[pineappleeyes]

I have applied for a job with my local police force. As part of the process I am required to complete vetting forms. A question on the form is about brothers/sisters and their addresses. My half brother who I lived with up until the age of 20 with our mum has a criminal record for various offences ranging from theft, drug offences to possession of a firearm. He has never been to prison but as a youngster he did get into trouble a bit. He hasn't been arrested for well over 10 years. My question is will this affect my application?

[ChessieFL]

The reason they ask stuff like this is because when working for the police you have access to lots of sensitive information. They want to try and see if you might be tempted to pass on/sell on that information to somebody else.
It's hard to say whether it will affect your application as it will depend what the job is and how much information you might have access to.

[PinkBuffalo]

Like chessie said
It's hard to tell if it would affect your application, but if it was all in his youth and over ten years ago, I think this is taken into account. They are not completely unreasonable, and if they only employed people whose whole family had no convictions, they would probably lose half their staff!
They do need to know that you won't be tempted to look things up that aren't part of your job, and not pass things onto people who aren't entitled to know that info. This is a problem within the police, so they need to lessen that risk.
Better you declare it, rather than they find out and you haven't
Good luck!

[BerylStreep]

Declare it, and if there is room within the form I would state that you are aware of his convictions, but that you do not live with him. Do you have much contact with him now? If not, I would add that.

If you are turned down as a result of vetting there are appeal mechanisms. What they will want to know is the level of closeness of your relationship.

[pineappleeyes]

He is my half brother and we haven't had contact for about 18 months. Prior to that we rarely saw each other. I intend to declare it all and I will add a note to explain that I no longer see him. I don't even have his phone number.

[gildashairflick]

What was the outcome of this OP? I'm going through the vetting process currently and whilst I don't expect to not sail through, it is still stressful waiting. Maybe my family and our laws have skeletons I don't know about....