Capita Punishment UK Stasi.

[Matthew X]

Two in five face job vetting in drive to detect offenders
'The new Criminal Records Bureau predicts that within three years it will 
be making more than 11 million checks on past offenders, out of a 
working-age population of 29 million [in the UK]. The police previously 
made about one million criminal record checks a year ... The government 
drive means that a Criminal Record Certificate could soon become as 
essential for a job interview as a curriculum vitae and a suit ... Of the 
11,627,595 checks predicted to be made each year from 2005, only 3.2 
million will be on those who work with children. The other eight million or 
so certificates will be requested by people seeking to apply for work in a 
wide variety of other roles and professions. To reach these targets - which 
the bureau must hit if it is to become a self-funding body - employers will 
have to be encouraged to demand the £12 certificates from applicants' ( 
Independent )
The CRB has received a great deal of coverage in the UK media over the last 
two weeks, after it failed to clear a huge backlog of checks on school 
staff in time for the start of term. As the CRB is nominally a Home Office 
agency, the public has been given the impression that this was a civil 
service cock-up. In fact, the work of the CRB is performed by Capita, a 
private firm with a long record of botching government contracts
See also this Telegraph article, and this Guardian article

Capita punishment
'New Labour can't master the "ever-faster waves of technology". All it can 
do is produce needless suffering and throw public money at bungling and 
rapacious corporations. In all the coverage of the Criminal Records Bureau 
fiasco, few journalists have noticed the boldness of the Home Office's 
ambition. At the moment, Capita, the out-sourcing company whose failure to 
deliver benefits or stop fraud has made it an old friend of this column, 
can't check the criminal records of teachers. Children are probably dying 
on the roads because Ministers are too scared of the post-Soham tabloids to 
allow them into the safety of the classrooms. Today's scandal, however, 
could well be dwarfed in the spring ...' ( Nick Cohen via Observer )
See also this article by Michael Mandel from 1997, this Observer report 
quoting Scotland Yard sources as saying that CRB checks are likely to be 
virtually useless in any case, as the police database against which the 
checks are made is riddled with errors.LINKS?
http://www.hullocentral.demon.co.uk/site/anfin.htm