Bill passed to expunge criminal records for minor offences

Akash Sama­roo

The Low­er House has passed ma­jor leg­is­la­tion al­low­ing peo­ple with mi­nor crim­i­nal con­vic­tions to have their records ex­punged af­ter a pe­ri­od of good be­hav­iour, ef­fec­tive­ly giv­ing them a clean slate.

The Crim­i­nal Records (Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Of­fend­ers) Bill, 2026, was passed with­out amend­ments late yes­ter­day evening.

Un­der the leg­is­la­tion, a per­son may qual­i­fy to have their crim­i­nal record ex­punged if they re­ceived ei­ther a non-cus­to­di­al sen­tence or a prison term of no more than three years, fol­lowed by a crime-free re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od last­ing be­tween three and ten years.

How­ev­er, peo­ple con­vict­ed of se­ri­ous sched­uled of­fences, in­clud­ing mur­der, kid­nap­ping, sex­u­al of­fences, wound­ing with in­tent, gang-re­lat­ed of­fences, ma­jor firearm of­fences and drug traf­fick­ing of­fences, as well as peo­ple who served prison sen­tences ex­ceed­ing three years, will be ex­clud­ed from ben­e­fit­ing un­der the law.

The process re­quires el­i­gi­ble ap­pli­cants to ap­ply to a spe­cialised Crim­i­nal Records (Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Of­fend­ers) Board, which will as­sess their back­ground, con­duct and ev­i­dence of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion be­fore of­fi­cial­ly mark­ing the con­vic­tion as ex­punged from pub­lic-fac­ing records.

Once a con­vic­tion is deemed “spent”, the in­di­vid­ual will be legal­ly treat­ed as though they had nev­er com­mit­ted, been charged with, or been sen­tenced for the of­fence.

Con­tribut­ing to the de­bate yes­ter­day, Sad­dam Ho­sein said the leg­is­la­tion would help re­duce the stig­ma faced by peo­ple with crim­i­nal con­vic­tions when try­ing to se­cure em­ploy­ment.

“This bill is telling you, okay, for a pe­ri­od of time you have be­haved your­self. We un­der­stand you have a con­vic­tion, but you be­haved your­self. You have re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed your­self on your own, which means that your propen­si­ty to of­fend again may be very low. Mea­sur­ing all of those fac­tors, putting it in­to a piece of law now is say­ing that, lis­ten, we will clear your record, go out and work,” Ho­sein said.

He added: “Be­cause when the young man or the young woman who can­not get a job be­cause they may have com­mit­ted an of­fence in their ear­li­er years, you leave them on the streets, you leave them idle. And what hap­pens with idle hands? What hap­pens?”

Op­po­si­tion MP Colm Im­bert raised con­cerns over the in­clu­sion of the of­fence of “wound­ing with in­tent” among of­fences ex­clud­ed from the leg­is­la­tion.

Im­bert ar­gued the of­fence cov­ered a broad range of cir­cum­stances, in­clud­ing rel­a­tive­ly mi­nor in­juries.

“Un­law­ful wound­ing is far too wide. It will range from very mi­nor wound­ing to se­ri­ous wound­ing,” Im­bert said.

“What’s wound­ing? It is you’re break­ing the der­mis or the epi­der­mis. That’s it. You’re break­ing the skin. That’s what wound­ing is. And the whole point, the point that was made by my col­leagues, is that if some­body is guilty of a very mi­nor, very mi­nor of­fence of wound­ing, this bill will ex­clude that per­son from seek­ing to have their record ex­punged.”

How­ev­er, in wind­ing up the de­bate, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion and re­fused to al­ter the pro­vi­sion.

“The Of­fences Against Per­sons Act in Sec­tion 12, it pro­vides for a de­f­i­n­i­tion of what is un­law­ful wound­ing. And this is what it says. Shoot­ing wound­ed with in­tent, the of­fence is pun­ish­able by 15 years. Wound­ing it­self, spec­trum, it goes up to five years. No apolo­gies for hav­ing this where it is in this piece of leg­is­la­tion,” Je­re­mie said.

The Crim­i­nal Records (Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Of­fend­ers) Board will be ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent and com­prise be­tween sev­en and nine mem­bers drawn from a range of pro­fes­sion­al back­grounds, in­clud­ing the le­gal pro­fes­sion, men­tal health sec­tor, law en­force­ment and civ­il so­ci­ety.

The board is ex­pect­ed to in­clude a chair­man with ju­di­cial or ex­ten­sive le­gal ex­pe­ri­ence, crim­i­nal law ex­perts, a psy­chi­a­trist or psy­chol­o­gist, a crim­i­nol­o­gy or so­cial work spe­cial­ist, a se­nior po­lice rep­re­sen­ta­tive and peo­ple in­volved in re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and hu­man rights ad­vo­ca­cy.

The Bill will now go to the Sen­ate.