Criminal convictions of States Members (FOI)

Request

Can you please let me know if any current States Members have a criminal conviction?

If so, how many have a criminal conviction, who are they and what crimes are the convictions for?

Response

The information requested is special category personal data of individuals who are current Members of the States.

We may hold information in response to this request in records we hold for two different purposes:

1. Records of convictions declared by candidates for election as required by Article 4A of the Connétables (Jersey) Law 2008 for the office of Connétable or Article 9 of the States of Jersey Law 2005 for the office of Senator or Deputy. This declared information is required to ensure there are no reasons to disqualify a candidate for any of the reasons set out in those two laws.

The declaration forms for the 2018 elections for Connétables stated:

The details you provide may be processed by the Parishes, the Judicial Greffe and / or the Law Officers’ Department in accordance with the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005 for the purposes of the Public Elections (Jersey) Law 2002 and / or the Connétables (Jersey) Law 2008, and will not be further used or disclosed without your consent.

The declaration forms for the 2018 elections for Senators and Deputies stated:

The details you provide may be processed by the Parishes, the Judicial Greffe and / or the Law Officers’ Department in accordance with the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005 for the purposes of the Public Elections (Jersey) Law 2002 and / or the States of Jersey Law 2005 and will not be further used or disclosed without your consent.

Disclosure of this personal data would contravene the data protection principles because it was collected explicitly for the purposes of compliance with election law under the strict understanding, made clear on the declaration forms, that the information would not be further used or disclosed without the consent of the candidate. This information is therefore absolutely exempt under Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the FOI Law) and we decline to supply it in response to this request.

2. Records held for the prosecution of criminal offences

There is a legal framework controlling disclosure of an individual’s criminal record which ensures the statutory rights of the individual to rehabilitation are respected while balancing the public interest in that record being discoverable. Whether a person’s criminal record is disclosed to a third party will depend on the particular purpose and circumstances of the request for the information. Disclosure under the FOI Law, which has the effect of making information fully public, would consequently not be lawful or fair; this would therefore contravene data protection principles and, depending on the particular circumstances, might be explicitly prohibited by an enactment. This information is therefore absolutely exempt under Article 25 of the FOI Law and we decline to supply it in response to this request.

Article applied

Article 25 Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.