Mind the gap

Abstract

This article discusses the relationships and tensions between the sentencing, statutory supervision and legal rehabilitation of lawbreakers under UK legislation. It does so with reference to both the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, which allows some criminal records to become 'spent' after a set period of time, and the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014, which was designed to significantly expand statutory supervision arrangements. The article also demonstrates how, post-supervision, many former lawbreakers are cast into a state of 'civic purgatory', before suggesting that a more fully integrated approach to rehabilitation is required.

Collateral consequences of criminal records from the other side of the pond: How exceptional is American penal exceptionalism?

“…(c) The third possible area of differentiation exists in the extent to which the United States has generally had fewer and weaker provisions for legal rehabilitation when compared to Europe, where long-established mechanisms for mitigating possible discrimination against people with a criminal record exist (e.g. Boone, 2011; Henley, 2018; Herzog-Evans, 2011; Morgenstern, 2011). This can perhaps account for the trend in many US states to introduce policies on ‘expungement’ (deletion of arrest records or convictions) or ‘sealing’ (removing criminal records from public view).…”

“…This means, for many, a nearly lifelong inclusion on the registry or, at least, one accounting for a substantial portion of a person’s working-age life. In the UK (England and Wales), the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 permanently excludes anyone sentenced to 4 or more years’ imprisonment from the possibility to have their conviction become ‘spent’, casting over 7,000 people each year into a state of permanent ‘civic purgatory’ (Henley, 2018). Moreover, a review of 16 jurisdictions – including New Mexico, Ohio and Texas – concluded that ‘the treatment of childhood criminal records in England and Wales is the most punitive of all’ (Sands, 2016: 7).…”