Pilot 4 Justice: Supporting Fair Disclosure
In England and Wales, approximately 11 million people have a criminal record. Many of these are spent convictions — offences from years or decades ago, for which the individual has already completed their sentence. Yet for a significant proportion of those 11 million, the existence of a criminal record continues to act as a barrier to employment long after any legal obligation to disclose has expired.
Pilot 4 Justice exists to change that — at least for the young people we work with in Kent and Medway.
The disclosure problem
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (as amended by the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012) provides that, after a specified rehabilitation period, most convictions become "spent" and do not need to be disclosed to most employers. The rules are complex, however: rehabilitation periods vary by sentence type, certain roles are exempt from standard disclosure rules, and the rules differ again for positions involving work with children or vulnerable adults.
Many young people we encounter do not know these rules. Some disclose spent convictions when they have no legal obligation to do so. Others are uncertain about whether they are obligated to disclose and, in the absence of clear advice, either disclose unnecessarily and lose the opportunity, or decline to disclose and live with the anxiety of feeling they have been dishonest.
Both outcomes are avoidable with the right information.
What Pilot 4 Justice provides
Our Pilot 4 Justice programme offers three core elements:
Disclosure guidance. A one-to-one session with a trained adviser who walks through the individual's conviction history, explains which convictions are spent and which are not, and produces a clear, written summary the young person can refer to when completing job applications. This session is entirely confidential.
Employer engagement. We work with a network of employer partners who have made an explicit commitment to fair-chance hiring — evaluating candidates on the basis of their skills, attitude, and suitability for the role, rather than filtering on criminal record data alone. These are not token gestures: our employer partners sign a fair-chance hiring pledge and receive training on how to apply it in practice.
Ongoing support. Securing an interview is not the end of the journey. Pilot 4 Justice participants receive continued coaching support throughout the application and induction process, and have a named contact at Pilot 2 Work they can return to if they encounter issues once in work.
Why this matters
The economic case for reducing barriers to ex-offender employment is well documented. Reoffending costs the UK economy an estimated £18 billion per year. Employment is one of the strongest known protective factors against reoffending. Yet the employment gap between those with and without criminal records remains wide.
For a social enterprise based in Kent and Medway — an area with above-average rates of youth offending — this is not an abstract policy debate. It is the daily reality of the young people we work with. Pilot 4 Justice is our answer to that reality.
If you or someone you know could benefit from Pilot 4 Justice support, please contact us. All enquiries are handled in complete confidence.