Proposal for piloting district level to be granted criminal record certificates

The Ministry of Justice proposed to pilot the Justice Department under the People's Committees at district level in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nghe An to issue judicial records.

The Ministry of Justice has just announced the proposal to develop a National Assembly Resolution on piloting the decentralization of the issuance of criminal records. The 2009 Law on Criminal Records stipulates that the competent authority to issue criminal records includes the National Center for Criminal Records under the Ministry of Justice and the provincial Department of Justice.

According to the Ministry of Justice, this decentralization is consistent with the goal of simplifying administrative procedures, strengthening decentralization and delegation of power, and overcoming the situation of slow issuance of judicial records in the past. "However, this is new content, so the Ministry of Justice proposes to pilot it in some district-level units of some provinces and centrally-run cities," the draft submission stated.

After the pilot ends, the Ministry of Justice will summarize and evaluate the implementation and report to the Government and the National Assembly. The results of the pilot implementation will be the basis for studying and amending the Law on Judicial Records.

People lined up from 4 a.m. at the Hanoi Department of Justice to wait for their criminal records to be verified, April 2023. Photo: Ngoc Thanh — People lined up from 4 a.m. at the Hanoi Department of Justice to wait for their criminal records to be verified, April 2023. Photo: *Ngoc Thanh*

In addition, the Ministry of Justice also assessed that resources and facilities for issuing criminal records are still limited; the construction, management, use and exploitation of the Criminal Records Database still has information that has not been processed or updated.

According to statistics, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Nghe An are the three localities with the largest number of requests for criminal records nationwide. From 2021 to 2023, Hanoi issued an average of more than 51,000, Ho Chi Minh City issued about 96,000 and Nghe An issued 57,000 certificates each year.

In that context, receiving a large number of applications has caused an overload. "There were times when people had to line up very early to submit their applications for certificates, causing public outrage," the Ministry of Justice stated.

The total number of district-level administrative units in these three localities is 73, which means that people here will have 73 more places to register to receive criminal records. Therefore, the Ministry of Justice believes that the pilot decentralization to district-level administrative units in these three localities is "extremely necessary at the present stage, contributing to reducing pressure and creating more convenience for people". The pilot implementation period for this policy is two years.

A criminal record is a document proving whether or not an individual has a criminal record. People can go to the Department of Justice to request a certificate or do it online. However, after registering on the National or local Public Service Portal, people still have to send paper documents by post or directly to the competent authority to submit.

Many businesses and organizations have recently abused the requirement of criminal records when recruiting, managing and employing workers. Some provinces and cities have not promptly resolved the need for confirmation, causing public outrage.

The reason is that ministries and branches have not yet reduced regulations requiring the submission of criminal records and have not applied information technology to issue them online to people.

Son Ha

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