Cambios incrementales del PAPDRB en Moreno A partir de 2008, en el segundo momento de la política cuando es elegido Moreno como alcalde, se

A ‘criminal record’ is not a completely unambiguous term, although it is usually interpreted as referring only to unspent court convictions. Under the 1974 Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (ROA), most convictions become spent after a specified rehabilitation period elapses. A conviction never becomes spent if it carries a custodial sentence of more than 30 months, it is spent after 10 years for a sentence of 7-30 months, and after 7 years for a sentence of 6 months or less. Fines and community sentences become spent after 5 years.40 _{Conditional and absolute}

discharges are spent after 1 year and 6 months, respectively, while cautions, warnings and reprimands are spent as soon as they are issued.

Job applicants do not have a legal obligation to reveal unspent convictions but they might be asked to do so by their employer at the time of the job application or interview, or when signing the employment contract. Failure to disclose unspent convictions could result in dismissal. It is illegal for an employer to ask about spent convictions unless the job is listed as an exception under the 1974 ROA. Most of these exceptions are professions, offices and occupations in the finance, health and public sectors.41

There are two types of Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks in England and Wales, known as

Standard and Enhanced checks.42 _{Both Standard and Enhanced CRB checks will reveal details of}

spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands, and warnings held on Police National Computer (PNC) records. In addition, if the job involves working with vulnerable adults and children, the checks will reveal information held by the Independent Safeguarding Authority.43

Enhanced CRB checks are usually asked for people applying for jobs that involve very frequent contact with vulnerable children and adults (such as a teacher or a Scout guide). They contain the same information as Standard checks but with the addition of local police force information considered relevant by Chief Police Officer(s).

40 _{These rehabilitation periods are halved for under-18s.}

41 _{For more details see: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/agencies-public-bodies/CRB/about-the-}

crb/eligible-positions-guide?view=Binary

42 _{A third type of check, called Basic Disclosure is available in Scotland from Disclosure Scotland and can only reveal}

unspent convictions. This is accessible to applicants from England and Wales. Just under a million applications were handled by Disclosure Scotland in 2010.

43 _{Notice that the Coalition Government has announced that the Independent Safeguarding Authority will be soon}

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The CRB was established under Part V of the Police Act 1997 and was launched in March 2002 (CRB 2010). As Table 6.2.1 shows, since 2002 the number of CRB checks has increased steadily. In 2010 there were more than 4.3 million checks in England and Wales, more than a three-fold increase since 2002. About 95% of the total were enhanced checks, involving the highest level of disclosure and 7-8% of these checks revealed one or more offences. Research has suggested that, at least in the early days of the CRB, as many as 11% of CRB checks may have been illegal under the 1974 ROA (Suff 2005). It appears that criminal justice penalties are increasingly visible to employers and may be a significant influence on their hiring decisions and, consequently, in the job search behaviour of people with criminal records.

Table 6.2.1 Number of CRB checks by type and year since 2002

Period Standard Enhanced Enhanced as %

of total Total 2002 (Apr-Dec) 117,917 805,752 87.23% 923,669 2003 267,819 1,881,653 87.54% 2,149,472 2004 284,232 2,184,291 88.49% 2,468,523 2005 294,381 2,361,547 88.92% 2,655,928 2006 342,171 2,800,938 89.11% 3,143,109 2007 302,892 3,050,148 90.97% 3,353,040 2008 358,456 3,345,015 90.32% 3,703,471 2009 349,438 3,848,836 91.68% 4,198,277 2010 189,158 4,119,250 95.61% 4,308,408

Source: Freedom of information requests 17194 and 17270. 44

The number of people whose jobs are potentially vulnerable to a criminal record is large. In the 2003 OCJS sample, 9% of respondents employed in the education, health, legal and financial sectors (where a criminal record may be visible to employers and potentially sensitive) reported having used cannabis within the last year and 3% reported a current rate of consumption of at least once a month.45 _{From the viewpoint of people acquiring a drug-related}

criminal record, employment rates among 2003/6 Arrestee Survey respondents on a charge of drug possession or supply were 42% and 40% respectively.

There is no direct evidence on the long-term effect of a drug-related criminal record, but there is

reason to believe that it might be an important factor in employers’ decision-making. The most thorough study of this issue in the UK by Metcalf et al (2001) was based on a survey of

Accessed at: www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/agencies-public-bodies/CRB/Freedom-of-information/all-foi-

responses/17194-number-of-checks?view=Standard&pubID=881971 and

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/agencies-public-bodies/CRB/Freedom-of-information/all-foi- responses/17270-checks-issued/?view=Standard&pubID=856072

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employers and founds that 26% automatically reject, or view less favourably, applicants with any form of criminal record.46Drugs offences would “count a lot against” the applicant in 56% of

cases. 47

This finding is supported by an experimental audit study conducted in Milwaukee (Pager 2003), using closely matched pairs of people applying in person for entry-level jobs. For each vacancy audited, one applicant was randomly assigned to declare a criminal record, allowing the causal impact of the criminal record to be estimated. The callback rate among white applicants declaring a criminal record (17%) was half that for applicants with no record (34%). Among black applicants, the proportionate difference was still greater: a 5% callback rate compared to 14% for the non-criminal group.

We use a simple theoretical model of job search as a guide for our speculation on the costs generated by a criminal record. We assume there are two employment sectors. In sector 1, comprising mainly education, health, legal and financial services, employers have a high probability of checking criminal records and acting on the results. In sector 2, past criminality is a less sensitive issue and the risk from a criminal record check is negligible. In line with the evidence from Metcalf et al (2001) and Pager (2003), we assume that the probability of a job offer is halved in sector 1 but left unchanged in sector 2 for applicants with a criminal record.

In appendix A6.2, we set out a very simple economic model of two-sector job search which allows us to explore the possible effects of criminal record scarring. The model is calibrated using data from the British Household Panel Survey and Labour Force Survey, matched to Arrestee Survey data. It should be emphasised that this model has only the very modest objective of providing a framework for thinking about the possible order of magnitude of the scarring effect; it should not be treated as a serious predictive model.

In applying the model, we assume that every drug offence that involves arrest and interview at a police station leads to a criminal record, but we ignore cannabis warnings and PNDs. There are errors in both of these assumptions: some arrests do not result in a conviction or caution and many warnings and PNDs may be visible to some employers with negative consequences for the individual. These errors are offsetting to some degree and we expect any bias to be in the direction of understatement of the scarring effect, so that our estimates should be seen as conservative.

Table 6.2.2 shows the elements of the calculation. The assumption that employment probabilities are halved in sector 1 translates into an estimated 19% reduction of average

46 _{Metcalf et al (2001, Table 4.6).}

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earnings for all people convicted on cannabis charges. Of the twenty-eight thousand cannabis arrestees (with average annual earnings of roughly £21,500), 16.5% are first-time arrestees who are at risk of scarring. The total loss of earnings through this scarring effect is therefore estimated to be just over £100m. The component of this sum which is external to the cannabis user is the total tax/contribution yield of £23m.

Table 6.2.2 Estimated scarring costs

Parameter Estimate

Proportional loss of earnings due to scarring 1 _18.6%

Number of cannabis possession and supply convictions in 2010 28,048 Proportion of cannabis-arrestees who are first-time arrestees 16.5%

Average gross annual earnings 2 _£21,520

Aggregate earnings lost through criminal record scarring £101.9m

External cost component of earnings £23.0m

1 _{Weighted average over individuals who are not users of opiates or cocaine.} 2 _{Weighted mean}

average for Arrestee Survey cannabis-only users arrested on suspicion of a drugs offence