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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Reasons for opposing State ID cards, updated Among the main reasons for opposing a compulsory state ID card is the risk, all too real in a country like Britain with shoddy state-run IT, of being wrongfully identified. For example, imagine the danger of being wrongfully described as a criminal, and having that error imprinted in a database.
The risk is all too real.
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Amazing… they screw up people’s lives IN ERROR and what is their response? Sorry? Hell no:
Quite how listing THE WRONG PEOPLE as criminals protects ‘children and vulnerable adults’ is unclear.
I assume you’ve all read Charlie Stross’s scenario. I though that was all-too-plausible before, but today’s news makes it look even more believable.
The Home Office also rather proudly proclaims that 25,000 “unsuitable” people have been prevented from getting jobs. Of course we only have the Home Office’s word for it, that they were ‘unsuitable’. The 1,500 who cleared their names may have benn merely lucky or unusually persistent.
As for the manner of ‘unsuitability’, we know nothing. No going straight any more, it might appear. How comforted should we be that 25,000 people with criminal records have been denied useful paid employment?
Oh, and by the way, that’s 25,000 out of 9 million checked to date. The idea that the 99.7% who pass are somehow all guaranteed “safe” in some interminate sense is pretty absurd, is it not?
The public, press, and politicians have as usual been suckered into thinking this a reasonable imposition on the taxpayer, the job applicant and/or the compliant organisations when the only significant gainers have been spinning ministers, bureaucrats, bullies and blackmailers. And the system, only three years old in practice, is already regarded as natural and normal, so short are even the subjected professionals’ memories.
Taking Guy Herbert’s figure of 99.7% checked as being “suitable” (presumably meaning not having a criminal record) does not seem to accord with the actual % of the population who do have a criminal record. Is there a rational explanation?
Perhaps if you thought your criminal record was relevant, you wouldn’t apply for a job (or volunteer post, such as School Governor) that is CRB-vetted.
So the Home Office’s 1-in-300 successes are people who couldn’t overturn the black marks on a false record or who didn’t understand that the true one would count against them (perhaps naively believing it genuinely irrelevant, perhaps not knowing that the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act no longer applied in the particular case, and they were back to being a goat since 2003). A big danger, then.
Home Office logic being what it is, this point will be countered by suggesting the existence of the CRB has effectively prevented everybody else with a criminal record from taking up any of the regulated occupations (or volunteering their services) – ignoring the true likelihood that they might. But for those that indeed might have done, and were pre-empted, the same going-straight point applies.
Should we really be glad if many thousands of ex-cons are by this mechanism dissuaded from even applying for jobs that they might otherwise have been capable of doing? Would you go for a job knowing that your employer would get humiliating personal details of your past, even if entirely irrelevant and unlikely to preclude you from employment?
If it doesn’t work it is bad; but if it works it is bad too.
How does the Home Office know it has stopped 25,000 unsuitable people from getting jobs?
Surely the decision on whether a job is offered depends on: (i) the requirements for the job; (ii) such bad past history as is in the CRB record or otherwise known; (iii) whether the applicant honestly disclosed their past record, prior to the CRB check?
Best regards
I am reliably informed that due to the strictures of politically correct recruitment, people from Ghana and Nigeria are now working for the Immigration Department. They are Commonwealth citizens you see, and it would of course be wrong to discriminate. Except it would not be wrong. It would in fact be only right and sensible, but that cannot be allowed to happen in ZaNu-Lab Britain.
This country is being run by Quislings. There is no other explanation.
Guy Herbert – Thanks for the further explanation.
Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive describes some unpleasant historical outcomes. One wonders if it’s possible that the UK could turn out to be the first state to fail because of a collapse of a set of the state’s centralised computer databases: eg, PNC/CRB systems, NHS computer system, income tax credit system, etc, and the final straw, the ID system. Maybe it’s not beyond the bounds of credibility that such a degree of chaos could unintentionally arise that would bring administration of the state to a standstill, with who knows what consequencies.
Come now!
Surely this pessimism is misplaced.
ID cards will be run by the Home Office, a Premier league Department of State!
with so many successes under their belt of late.
You can almost hear the select commitee questions a few years down the line.
“So how many ID cards have you issued to date?”
“Havent the foggiest!”
“Have any, or indeed, a substantial number fallen into the hands of forign terrorists?”
“Your guess is as good as mine squire”
“But surely the database is up and running according to plan?”
“Er… well it will be, we are told, a week next tuesday. That’s when we get it back from PC World.
The 180 GB hard drive wasn’t quite big enough apparently.”
Comon! It’s the Home Office!
