Assessing a conviction to make a reasoned judgement about risk, is a fairly simple process. It involves checking a person's criminal history against the following criteria.
Steps:
- The relevance of the offences to the job being applied for
- How long ago the offences occured
- How many times has the person offended
- The nature and seriousness of the offences
- The background to the offences
- Circumstances often change (i.e drug dependency, homelessness)
- Whether or not they were work related
- The persons attitude to the offences
It is impossible to produce a list of those convictions which should be taken into account, and those which should not, any more than health conditions can be split into relevant and irrelevant conditions.
It is, however, worth remembering that organisations which routinely train and find employment for large numbers of exoffenders, eg, Outcare (Inc.), report that in general the risk of reoffending at work is slight.
By using these guidelines, informed decisions can be made on individual applications. The following scenario uses the step-by-step guide given on the opposite page.
Job being applied for: Sales Assistant
Conviction held by applicant: Assault
1. Relevance: May be relevant because of the high stress/people contact factors of sales work. (Therefore, continue with assessment.)
2. Length of time since offence: Five years since last offence.
3. No. of Convictions: Two. (First offence was 8 years ago, second 5years)
4. Nature of Convictions; common assault, both alcohol related and following hotel closing time in car parks.
5. Background to Offence: At the age of 18 and 21. In both cases, occurred at a time of family stress (divorce
6. A pplicant maintains that he is not alcohol dependent in any way.
7 Is it work related? No connection with work.
8. Attitude: Applicant appears to accept responsibility and firmly believes that it will not happen again.
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