Trial By Gossip

nick cowen, 18 August 2008

The Register, the online IT magazine, has a detailed report on the case of John Pinnington, a deputy head teacher who was fired from his job when an enhanced criminal records background (CRB) check registered allegations of abuse, allegations that were demonstrably weak. Pinnington took his case for judicial review, arguing that mere accusations should not have been disclosed to his employer. Lord Justice Richards has taken the view that they should be disclosed and that it was for the employer to decide whether an employee posed an acceptable risk as a consequence.

Besides the principle problem here, that innocent people will be punished for crimes they did not commit, this situation is unsustainable in practice. Like over-reliance on DNA evidence, using CRBs as your primary method of vetting the safety of candidates will open up new ways by which the system can be exploited. Once children realise that they can terminate an unpopular teacher’s career through mere rumour, anonymous accusations will be flying from police files into all number of databases. Pretty soon it will be more likely for a teacher to have an accusation against them than not, meaning that we will either have far fewer and less competent teachers or elements of the enhanced CRB will be ignored by employers. Meanwhile, the real abusers will find ways of tricking the system – easier to do when the system has so many false positives.
This is not even to mention the more general chilling effect that this has on relations between adults and children, that our recent report Licensed to Hug has covered in detail.