Influential criminal justice charity campaigning for removal of minor 'gender specific' offences from DBS checks

[catinboots9]

Apologies for the clunky title

www.unlock.org.uk/call-for-evidence-dbs-checks-transgender/

Surely all 'gender specific' offences of of a sexual nature???

R0wantrees I didn't know there was additional information in addition to the actual convictions. Makes sense.
I'm against CRB checks when they are unnecessary because it prevents ex-convicts getting on with life after they've been punished for their crimes. But nobody is forced to apply for a job in a position of trust. In fact normally that kind of work is very hard and poorly paid. So if you have a conviction for indecency go work as a van driver instead of a care worker. Nobody has a right to a certain job, do they?

I want to tweet unlock but I'm no sure how to word it

The counselling relationship is based on mutual trust and informed consent.

If my counsellor did not disclose to me they were trans I would consider it abusive. I am questioning the quality of this counsellor's training.

This means people can feel like they are effectively serving a life sentence for minor offences that they committed in their youth.
Except if the offence is not relevant, and the company/organisation has already recruited the individual, with the associated costs in doing so, there's nothing to suggest they'd suddenly withdraw a job offer. I'd like to see way more evidence of this being the case. In my personal experience the opposite is more likely, a previous minor conviction is discussed and deemed irrelevant in most cases.

Ffs EVERYONE will be able to tell whether someone is male if female just by looking.

It wouldn't matter if you could tell by looking. If legally a female, then the employer needs to roster (in this case) Helen as female as not putting Helen on the roster for specific requests might itself be outing.

If Self-ID is successful, and, say, Alex Drummond, were your allocated psychotherapist (for whatever reason), I assume you couldn't refuse even if you had specified a woman therapist because (say) you wanted to discuss gas lighting within a controlling relationship.

This Trans Woman Kept Her Beard And Couldn't Be Happier: www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/this-transgender-woman-has-a-full-beard-and-she-couldnt-be-h

What 'gender specific crimes' are committed by women?

Then come back to me and say that this particular TRA objective is not a MRA objective that comes at the expense of women and children and other vulnerable adults.

Nothing more needs to be said.

Yes red

How often that seems to be the case

Hang on.
Most convictions are spent after (I think) seven years.
The only checks that would reveal old convictions are the enhanced checks.
The enhanced checks are only for jobs dealing with the vulnerable in a position of trust.
So what's the bloody issue? Don't apply for that kind of job. If a conviction for shoplifting aged sixteen was preventing people from getting a job anywhere that's a different matter. But you could have a spent conviction for rape and go fit double glazing, or sell insurance over the phone, or build VoIP phone networks. It's not exactly limiting, most places don't do DBS checks.

OK so here's a potential solution: adopt the Nordic model and retrospectively wipe out all historical convictions that directly arose from being prostituted

yes, this would be fine. But it would accidentally be useful to women on the main and therefor wrong. It would also be "sex negative" to men so swerfy and terfy.

R0wantrees I didn't know there was additional information in addition to the actual convictions. Makes sense.

Turph there are differences between standard and enhanced disclosures.

This depends on the nature of the position eg a school caretaker who lives on site & works alone as opposed to a volunteer who comes into school and works alongside staff for specific purposes.

There was though a recent change with regards additional information 'Disqualification by Association'

OP bd67th wrote:
"DQ by association requirements now scrapped for schools, already.
hub.unlock.org.uk/scrapping-of-disqualification-by-association-requirement-in-schools/

Because no male teacher would ever dream of using coercive control to get his wife to take the rap for his child porn abuse images so that he could carry on teaching and having access to vulnerable children.

Never mind a bus, you could drive a cruise liner through that loophole. And it's already in effect. And where are the Press on this?

I am increasingly sure that there is a deliberate and very quiet removal of safeguarding across the board going on. The TRA/self-id aspect is just the most visible."
thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3360238-DBS-DQ-by-association-now-SCRAPPED-for-schools

This is insane.

Ffs EVERYONE will be able to tell whether someone is male if female just by looking.

The TRAs seem to miss the fact that it's not just about appearance either but body language and behaviour. I've never seen a TRA where their body language and behaviour didn't scream MALE. The complete and utter lack of empathy for vulnerable young girls and women is a bit of a giveaway for a start.

