STATUTES
| Date | 01 July 1975 |
| Published date | 01 July 1975 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1975.tb01423.x |
STATUTES
REHABILITATION
OF
OFFENDERS Acr
1974
1.
Background
One of the examples frequently used to illustrate the problems of
invasion of privacy is that of a person who is deprived of a job or
whose family life is damaged by the disclosure of
a
past indiscretion
or conviction which he had hoped had been forgotten long ago.
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act
1974
attempts to deal with
this kind of situation.
The Act had its origins in Living It Down,2
a
Report of a Joint
Committee of Justice, the Howard League for Penal Reform and
the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of
Offenders. The Committee demonstrated how a man with a
“
past
”
is rarely able to shake it
off
completely and is faced with consider-
able difficulties, especially in the field of employment, insurance and
in the courts.
A
sample survey showed that the longer a convicted
person goes straight the less likely it is that he will commit another
crime: of
4,000
male first offenders convicted on indictment,
64
per cent. had gone straight for five years,
60
per cent. for
I0
years,
and the number
of
people who had been convicted after a period
of
10
years was minimal. The Committee pointed out that all the
countries in the Council of Europe, apart from Great Britain, and
many other countries, had some kind of rehabilitation law and
recommended that legislation should be introduced here whereby
after
a
certain period
of
time a person should be
“
no longer liable
to have his present pulled from under his feet by his past.”
There are various ways in which protection can be provided.
First,
it
is possible to allow a person to apply to a tribunal for a
pardon. This, it was thought, was unlikely to work. People would
be reluctant to unearth their own background before a tribunal;
there would be problems of leaks to the Press and it might be
necessary for a tribunal
to
investigate whether
a
person was leading
an honest life. Secondly, it is possible to obliterate
a
person’s
criminal record completely after a certain time. There are several
objections to this; for example, the police would not be pleased
if
they had to destroy the records of people still alive; and crimino-
logical research might be hampered. Thirdly,
it
is possible to make
it a criminal offence to ask anybody questions about rehabilitated
convictions; but this was thought to be both impractical and
too
heavy a weapon
to
deal with the situation. The fourth solution was
regarded as the most satisfactory by the Committee: after a period
of time certain convictions should be rendered inadmissible in
evidence and questions relating to such a conviction should in
--
1
C.
53.
The
Act
came
into
force
on
July
1,
1975.
2
Living
It
Down: The
Problems
of
Old
Convicfions
(Stevens)
1972.
429
430
THE
MODERN
LAW
REVIEW
[Vol.
38
general not be asked or,
if
asked, need not be answered at all or
not answered truthfully, both within or outside a court. In other
words,
a
person should be treated as if he had not been convicted.
Having made its recommendations, the Committee was fortunate
in its Chairman, Lord Cardiner, who sponsored the first Bill in the
House of Lords and played a leading role in persevering with the
proposals until its final enactment after three attempts. The history
of the legislation, from the introduction of the first Bill on Decem-
ber
20, 1972,
until the final deliberations on the third Bill at
4.35
a.m. on July
30,
1974,
exemplified the parliamentary process at its
least efficient. The Bill, first drafted by Paul Sieghart, as a private
member’s Bili, was eventually taken over and rewritten by the
Government draftsman, There was little interest in, or opposition
to, the proposals in the beginning, but almost at the eleventh hour
it
suddenly aroused the wrath of many individuals and organisations,
not the least being the Press, members of which had originally
welcomed the Bill, and the Faulks Committee considering the law
of defamation who submitted an Interim Report criticising many
aspects of the proposals. Most critics indicated sympathy for the
objectives behind the Bill but expressed grave doubts about the
provisions.
As
a result the original Bill was thoroughly mauled about
in its drafting and the Act has emerged, in the best traditions of
Finance Bills, as a complex, ill-drafted and, in parts, incomprehen-
sible, piece of law which probably does not satisfy the Committee
which made the original proposals.
2.
The
Act
It is only possible here to give a general outline
of
the legislation.3
(a)
The Rehabilitation Principle.
A
person may live down a past
conviction in the following way: first, he must wait for a certain
period
of
time, which varies depending upon the severity of the
conviction, such period being known as
“
the rehabilitation period
”;
thereafter the conviction becomes
a
“
spent conviction
”
and with
regard to that offence the person
is
treated as a “rehabilitated
person.” Not all convictions are affected: in general the Act
applies only to those not
so
heinous as to arouse strong public
reaction at the thought of convicted persons subsequently conceal-
ing them; although, interestingly, the test turns not on the particular
kind of offence but on the sentence imposed upon the guilty person.
Thus, all sentences are subject to rehabilitation except sentences
of life imprisonment, imprisonment or corrective training for a
term exceeding
30
months, and preventive detention.s The length of
the rehabilitation period varies: there is
a
maximum rehabilitation
period of
10
years for custodial sentences exceeding six but
not
‘!
For
an excellent detailed analysis, see the annotations
by
Rear in
Citrrerir
Low
4
Incliiding certain findings
of
guilt
by
military and naval authorities:
s.
2.
Sfnrccfes
(1974).
5
s.
5
(I).
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