For Pact, this means people who have lived experience of the criminal justice system. They could have been in prison, or served a community sentence. Or they could have had a family member, loved-one or close friend in prison. 

We are committed to employing people with lived experience at all levels of the charity. It isn’t just the right thing to do – we believe that employing people with lived experience will help us to design and deliver better services, that genuinely meet the needs of the people who use them.

Yes. However, the rules about who can work in the criminal justice system are tighter than most other professions.

When you complete your initial application form, you will need to disclose any criminal convictions. The details of this are not visible to the hiring manager at this point in the process, unless you choose to mention this as part of your application or interview. Your criminal convictions become visible to the hiring manager at the point that they select you as the preferred candidate for the role.

All new staff working in prisons or the probation service need to go through a security vetting process. This process is carried out by HMPPS, not by Pact. Whilst it’s impossible to prejudge the decision, there are some broad rules that it is worth considering.

If you have a criminal conviction and you want to work in a prison or the probation service it’s unlikely that you will pass ‘Standard’ vetting. There will be a longer process that you need to go through to get the required clearance. 

The nature of some offences will, in effect, preclude people from getting a job based in a prison or working with people in the criminal justice system. Anyone on a barred list, and is legally prohibited from working with vulnerable people, will not be able to work in in the criminal justice system.

There are also a number of offences that will make it less likely that you will pass security vetting. These include sexual offences, violent crimes involving serious harm, terrorism-related offences and offences involving dishonesty, such as fraud or theft.

It can be a lengthy process. It’s difficult to say exactly how long it will take, but you should expect to be waiting for a number of months, rather than weeks. Your hiring manager will stay in touch and keep you up to date throughout the process. However, if you are currently in a job, we’d recommend against handing in your notice until vetting has come through. 

Yes. When successful candidates have a criminal record, we need to make a transparent and informed assessment of their readiness to work at Pact.

We’ll hold a Readiness Assessment with you before formally offering you the role. The purpose of this meeting is not to make any judgements about your conviction, it’s about it’s about assessing its impact on your ability to work for Pact. 

We’ll explore your convictions and how you feel about them now. We need to have a relatively high level of confidence that you will be able to get the security clearance to do the job.  We want to avoid situations where candidates get through the whole application process only to be denied security clearance months down the line. This is a waste of everyone’s time.

However, we also know that coming into contact with the criminal justice system can be a traumatic experience for a lot of people. We have a duty of care to our staff and we need to know that taking the role won’t put you in distressing or upsetting situations.

There is a lot of helpful information and advice on the Unlock website