Men should not be able to become "legally female".
Documentation and laws should not be changed on the basis of a man calling himself a woman.
Transwomen should man up and own their reality.

(The same applies to transmen.)

The complete and utter lack of empathy for vulnerable young girls and women is a bit of a giveaway for a start.

This is an important thread which collates the failings / potential failures in Child Protection and Safeguarding frameworks:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3301266-Safeguarding-girls-and-protecting-women-post-Jimmy-Saville-metoo

The only checks that would reveal old convictions are the enhanced checks. The enhanced checks are only for jobs dealing with the vulnerable in a position of trust.

Even for an enhanced DBS, it's at the discretion of the police to omit some items.

I've mentioned this tragic story before: Driven to suicide as a result of an enhanced DBS certificate – the problem with the disclosure of police intelligence

[X] got the job and was told that she would need an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check. [She was allowed to start work as long as she applied for it immediately.]

Several weeks later her DBS certificate arrived and on it, disclosed under the ‘additional information’ section was her Penalty Notice for Disorder (PND) for a public order offence. [X] had received this whilst she was at university and on a night out with three of her fellow students...[X] had a strange feeling [men they passed] might be undercover police officers so jokingly as she walked past them, she made a pig-like noise.

One of them grabbed [X's] arm and told her that she had committed a public order offence by ‘making a pig-like noise in the vicinity of a police officer.’ They told her that if she accepted a Penalty Notice for Disorder (PND) and a fine she would avoid having to go to court. Believing that this was her best option, [X] accepted the PND.

[X] thought that was the end of the matter but of course as her enhanced DBS certificate was to show it most certainly was not. When she took the document to her employer, they told her that she’d acted dishonestly in not disclosing the PND and she was instantly dismissed.

You know the rest from the title of the report.

www.the-record.org.uk/unlock-people-with-convictions/driven-to-suicide-as-a-result-of-an-enhanced-dbs-certificate/

You can appeal against the disclosure of some information so it doesn't appear on an EDBS: hub.unlock.org.uk/knowledgebase/local-police-information-2/

Outside of the old sexual offences under the 1956 Sexual Offences (where men commmited xyz and women committed abc and any sex committed pqrs)

I can only think of one crime for which only a woman can be charged, tried and convicted. Infanticide.

^Where a woman:

by any wilful act or omission;
causes death of her child being a child under the age of 12 months;
but at the time of the act or omission the balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of her not having fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child;
or by reason of the effect of lactation consequent upon the birth of the child then;
notwithstanding that the circumstances were such that, but for this Act, the offence would have amounted to murder (See R v Gore [2007] EWCA Crim 2789);
she shall be guilty of an offence of infanticide; and
may for such an offence be dealt with and punished as if she had been guilty of the offence of manslaughter of the child.

Infanticide can be an alternative verdict or charged in its own right. The child that is killed must be the child to whom the birth etc. refers, and the child must be under 12 months old. The death can be by either act or omission^.

Realistically, this change is aimed at middle aged and elderly men who were convicted for "gross indecency*".

This would have occurred before 1989 (around 2,000 men were convicted that year).

*gross indecency in old laws = homosexual sexual activity that falls short of penetration

Did you mean 1969?

^^Realistically, this change is aimed at middle aged and elderly men who were convicted for "gross indecency".

It might look like that but it's woolly. Watch 'from decades ago' become anything that reveals I'm trans.

Spartacus so all they need to do is remove the "importuning as a man" from the list or change it to "importuning".

Would the employer choose not to take on a man who has a particular offence in their past?
Whether Yes or No, the same should apply to a transwoman.

Would the employer choose not to take on a man who has a particular offence in their past?
Whether Yes or No, the same should apply to a transwoman.

It will of course depend on the nature of the role, the organisation's policies and the specifics of the offence.

Organisations requiring enhanced DBS checks will have established ways to manage this. It is not unusual to deal with and such organisations (by dint of their nature) will be versed in confidentiality policies.

The key point is that it really is primarily for the organisation on behalf of the vulnerable children or adults for whom they have a duty of care to have disclosure.

I can see huge merit in those who have been prostituted not having that disclosed to employers or where they might want to volunteer

Yes, this has already been through court though and the women won. I don't know if the government have implemented it yet though, I haven't heard anything since the verdict. Has anybody been following it?