Originally posted by LewsTherinThelamon
I was referring to British CCTV. That is something we do not have.

Actually, your major cities, such as Washington, New York and Chicago have many more CCTV camera's controlled by the authorities than London does. New York has upwards of 15,000 such camera's.

Once again, someone commenting on something they actually have little to no knowledge off, simply basing opinion off what they've heard around the internet. I bet my bottom dollar this opinion is based, at least in part, to the 2005 story that you are caught 300 times a day on CCTV in London. This report was roundly condemned at the time as inaccurate and even the reports own authors later dismissed it as their methodology was wrong.

With all the grumblings about non-americans commenting on gun control, this thread is a good example of why everyone should be allowed to comment on all subjects.

Even the rude and ignorant poster demonstrates why we should be able to post on any matter. He/she has shown us that these types of posters only show themselves up. They are the ones that look silly. They only lay bare their own lack of intellect. They should be embarassed and ashamed, but experience tells me that often these types of posters can suffer from such a severe level of narcissism that they are never ashamed, and become so inflexible in their views that they can not make any kind of reasoned debate.

Thanks maxmars and Phoenix 358 for your posts. Despite being in the US and Aus you have both demonstrated full understanding of the subject matter. I came to this thread heavily in favour of the current CRB system. However I am now ambivalent, torn.

I would feel remiss if i did not point out that there have been many assumptions made about the data. Nearly 12k of successfully challapenged CRBs.

4196 cases of incorrect information on police records
3519 cases of people being given the wrong persons record
4088 cases of potentially wrong identity and inaccurate info.
There were over 4 million checks.

Nowhere can I find any kind of figure of how many individuals were cheked. So we cannot say that its only 12k people out of millions. It could be 12,000, out of 100,000. For an accurate picture we need to know how many individuals are involved, not how many searches were made. Lets not forget that one person can have many CRBs done on them in one year. When I did a search. I could find no info on how many individuals are involved but it became apparent that one person having 6 or 7 CRBs was not uncommon. Remember that the CRB is only really up to date on the day it is produced.

It is also true that if even if there wasn't any kind of occulted information management there would likely be another 12,000 who have wrongly passed CRB checks.

What's the answer?

We do need a register.
We do need to protect vulnerable people.
We do need to protect innocent people from error.

Least bad option? Set the information free. Let the information in the register be freely and easily available to all. At least then you'd be able to check the info that they have on you, and you could satisfy yourself that that new nursery worker wasn't a pedo.

Originally posted by merkins
We do need a register.
We do need to protect vulnerable people.
We do need to protect innocent people from error.

Regardless of what some members may cry about passing responsibility to government etc, I absolutely agree with your 3 points.

Least bad option? Set the information free. Let the information in the register be freely and easily available to all. At least then you'd be able to check the info that they have on you, and you could satisfy yourself that that new nursery worker wasn't a pedo.

I disagree, it would make the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 redundant and create a similar situation as in the US where any unrelated past crime could damage future job prospects.