Very cool, if true

Absolutely. These things need appeals and oversight. I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

And it's always hard to deal with unsubstiated allegations. I tend to fall on the side of innocent until proven guilty, so I'd be against unsubstantiated allegations being passed on. Or at least, only being passed on with a "police investigated, he was found innocent." attached.

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If you believe it's 'innocent until proven guilty', why are there checks?

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Ethically it's a bit of a minefield. Clearly anyone who holds to the general principle of "innocent until proven guilty" has to make some form of exception in order to satisfy the competing ethic of "don't let children be harmed".

Pragmatically if we knew how many potential child abusers managed to gain jobs in care then we'd be better placed to know if this clash of ethics is worth resolving with CR checks.

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Nicely put. I've been enjoying a bunch of your comments recently.

I work in a charity, and I look at how much money we have to spend doing background checks. And how we can't take on *any* short term volunteers because not only would we not see a return on paying for a check, but the whole process can take months.

And it's not like we had a referendum or reasoned public debate. We just have had an explosion of agencies and quangos and bureaucracy responding to the 90s paedo panic.

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I actually work at the minute researching child protection decisions made by sexual health practitioners. Various ethical things tend to come up! My favourite one is currently the tension between patient confidentiality and the need to disclose suspicions of abuse. Particularly given that there tends to be a swing between preserving the family and taking children deemed at risk into care as soon as...(After Baby P and simialar cases we are heading towards the latter at pace I fear)

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Interesting. Anything you're likely to blog about, or should we look for an academic paper in the future...? =)

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There will be a paper, next year I would imagine. Being a little new to this game I'm not sure how long the publication timetable takes.

I'm unsure what the NHS status is on blogging about research projects so to stick on the safe side I probably won't do anything about it over on ye olde blog... (andyourelectronmicroscope.wordpress.com)

I might do something on decision making and risk assessment though... Given I have a shed load of references for that...

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I believe it's all been simplified - if you look at the stuff that the original post is talking about you apply to a central agency, hand them a small amount of cash, and they tell you what you need to know. I agree that large bureaucratic processes can get ridiculous - but I believe this one has now been streamlined a fair bit.

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You're checking the register to see if the person has been found guilty in the past.

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Why is there an assumption the person needs checking?

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Or to put it another way, I worked in a financial department of a large, governmental organisation. There were no background checks to see if I tended to nick things.

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I had to tell my employers about any "unspent" convictions I had. It was on the job application form. Did you not?

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Well they took it on trust that you would tell them. I doubt many, if any, employer (outside of certain occupations) actually bothers to check.

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That's different to being checked. I didn't have to pay anyone to prove to the world I was honest.

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Aaah, that I can see as a problem. I'd be more in favour of the employer paying, obviously.

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channelpenguin.livejournal.com

in my experience, they do. I've had all sorts of checks run on me by various investment banks. They pay.

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From The Reg:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/17/crb_enhanced_vetting_trouble/comments/

"I help run a childrens drama group and we will need to spend ~£640 to get our adult helpers registered under the new scheme, where will we get the money from?"

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Tough. If they're going to be spending a lot of time with kids then they need to be checked. If they need to put their prices up then that's life.

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ninebelow.livejournal.com

I'm surprised. I work in a large, governmental organisation and I had to undergo many background checks.

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Because nobody who has been found guilty of abusing children is allowed to work with them. Therefore checking the big list of people who have been found guilty is the obvious thing to do. I don't see how that's an assumption of guilt.

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You are checking the list to see if someone is on it, in case they are a child abuser, ergo there must be an assumption (or if not an assumption a mechanism of sorts) that they might be guilty.

While not an assumption of guilt it doesn't sit entirely comfortably with the principle of assumption of innocence.

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They have detectors in HMV in case you're trying to walk out with a stolen DVD. That's not an assumption of innocence either, but I also don't have a problem with that.

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How about if you had to deposit 50 quid on the way in?

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That is a good point, the only difference I would state is that the detectors are an essentially passive means of catching shoplifters out. They don't intrude on anyone elses personal lifes a CRB check is conciously carried out, it's not passive and it is (to an extent) invasive.

To be a little reducto ad absurdum (sp?) you could also state that doors (at least locked ones) also indicate the lack of an assumption of innocence. It also allows me to ask when is a door not a door?

