BUNGLING BRITISH CRIMINAL RECORDS OFFICE UNREPENTANT

A teacher has told how his career is under threat after he was wrongly branded a crook three times by the Criminal Records Bureau. Richard Adams, a 27-year-old computer specialist and father of three, was mistaken by CRB officials for an offender with a similar name and identical date of birth. The blunder may have cost Mr Adams the teaching post he was due to take up next month and he now fears for his job prospects.

But the CRB remains defiant. A spokesman said: "We make no apology for erring on the side of caution."

Mr Adams said: "My life has been made hell. I have been labelled a criminal three times. "Each time I told the CRB they were wrong and each time I have received a written apology - but they still keep doing it. "The second time it happened, I was flabbergasted. I was told I could not go to the school until the mistake had been officially corrected by the Bureau. "Now it's happened again. If it wasn't so serious it would be a joke."

The new blunder comes three months after The Mail on Sunday revealed how thousands of law-abiding citizens had been labelled as criminals after being confused with real crooks.

But Home Secretary John Reid, to whom the CRB reports, has refused to change the rules to prevent similar errors, despite the public outcry.

Mr Adams's nightmare began five years ago after he successfully applied to be a computer teacher at a centre near Lincoln for youngsters with behavioural problems. The school then told him that the CRB claimed he had been cautioned in 1999 for common assault and had received a conditional discharge for forging a prescription. Mr Adams was fingerprinted and cleared by police. But when he applied to work at Lincoln Christ's Hospital secondary school in 2004, the CRB again sent his employer the same details, claiming he was a forger and a thug.

Now the agency has blundered again after the Aveland High School in Lincoln offered Mr Adams a place as a 20,000 pounds-a-year IT instructor. Meanwhile, said Mr Adams, "the real criminal is walking free".

A spokesman for the CRB said: "This is not about the Bureau making mistakes where there has been a mismatch. "It is because the individual's details are similar or even identical to someone else's conviction data held on the Police National Computer."

Report here



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