A charity founder who ran as a candidate in this week’s local elections has responded to a social media post from a rival party “exposing” her prior criminal conviction.
Carlotta Allum, founder of Stretch, which delivers arts projects with ex-prisoners, was targeted in a London Labour post, which focused on her 1996 drug trafficking conviction.
The London Labour X account on Wednesday posted an image of Allum, in a thread entitled Greens Exposed with the strapline: “The people [Green leader Zack] Polanski has welcomed into his party”.
Its post targeting Allum featured a screenshot of an interview with the Daily Mirror in 2013, in which she spoke about her conviction and the impetus it gave her to start the charity.
Allum, a Green candidate for the Brixton Windrush ward in Lambeth, south London, told Civil Society she was “really disappointed” in the post and said such tactics discouraged civic engagement.
She said: “Whether you believe somebody has the right to lead a normal life after committing a crime, admitting it and paying for it, do they need to pay for the rest of their lives?
“Or can they go on to become good, upstanding citizens and contribute to society which is what a lot of people want to do, but it takes the whole of society to allow that to happen.”
Allum added that her charity had experienced a “really bad” couple of years due to the rehabilitation of prisoners being an unpopular cause and funding shortages.
However, she said she was encouraged by the inclusion of people with spent convictions in some high-profile roles recently, such as New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent appointment of Stanley Richards as his head of corrections, who spent two and a half years on Rikers Island for armed robbery.
“So even though the discussion started out in quite a negative way [from the X post], some positive conversations can come out of it,” she said.
‘A spent conviction should not become a barrier’
Paula Harriott, chief executive of Unlock, a charity which supports people with criminal records, said that London Labour’s post stigmatised people wanting to contribute to civil life.
“There is a broader democratic issue at play – a spent conviction should not become a barrier to civic participation,” she said.
“Bringing that into play as a smear tactic disregards the protections of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
“There are 12.4 million people with some form of criminal record: are we saying that those people are forever barred from taking part in civic life?”
When asked about the knock-on effects for the charity sector, Harriott said such messaging risked people being put off from applying for jobs and shying away from contributing their lived experience.
On Allum, she added: “She’s put that right [her past conviction] and now she wants to play a role in society, and I don’t think we should conflate her right to do that with discriminatory attitudes towards people with criminal records.”
Harriott, who served eight years herself for drug offences in 2004, referenced successful programmes in Europe and America where former prisoners lead community initiatives.
“That’s something that is welcomed, talked about and seen as really useful,” she said.
The London Labour X account has now removed the post. The Labour Party and its London branch did not respond to requests for comment.
