Hundreds wrongly dubbed criminals

The CRB is an executive agency of the Home Office

Nearly 1,500 people have been wrongly labelled as criminals by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB), it has emerged. The Mail on Sunday said the mistakes had led to some people being turned down for jobs or university places.

The Home Office said the errors arose when personal details were similar to those of people with a conviction, but were “a tiny proportion of cases”.

It said 90% of disputes were resolved within 21 days and, while errors were regrettable, it would not apologise.

Only 0.03% of the nine million “disclosures” the agency makes had been wrong in this way, it said.

[…]

“We err on the side of caution in these rare cases precisely because it is vital to ensure that the disclosure individuals do not fraudulently try to claim they have no criminal convictions when in fact they have.”

[…]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5001624.stm

And there you have it. Because they are incapable of keeping records correctly, they ‘err on the side of caution’ and brand you as a criminal. Even though you have done nothing, they prevent you from going to university or getting a job, and then do not even have the decency to apologise. This short circuits the principle that you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. It short circuits the courts. It makes a mockery of every idea of justice held by decent people.

If the tories do not win the next election and the NIR / Identity Verification Service comes on line, the number of people suffering this nonsense will increase by orders of magnitute. This will not only be through the brute incompetence of the Home Office, but deliberate swapping of your identity for a criminal’s by employees of the government.

Of course, if you refuse to go into the system, you will not have your records in there to be swapped.

The ‘position’ of these animals is precisely the same as the DVLA and their attitude to the users when they get it wrong; they take no responsibility whatever for their own incompetence. You will not be entitled to compensation. You will not be able to sue them for defamation of character. You will simply be fucked, and there is nothing you will be able to do about it.

Now to those imbeciles who say, “checking that you do not have a criminal record will not be possible with the NIR; its not in the legislation”; you are truely amongst the most retarded of the retards. Not only will the NIR be used for this, but the Home Office says that you will be able to do this explicitly. This means that many people will be branded as criminals when they are no such thing, and then of course, there are the subtle sub-criminal gradations of activity that can brand you as an ‘unnaceptable type’. Buying ‘too much’ alcohol. Too many trips to the pharmacy. Too many stays in the same hotel in London when you are a Londoner. I’m sure that the Blogdialers can (and indeed they have) come up with their own scenarios.

I had the most unpleasant experience of having to speak to one of the reactionary, illiterate, educationally subnormal poorly spoken ‘men of the street’ yesterday, who trumpeted loudly that he would gladly hand over his DNA, eye scan and fingerprints, “to stop the baarstards”. It was when I pointed out to him the recent ‘scandals’ involving Whitehall, the Home Office, the Koreans, and the fact that (and this was the killer) he does everything he can to avoid paying VAT, and that his little games will be given ‘the kibosh’ by this scheme, that he blanched and turned completely against ID cards.

This subhuman, this idiot was screaming about how he didnt care who knew what alcohol he was buying and even said he would be willing to thumbscan for petrol…untill I pointed out to him that anyone that wanted to employ him would be able to find out how much alcohol he buys a week, whereupon he quickly retreated with a, “Oh! I see your point there”.

Honestly; its clear that there is MUCH more work that needs to be done, since the lowest common denominator still doesn’t get it!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 12:58 pm and is filed under NIR.