When it's turning in to a field!

I have no real issue with CRB checks (I might if it was shown that they don't do all that much in real terms) however I do acknowledge that it's a touch "iffy" when it regards some of my socially liberal views and ethical standpoints. Certainly not enough for me to believe I have some arbitary cut off for where the presumption of innocence no longer matters but enough to make me a touch uncomfortable if I think about the competing ethics of it all.

Your mileage may differ of course.

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I feel much the same way. I don't like checking up on people, I prefer to trust them. But it does seem like this is an instance where that doesn't work.

I'd be fascinated to see some data on how often someone is caught by this.

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I suspect that if probationary services were better this wouldn't actually be needed. It's never gonna catch first time offenders afterall.

Although that brings up another ethical dilemma should "certain people" be watched by the state to protect the rest of us.

Like I said minefield ;)

(I'll have a looksee at some point to see if there is any data on this)

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a-pawson.livejournal.com

A CRB check isn't exactly invasive. Your prospective employer rights off to the relevent agency, and gets a letter back saying yay or nay.

The only ways I can see it may be considered invasive are 1) you have to sign the form to give consent, and 2) it may delay you starting work while it is carried out.

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It's more invasive then security detectors at HMV anyway! ;)

I count acess to personal data about me to be reasonably invasive, giving consent obviously takes the edge off quite a fair bit, that said I would consider (as a non-criminal record type person) that any data they held about me would also be invasive.

It's a bitch waiting for clearance.

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a-pawson.livejournal.com

I think we have different attitudes to personal data storage. I couldn't care less if my name sits on a database somewhere saying I have no criminal convictions.

The waiting time I can imagine is a problem, but hopefully efforts are being made to speed up the process.

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a-pawson.livejournal.com

I don't think there is such an assumption. In fact the assumption is probably that the person is OK from initial interviews etc.

However, the reasoning is that the repercussions of allowing someone through, who is on the register, are so great that not checking everyone becomes a risk the organisation cannot take.

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red-phil.livejournal.com

Because of the occasional 'He was proven guilty and nobody noticed until afterwards he did it again....'

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Oh, and you should leave that as a comment on the original discussion!

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While I believe that drug treatment for many, many mental illnesses is sometimes a lottery, prescription being more of an art then a science, and also have much love for the social model of mental illness... I was gonna use the magic bullet analogy but I see it is used in the article!

I have to say the altered state thing grates a little, its reliant on the "diamond mind" metaphor - I.E. that the brain/personality/whatever is somehow rigid and has a baseline state of sorts. Not that it's subject to frequent change (on a biological level at least, although I would argue that conciousness possibly exists to create certain perceptual illusions that make us believe in a constant "us" - although I have nothing to back that up whatsoever so it's probably just be a random flight of fancy) at least in terms of emotional states.

To try and make the point I'm waffling around everytime we experience an emotion it's an "altered state", everytime we learn something new ~~it pushes something old out of our heads~~ it's an "altered state". To make the arbitary point that drugs alter brain chemistry thus produce an altered state is to my mind, if not an example of, bordering on the naturalistic fallacy.

Although that said I agree with the need for articles like this, despite quibbling over what probably appears to most people to be the minutae, if only to try and address the notion held by the public of mental illness.

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Having taken the odd substance that alters personality, while I in no way believe that the mind is "static", I do believe that chemicals change the brain in some way that I'm not up to being pinned down on right now :->

If you think of the phase space of possible brain states as a nice simple circle for a moment, you might start off somewhere in the top right quadrant, and then, due to stress at work, you are currently somewhere in the bottom half of it, off to the left. By taking BrainBeWell pills you can move that state to the top half of it, off to the left.

You've been put into a different part of the phase space than you would have been without them, and possibly into a part of it that you would not enter without the aid of these drugs. Which isn't to say you _couldn't_ get there without drugs, just that it hasn't put you back into the area that you were before you started. It hasn't "fixed" the problem the stress caused, it's put you somewhere else in brain-space that you prefer to the place you'd ended up.

Some people might be happy with this. Others might want to work on the stress to the point where they can stop taking the drug and return to something like they were before it all started. They'll never be exactly the same person, but they will be someone they recognise more as themselves, and are happier being.

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