What could go wrong
The CRB messes things up in the other direction too. In 2003 my wife applied for “enhanced disclosure” from the CRB to take up a teaching job. She truthfully disclosed that we had spent the last two years in the USA. She received a letter stating that because she had spent more than six months outside the UK she would have to get some form of certification from the FBI before the CRB would issue the enhanced disclosure. She applied to the FBI. Before she got anything back from the FBI the CTB just sent a clean enhanced disclosure certificate.
Nigel,
How does the Home Office know it has stopped 25,000 unsuitable people from getting jobs?
Good question. I don’t suppose it gets feedback. perhaps it means it has dispensed 25,000 non-blank certificates…
Guy wrote, in response to my question: “Good question. I don’t suppose it gets feedback. perhaps it means it has dispensed 25,000 non-blank certificates…”
That’s what I assumed too.
This, I think, shows up a particular problem: that the Home Office is seriously struggling to understand the purpose and value of what it does. [And this is perhaps exacerbated by their PR department having a knee-jerk defensive attitude to any bad news.]
This is on top of the managerial and IT systems problems, which are perhaps (mearly) symptoms. It must be very difficult working there, senior but below the top level , trying to make work policy that, of itself, barely makes sense and is probably on the margins of, or even beyond, the possible.
It’s a very sick department.
Perhaps tackling the root cause of the sickness (purpose and value) would be more useful than “medication” (more and more IT and consultants) to just supress the symptoms.
Best regards
I think you are too kind, Nigel.
…the Home Office is seriously struggling to understand the purpose and value of what it does.
That implies some self-consciousness, and self-questioning, which is nothing like Home Office culture. Yes, it fails to offer any rational purpose for what it does or demonstrate any value for it to the outside world. But it doesn’t try, and is confused as to why others should question those things. Does not compute!
The Home Office conception of order as everyone behaving in approved fashion, being monitored to check they do so, and being reliably held in place by fear of punishment, is axiomatic. There’s no real self-doubt: critics are helping criminals or just don’t understand what’s good for them.
Hehehe…….
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=6045&pagtype=all
Now have a great day !
I wrote:
… trying to make work policy that, of itself, barely makes sense and is probably on the margins of, or even beyond, the possible.
It’s a very sick department.
and Guy wrote: I think you are too kind, Nigel.
I must try especially hard then, not to be unkind by intent.
More seriously, I suppose I did soften things a bit with adjectives here and there, just in case the country can recover the situation without replacing every one of the tens of thousands who work there. [Remember that some think Iraq would have recovered sooner if the Bathists had not been completely stripped out. There is a parallel.]
Best regards
How comforted should we be that 25,000 people with criminal records have been denied useful paid employment?
Here you have the infantile libertarian position: confusing Boolean variables (True/False – yes, one must explain) with normally distributed variables with mean Mu and variance Sigma.
Let’s go beyond underlying probability, let’s go Bayesian. If they have a criminal record, they’ll probably dip into the till.
I said probably. But if it’s my business, I’ll take no chances. If I’m socialist, I’ll let everybody else take my chances.
I know. Let’s have anti-employer ASBOs.
ADE – I have a criminal record for assault (one occasion, six years ago). Do you think I would “dip into the tills”? Surely the only former criminals who would be likely to steal from an employer would be the ones who were convicted of theft of some kind? Unfortunately, thanks to the attitudes of people like you, people like me, who would like to rebuild their lives (and more importantly, who have done nothing illegal since) find it incredibly difficult to find employment. I’m unemployed right now, and I know that every company to which I send my CV takes one look at the fact I have a conviction and decides not to call me for interview, regardless that I may possess the qualities/abilities for which they were looking in the first place.
I think an important ability is the ability to learn from one’s mistakes – I’ve done that. Irritatingly, I never get a chance to prove it.
Surely the only former criminals who would be likely to steal from an employer would be the ones who were convicted of theft of some kind?
Or rather, more likely than a random unbranded person applying for the same position – which is the logic of the presumption behind not employing on the basis of criminal records.
Curious, isn’t it, that it is often those keenest on punishment for crimes, who have least faith in its effectiveness as primary deterrance?
Heh, curious indeed. You’d think they’d spot the disconnect.
Lizzie,
Unless you are applying for work with children or vulnerable adults there is basically no official way that employers can get access to your criminal record. Just be economical with the truth. Also, I think that your offence may be considered as “spent” after five years so it’s not lying to say you have no convictions.
The law on spent convictions is messy and confusing. Some are never spent. Even an absolute discharge, where the judge in effect decided the prosecution was entirely without merit, is not spent for six months.
Meanwhile, the list of employers and voluntary organisations who are entitled (and in most cases obliged) to carry out either standard or enhanced CRB checks grows ever longer.