A professional body improperly disclosed to its members the spent conviction of a person who was interested to enter the profession
The Complaint
After many years of his conviction of dishonest conduct, the complainant wrote to a professional body to enquire if he needed to disclose the spent conviction in his intended application for traineeship in that profession.
The law prohibits members of the professional body from knowingly employing a person convicted of an offence of dishonesty without the professional body’s permission. To warn its members against employing the complainant without its prior permission, the professional body disclosed details of the complainant’s conviction in a circular to its members.
The complainant complained to the PCPD against the professional body for contravention of DPP3 in disclosing his spent conviction to its members without his consent. Separately, he applied for a judicial review, alleging that the professional body’s decision to publish his spent conviction was unlawful.
Outcome
The Court held in the judicial review that the publication of the circular disclosing the complainant’s spent conviction was unlawful. As far as the complainant’s case was concerned, he was simply exploring the possibilities of entering the profession by making enquiries on a matter of principle. There was nothing to show that the complainant was at the material time employed by any of the professional body’s members. The Court considered that the complainant should be entitled to the protection under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Ordinance until his intention to join the profession goes beyond merely exploring possibilities.
The professional body complied with the Court decision by deleting the details of the complainant’s conviction from the circular. Besides, upon the PCPD’s advice on protection of personal data, the professional body, in similar circumstances in future, would only state that the person concerned was once convicted of “a criminal offence involving dishonesty”. Any member of the professional body who finds a prospective employee mentioned in the circular may then contact the professional body for details of that person’s conviction on a need-to-know basis.
(Uploaded in March 2019)