Mandatory good conduct certificates are unworkable

Last week, following the conviction for murder of a Jordanian resident of the UAE who, it transpired, had a lengthy criminal record in his home country, there were widely reported calls from senior judges, prosecutors and lawyers for the introduction of a system to require certificates of good conduct for any expatriates wishing to come and live here.

I can understand why the idea may seem attractive. It certainly makes sense to try to develop a system of checks to exclude those who are known serious criminals.

The UAE is not alone in facing this kind of problem. In the United Kingdom, for example, there have recently been well publicised cases of European immigrants who had convictions for murder in their home countries – and then committed further murders in Britain. An effective system of cross-checking with the authorities in their home countries might well have meant that the culprits never got permission to live in Britain in the first place, although one of them was from a member country of the EU, with an automatic right to live in the UK.

While the proposal may be a good idea, there is a wide range of issues that might prevent it being universally applicable. It could only be put into effect with regards to countries where there is an efficient national crime database. The UK's Police National Computer, for example, holds records of all serious convictions. It would be a cumbersome process, but it would presumably be possible to introduce a requirement that all UK citizens applying for residence visas here should first produce a certificate of good conduct, or something equivalent, from Britain as part of their application.

In the United States, however, information on many crimes which could be considered serious are kept only at the level of individual states, rather than on a central database. It would, I suspect, be impractical to insist that all Americans coming here should obtain a good conduct certificate from each of the 50 separate states, from Washington, DC and from the five major overseas territories and other possessions. The same may well apply to many other countries which, like the US and the UAE, have a federal structure.

Many countries may not have an efficient central criminal database of any kind, due to their own lack of effective governance. A good conduct record produced by some countries may be of little real value, because of the possibility of corruption or simply because the machinery of the state has collapsed. Given the murder, mayhem and more that has taken place over the past few years in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Somalia and Nigeria – and many more besides – the value of a good conduct certificate from their governments might be rather limited.

Even where such a certificate could be issued, from an efficiently-run country with a trustworthy database and with a fair legal system, how is one to assess its value? How is one to judge whether the seriousness of a crime, unless it's one of violence, means that the individual concerned might represent a threat of some form to the UAE? When is a past conviction to be considered “spent”, or no longer relevant, today?

Nearly 50 years ago, I was convicted in the UK of illegally putting up a poster protesting against the apartheid regime in South Africa. It was a minor offence – I was fined the equivalent of Dh 2.50 – but the record may still reside somewhere in the UK crime database.

Reluctantly, I am driven to the conclusion that a blanket rule to require a good conduct certificate from every intending resident is unworkable. Let's have more checks, by all means, and, in collaboration with individual governments, and by working more closely with bodies like Interpol, it may be possible to weed out many individuals. I fear, though, that some undesirables are always going to slip through the net.

Peter Hellyer is a consultant specialising in the UAE’s history and culture