1,500 Britons falsely labeled offenders

LONDON, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Hundreds of Britons applying to work with children have been falsely branded as criminals due to government errors, The Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

Mistakes by the Criminal Records Bureau have affected 1,500 people by either wrongly flagging them as criminals when applying to become teachers, nurses and babysitters or by mistakenly giving clean records to those with criminal offenses, the newspaper said.

The Telegraph said the bureau has seen a doubling of its mistakes in the past year despite pressure put upon its leaders to cut down on the errors, which can adversely affect the careers of those falsely named as offenders, attaching a stigma to them as they go through an appeals process to clear their names.

The British Home Office faced criticism last year when the Telegraph first ran stories about the CRB mistakes and had vowed to fix them, but the 1,570 people who were falsely flagged in the 12 months prior to March 2009 was up from 680 people in the previous 12-month period, the newspaper said.

"The CRB should be as vigilant in not hounding the innocent as they are in exposing the potentially dangerous," said Conservative Party shadow Home Office minister Damian Green.