When applying for a new role, it is common practice for your potential employer to request to perform a criminal history check on you. If you haven't completed one before, it can be an overwhelming task.
Here, we’ve put together some notes to help you better understand what a
National Police Check is and why it’s important that they are conducted.
What can a criminal history check include?
A criminal history check either indicates that no disclosable records are held or contains information obtained from police agencies that can be disclosed.
Depending on the purpose of the check, a
national criminal history check provides a summary of a person’s police history information in Australia and generally includes:
- Any charge found proven in court
- Details of the court that heard the charge, the date and any penalty or sentence
- Findings of guilt by a court, even if no conviction is recorded
- Court convictions, even if no sentence or penalty was given
- Good behaviour bonds and similar court orders
- Charges laid by police but not yet proven, or otherwise, in court
- Current investigations in which the subject is a suspect
- Children’s Court convictions and guilty findings
- Traffic convictions and guilty findings
- On-the-spot fines issued by police that ended up in court.
What does a criminal history check not include?
Criminal history checks do not contain information about
spent convictions. A spent conviction is a criminal conviction that has been removed from a person’s criminal record because it has lapsed after a period. Whether a conviction is spent will vary on state and federal legislation, but generally a spent finding is a criminal offence older than 5 years if convicted as a child, or an offence older than 10 years in any other case.
