Woman placed on Violent Offenders Registry

I am really happy about this story. I did not know there was a potentially "violent person registry." I don't know what the names would be in Canada, U.S. or Europe, but it should not be hard to find out.

Think of this scenario in the workplace, at school, etc. You make a comment, or perform an action that might upset someone with the capacity to get you on such a list, and then an notice is sent out to several dozen places that you are a potentially violent person who should not be alone with others, and then your life changes.

Here is some really neat info from this article.


I was turned into a Parriah for complaining about a yob

[quote]Jane Clift saw it as her public duty to report a drunk she saw trampling flowers in a park.

But her efforts led to a surreal nightmare in which she was branded potentially violent and put on a council blacklist with thugs and sex attackers.

Her details were circulated to an extraordinary range of public and private bodies, including doctors, dentists, opticians, libraries, contraceptive clinics, schools and nurseries. Their staff were advised not to see her alone.

The 43-year-old former care worker was forced to withdraw an application to become a foster parent and, eventually, to leave the town where she had lived for ten years.

Now, after a bitter four-year legal battle with Slough Council, the stain on her character has finally been removed.[/quote]

A list that put her up there with sex attackers if you can imagine that.

She was a care worker, and got denied fostering a child because of this.


Woman sues council for libel after being labelled
'potentially violent' for complaining about a vandalised flowerbed

[quote]Ms Clift told the court that she had to leave Slough, where she had lived for 10 years, and had initially moved to Southampton.

'I'd like to move back some time in the near future but without this hanging over my head and my family's head.

'I have many connections in Slough, I like Slough, but it was impossible for me to function normally in Slough with this on my head for 18 months, and the stain will always be there.'

She said that after the council acted, she sensed that everywhere she went, there was 'whispering, collaboration, people scurrying about'.

'One time I went to the contraceptive clinic and I felt that there were way too many people hovering about for me than should have been there, making me feel very insecure.

'It did serve as a reminder that everywhere I went - hospitals, GPs, libraries - anywhere at all, even if I phoned the fire service, as soon as my name went on to that system, it flagged up 'violent person marker, only to be seen in twos, medium risk'.'

'I'm nothing special, no qualifications, don't have a fancy job but I don't go getting into trouble. It cuts across class, race, everything.

'These people have this ability to do this and they can abuse it.
Not many people know, I didn't even know, that such a register existed.[/quote]



She sensed that everywhere she went there was a whispering and collaboration campaign, with people scurrying about. She also goes on to say more people were hovering about than should have been there, making her feel insecure. I am sure that I have another word for what they were doing, but to continue.


Woman Placed on Violent persons registry
Woman labelled violent by Slough borough council wins damages

[quote]A woman who was labelled potentially violent by a council has won £12,000 in libel damages.

Jane Clift sued Slough borough council and Patrick Kelleher, its head of public protection, over their reaction to her complaint about a three-year-old boy who vandalised a flower bed in a town park.

The authority argued that a 2005 entry about her in its violent persons register was accurate, and that Clift was obsessed with getting Slough's antisocial behaviour co-ordinator sacked.

Mr Justice Tugendhat found in favour of Clift at the high court, but rejected her claim that Kelleher had been malicious.[/quote]

She had to move and it took four years to get her name removed from this list.

I was just pointing that out, because I am sure that the policy on these lists is not to give our information to the person being placed on the lists.



http://www.doncaster.gov.uk/about/chamber/default.asp?Nav=Report&ReportID=8873

[quote]
Staff Safety (Potentially Violent Persons) Database
employees and others arising from their work activities.

3. Purpose

The purpose of this document is to alert Directorates to their statutory duties and of the corporate information system designed to enable managers to identify potential risks to employees from individuals, animals and premises. The purpose of the recording is to seek to avoid further incidents through the controlled sharing of information that will be used to undertake a better-informed risk assessment of proposed visits by employees.


5. Definitions

The Staff safety register is a secure electronic based database recording incidents involving an employee of DMBC (or partner agency) that have caused actual or potential harm.

6. Policy

It is Doncaster Council policy to ensure the health, safety and welfare of its employees and therefore managers must utilise the staff safety database to achieve this objective.

7. Responsibilities

Managers

All managers in day-to-day control of people, places etc must ensure that risk assessments are completed and are suitable and sufficient for their purpose. Managers must ensure that the significant findings arising from risk assessments are communicated to employees affected by those work activities. For the purposes of this section the work activity relates to visits by Council employees away from Council premises. See Instruction section for detailed Risk assessment.

