One in 4 of us is a felony because it’s dubbed ‘astonishing variety of folks in nation’

One in four Brits has a criminal record – equivalent to more than nine million UK adults of working age, new official data shows.

Around a quarter of 16 to 64-year-olds – 9.4million people – have a record on the Police National Computer (PNC), said the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

The figure includes those with convictions. These could be impending prosecutions or cautions as well as suspected criminal activity or cases where proceedings have been dropped.

Further Home Office statistics show there are 12.6million “nominal records” held on the PNC for folk with “a criminal element against their names”.

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The MoJ said the figures were estimates and that a “comprehensive programme of work” would be required to produce precise stats.

Penelope Gibbs, director at charity Transform Justice, said the data showed the need for a fairer criminal record disclosure system.

She said the shadow of criminality and brushes with the law hung over an “astonishing number of people in the country”.

Ms Gibbs added: “We also know that a quarter of all employers will not even look at somebody who has a criminal record, so that has massive implications for people who did something a long time ago and are simply trying to move on in their lives.”

Ms Gibbs said her #FairChecks campaign called for an end to automatic disclosure of cautions on criminal records, childhood offences to be automatically removed from people’s record at 18 and for short and suspended jail terms to be excluded from standard and enhanced criminal record checks after a set period.