Rehabilitation in the Digital Age
A new (December 2025) briefing from Unlock, the charity which supports and advocates for people with criminal records to be able to move on positively in their lives, examines how the digital age has undermined the promise of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (ROA) and sets out reforms needed to protect the right to move on from a criminal record.
The briefing, entitled the Right to be Forgotten, shows how Employers, education providers and others can easily discover information online that they would not lawfully receive via a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act
The ROA was designed for an analogue world in which criminal record information was accessed only through formal channels and with the individual’s knowledge and consent. Today, online news archives, search engines, social media and rogue “naming and shaming” sites mean that criminal records – including spent convictions – can remain searchable indefinitely.
Employers, education providers and others can easily discover information online that they would not lawfully receive via a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. Indeed many people routinely Google the name of a new work colleague out of idle curiosity. For people with a criminal conviction, the digital world can make it almost impossible to leave behind earlier mistakes.
The DBS framework
The report explains the DBS framework (basic, standard and enhanced checks) and shows that, in principle, how this system ought to balance safeguarding with rehabilitation. In practice, however, the availability of online information bypasses DBS safeguards, giving employers uncontrolled access to partial and often inaccurate criminal record data.
Many routinely conduct online searches – including via search engines, social media and AI tools – without a lawful basis or clear policy on how to handle any criminal record information they find. This creates serious risks of unlawful data processing under UK GDPR and systemic discrimination.
Compounding inequality
The Unlock briefing describes how these harms are unevenly distributed. People with non-anglicised names are more easily searchable, compounding existing racialised discrimination in recruitment. Women are more likely to attract sensationalist media coverage, often linked to trauma and poverty, and are at particular risk from abusive ex-partners who can track them online. Families, especially children, may suffer stigma and bullying linked to a parent’s digital footprint.
Unlock articulate the impact of this digital exposure:
“Living under this “long shadow” of a criminal record contributes to anxiety, depression, social withdrawal, loss of employment and housing opportunities, and can undermine desistance and trust in state institutions.”
Legal complexities
The report sets out just how difficult it can be to get personal records removed from the digital space – even when these records are inaccurate. This situation is likely to get even more difficult for those who wish to leave the past behind.
The Sentencing Bill currently going through parliament includes a proposal (Clause 35) to allow probation to publish names and photographs of people on community orders online formalises “naming and shaming” and risks creating yet another layer of digital permanence, with no clear rules on duration, delisting or deletion.
Advances in AI, including facial recognition and automated data scraping, further threaten the effectiveness of traditional protections such as name changes.
Recommendations
The report concludes with a series of seven recommendations for digital rehabilitation reform:
- Modernising the ROA to include explicit digital rehabilitation provisions and a presumption of delisting once convictions are spent.
- Statutory guidance clarifying a consistent public interest test for retaining historic conviction data online.
- A specialised Digital Rehabilitation Tribunal for serious offences to review risk, rehabilitation and proportionality on a case-by-case basis.
- Compliance with ethical standards on reporting spent convictions, aligned with Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) and Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) protections.
- Strengthening ICO capacity and tools to act swiftly against vigilante sites and unlawful data processing.
- Public awareness campaigns and accessible tools (e.g. template letters) to help individuals use ICO and IPSO remedies.
- Clear regulatory standards for AI-generated or AI-processed criminal record data.