Senior managers who, after notification of an incident to one of their employees, believe that person(s) and/ or an address now need to be included onto the staff safety register then they must notify the system manager of that decision at the earliest opportunity.

To comply with Data Protection Act 1988 if the manager decides to include a person onto the register then that person must be informed in writing of the intention to do so, the reason for their inclusion and the arrangements for review and removal. The right of appealing against that decision must also be provided.

Employees

Employees who undertake visits to non-Council premises must utilise the Staff safety register to ascertain if the location of the proposed visit is included in the register as a potential to cause harm.

Principal Safety Officer

The Principal Safety Officer as system manager has the ability to create, amend and delete data and to ensure appropriate an advisory/ training service is available to all employees with responsibilities under these instructions. The PSO must ensure that the system is managed and staffed appropriately.

8. Instructions

System Access – Three levels of access are available and a clear level of authorisation will control the granting of each. All levels of direct access to data will be password controlled and the staff safety register itself will record details of every access, including the data viewed and the reason for access.

8.1. Level 1 Access- Basic Interrogation

An email (external email facility) based enquiry function, which tests whether a name or address is registered. Appropriate staff will be specifically authorised to use this function.

8.2. Level 2 Access- View Only

The ability to view data on the software system (software installed on individual pc’s). Only a limited number of managers will be given this access. Where a level 1 user identifies a match from the email system a Level 2 user will obtain the relevant information from the software system and carry out a risk assessment for a visit to the premises and advise accordingly.
[/quote]


Interesting, I bet every single little Human Resources officer knows about this list. It goes hand in hand with make a stink go see a shrink policy they have in their handbook.

http://www.harassment101.com/Article5.html

[quote]
The next day, the plant director of human resources invoked a Ford program for combating workplace violence to bar Crosty from the factory and ordered him to see a company-paid psychiatrist or lose his job.

A little more than fourteen months later, and 725 miles away, officials at Emory University cited a similar concern about violence to justify using armed guards to escort Dr. James Murtagh off university property when Dr. R. Wayne Alexander, chairman of the department of medicine at Emory, ordered him to see a company-selected psychiatrist or lose his job. Six weeks earlier, Murtagh, a professor of pulmonology at Emory, had filed a false claims suit against the university, alleging that it had misspent millions of dollars in federal grant money. He claimed the university diverted money from research grants in order to pay for salaries and trips for administrators and some staff. The specific allegations were sealed by order of the federal judge.

Crosty and Murtagh don't know each other. It is unlikely their worlds would ever intersect, but they have at least one thing in common. They both are victims of an increasingly popular employer weapon against whistleblowers: the psychiatric reprisal.

Across the United States, companies have seized upon concerns about workplace violence to quash dissent. Hundreds of large corporations have hired psychiatrists and psychologists as consultants to advise them on how to weed out "threatening" employees. They say they are only responding to a 1970 directive from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration that they maintain a "safe and secure work environment." But by drawing the definition of "threatening" as broadly as possible, they are giving themselves a new club to bang over the heads of workers.
[/quote]


So in the workplace I am guessing this could be applied for a number of reasons, and then you end up on these little connected lists.


[quote]
132 – Violent Persons Register

Referring to Minute No. 125 – Violent Persons Register, John Irving from the COPS Team had attended the meeting and gave the following advice:

To hold a register of violent or potentially violent people on computer, the information could be de-personalised by using a classification system i.e.: 1 = Potentially violent, 2 = Threatened people before, 3 = Been violent in the past, 4 = Two-man visit, 5 = Don’t Visit.

ITEM

132 – Continued…

The Legal Services Administrator would compile a Violent Persons Database, which would be put on the Council’s Intranet system, and would be password protected. John Irving suggested that as a long-term goal, once the database had been established it would be useful to share the information with Liberata, District Nurses etc.

The Legal Services Administrator also needed to write a procedure to ensure that the Council didn’t fall foul of the Data Protection Act. It was agreed that addresses couldn’t be put onto the Violent Persons Register without proper clarification. It was suggested that a sub-group to this Group be set up to endorse these requests.
[/quote]

Minutes of the meeting from a local booby. How to really mess up someones life. I mean how to share information of violent persons.

Well just some fun food for thought. Tell me what you think, leave comments if you feel like it.