Elena Larrauri

Are criminal convictions a public matter? The USA and Spain

A criminal conviction, if widely known, constitutes a life-long stigma that limits the convicted person’s employment and other opportunities. European countries, including Spain, recognizing an ind...A criminal conviction, if widely known, constitutes a life-long stigma that limits the convicted person’s employment and other opportunities. European countries, including Spain, recognizing an individual right of informational privacy and a societal interest in limiting recidivism, sharply restrict the dissemination of individual criminal history information. By contrast, the USA, in accordance with its commitments to judicial transparency, free speech and the individual’s right of self protection, allows (and even promotes) extensive dissemination of individual criminal history information. This article compares the profoundly different policies on providing public access to individual criminal history information in Spain and the USA, illuminating the cultural and legal values behind each country’s policies and the tensions both countries encounter in attempting to reconcile these policies with other socio-political values and goals.

Conviction Records in Spain: Obstacles to Reintegration of Offenders?

This paper argues that conviction records pose a serious obstacle for the reintegration of offenders, especially in the labor market. It argues that this reintegration will be different in countries where publicity of conviction records is freely available, where employers are required to carry out regular checks before hiring their employees, and where conviction records never get expunged. The first part of the paper presents the regulation of conviction records in Spain, regarding these three matters. The paper then moves on to offer some reflections on how the erasure of spent conviction records could be strengthened and how this might aid the desistance process.

European Norms, Policy and Practice

Associate authors: Karin Bruckmuller, Luciana Caenazzo, Rob Canton, Algimantas Cepas, Berit Johnsen, Sonja Snacken, George Mair, Sandra Scicluna, Luisa Ravagnani and Dirk van Zyl Smit We now have evidence that there is a specifically European approach to key aspects of punishment. There is a pan-European rejection of the death penalty a European approach to prisoners’ rights, and the Committee for the Prevention of Torture as a strong monitoring body and we also share the idea that imprisonment must be used as ultima ratio (van Zyl Smit and Snacken, 2009). What we want to know is whether this approach extends to punishment and supervi- sion enforced outside prisons — that is, to community sanctions as sentences and supervision measures before or instead of trial.

Los programas formativos como medida penal alternativa en los casos de violencia de género ocasional

This paper deals with ‘treatment orders’ or ‘educational programs’ as a community penalty applied to people sentenced for gender violence. The paper follows the implementation of this penalty and tries to focus on the problems that confront the different actors intervening in it. In the first part the judicial system is analyzed, in the second we show the problems that face the probation officers in Catalunya, and finally we approach the perspective of the psychologists who are directly engaged in the work with the men sentenced for gender violence.

Are police records criminal records?. Disclosure of criminal information and the presumption of innocence.

Criminal background checks are used often for employment purposes. In some countries like the uk these checks tend to disclose not only convictions but also police information like arrests, cautions, and acquittals. By contrast, in other continental European countries criminal background checks for employment purposes tend to disclose only convictions. This paper argues that the disclosure of police information like, for example, arrest records is against the presumption of innocence and the right to privacy as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights.