Teenager has university place withdrawn due to spent conviction

[melpomene]

Story here

I feel sorry for him. He must have been 15 or 16 when he committed the offence and it sounds as if it was an insolated offence and he got himself back on track.

Okay. Well, I obviously have more compassion on this than you do then.

Clearly, the people who choose the admissions for this particularly university have the same feelings as you do.

I am happy to be in the minority if this is it.

oh - sorry - someone already said that - DOH!

yes, you have more compassion than me. lol, deffo.

Yes, i think he should be given chances. He has done his time and all that.

However - if he is up against other candidiates with equally as strong grades, etc. then yes - I am afraid most universities are bound to favour a non-convicted candidiate to one with a record. That is the thing when you go for highly competitive places (jobs, courses, etc.) - if you want the place you have to be the best alround candidate. Having a conviction is not going to help your chances - obvious isn't it?

Pretty much all my clients (prisoners) are very aware of such consequences - he must be pretty niave and very badly advised to think that this would not count against him.

IMO I think this guy would make an excellent Dr. His background will have given him a good understanding of "the man in the street" which is vital to an understnading of how people present themselves and their ailments. In addition his obvious determination to succeed and bring himself out of a potentially downward spiralling life of crime can only be applauded. Also, the likelihood of Imperial actually checking any criminal convictions (or non admissions of) is so low that he could have just lied and got away with it, but no, he was honest about what had happened.

So in a nutshell, we have a candidate from a less well off background with potentially good life experiences that may help in his work, who has shown a high level of intelligence, determination and honesty. Yet he gets penalised for it? WTF?

Are we all free of mistaken youthful misdemeanors? What happened to redemption in our society? Without redemption then there is no point of our criminal justice system.

And what about those doctors who are practicing who have criminal convictions for far worse offences? Should we strike them off too? What if they're excellent medics?

he no doubt will make an excellent doctor, he'll just be going to another uni, that's all. [fuss about F.A. icon]

But Aitch - he did get his first choice - so why should the college get way with treating him like this?

well, apparently he didn't break any rules by not saying prior, nor did they break any rules by revoking his offer.

if he hadn't told at some point, no doubt it would have come out at CRB checks in later life. (do docs get CRB checked? i'd have thought so).

so 'doing the right thing' showed a degree of both good sense and self-interest, not to mention being 'the right thing', i don't actually think he gets points for that.

perhaps he'll get extra kudos from another uni, just not his first choice. and i think that'll teach him as valuable a lesson as four months' community service. even the fact that he's moaning about it to the press suggests to me that he's rather missed the point about what he did. i'd be mortified and for falling on my sword if it was me.

He should have the uni place

Message withdrawn

Drs don't get CRB checked (in fact I know that you can practice with a conviction for attempted murder) so it's unlikely he would have got found out.

he didn't put it on his application. and a disclosure form is for disclosing these details. who knows, maybe the uni would have been more impressed if he'd mentioned it sooner? perhaps they felt that by not mentioning it (albeit fine according to the letter of the law) that he was guilty of sharp practice? who knows? it's up to them.

not even if they're workign with kids, pennies? that's shocking. and in this climate bound to change over the next while i'd have thought.

i don't understand why everyone thinks he should get extra uni points for doing the right thing.

My bro's a paediatrician and to my knowledge he's not be CRB checked although I could be wrong. FIL is a GP and he's not been CRB checked. My Dad has also never been CRB checked but there's not much that the medical world doesn't know about his criminal shennanigans.

I think it's tough really...having a conviction, spent or not is going to leave a "stain" on your character. Seems a reasonable enough criteria for the college to allocate places... and I really bloody hope this isn't one of my ds's one day but if it is I'll be saying the same.
Aitch do you like Green Wing by any chance?

i do indeed, although sometimes i did suffer from whimsy-overload. why do you ask?

"Falling on my sword"!
I'm going to have to go and watch it now

I work within the CJS, and I applaud anyone who can turn their life around, but offenders have to realise (15 or not) that there are consequences to their actions, some of them long-term. (And this conviction, whilst spent, dates back less than three years).

He will get a uni place elsewhere, it's not like he's been told he'll never get a uni place/job elsewhere.

It's harsh.

And folk are presuming a great deal wrt to what his burglary conviction involved.

He has learned his lesson. I'm just wondering what kind of lesson this will actually teach him though.

My DP is a doc and his is definitely CRB checked. Anyone who was in post prior to the CRB checks coming in won't be though unless they change jobs.

I know here that they have loads more applications than places for medical students so they are assessed on their "out of school" activities, so if you don't do enough team sports or voluntary work etc you don't get in, so it seems reasonable to me that someone with a conviction, though spent, would not get in.

Nurses at Birmingham childs are all CRB checked before they are allowed in the hospital to work - so can be a wait before they strat as the CRB check has to come through first. Can't see that they would discriminate and just ave nurses checked and not dr's - but maybe wrong?

aitch, he didn't put it on the application because it didn't ask the question at that stage, from what I understand. The application didn't ask about spent convictions because he hadn't been offered a place at this stage. he was even advised by UCAs not to mention it as he hadn't been offered a place, so it wasn't necessary.

Imperial then did an enhanced crb check and at the same time he told them. He then was deemed 'unfit to practice.'

Isn't this the GMC's role and not the university's? I don't know

I'm a bit dubious about doctors being such perfect people that he doesn't deserve to join their ranks. I thought people studied to be doctors so they could have loads of money. They must mean a special kind of doctor I haven't encountered yet.

But I'm also a bit doubtful about him being tricked into entering someone's house. Isn't that just something you'd say in hopes of getting away with it?

Also it may be that it was simply the first time he was caught in the act as opposed to his first offence. It may seem unfair to suspect that, but if you want people to trust you then don't be a burgler.

On the whole I'd say he is reaping what he sowed. The conviction may be spent, but where does it say we have to like or trust criminals?

i don't know either. i'm not saying he did anything wrong wrt his application btw. seems to me he just followed the process and hoped for the best. but he didn't get what he wanted, to which i say 'better luck next time'.

vvv i'm presuming nothing about his conviction. if it's what he says he did then i'm surprised that they think he presents a danger. nevertheless... better luck next time, he didn't get what he wanted because he did something quite shit a few years back.

saying he should get his place I'd be really cross to hear money being spent on someone who had burgled my house - what has he done to apologise and put right his actions?