Criminal Law Committee backs extension of clean slate scheme

The Law Association’s Criminal Law Committee has submitted in support of the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) (Additional Eligibility) Amendment Bill, describing it as a principled and overdue extension of a scheme designed to help rehabilitated individuals move beyond their criminal histories. 

The Bill proposes to extend eligibility for the clean slate scheme to individuals who have received a custodial sentence of up to 12 months, or who have been subject to mandatory driving disqualification for repeat offending, provided they have subsequently completed a 10-year rehabilitation period. Under the current Act, both categories are excluded from the scheme regardless of how much time has passed or how an individual’s circumstances have changed. 

The submission describes the existing blanket exclusion of any person who has received a custodial sentence as unnecessarily rigid. A short sentence of imprisonment, it notes, can continue to affect an individual decades after it has been served, regardless of the seriousness of the original offending or the extent of rehabilitation since. 

The employment consequences of an historic conviction receive particular attention. The submission notes that disclosure of a criminal record can prevent individuals from obtaining work commensurate with their skills and experience, restrict advancement, or in some cases prevent employment altogether, even where the offending is remote in time and bears little relationship to the work being sought. Stable employment and economic participation, it argues, are themselves protective factors against reoffending. 

The submission notes that public protection safeguards remain intact under the Bill. Existing exclusions for specified sexual offences continue to apply irrespective of the length of any custodial sentence imposed. 

The committee also places the proposed reform in comparative context. Australian jurisdictions generally allow convictions resulting in custodial sentences of up to 12 months to become spent following a 10-year rehabilitation period. England and Wales operate a more expansive regime still. The submission describes the Bill as modest by comparison.