how will I know whether my conviction of theft, for which I was fined by the court,in 2005 is spent or not?

[harpreet_sheera]

will my conviction of theft from 2005 for which I got a court fine be spent by now or will it never be spent.?

[dzug2]

For what purposes do you want it spent?

For applications for certain types of job it is never spent

For US visa purposes (and some other countries too) it is never spent

[SnowQueen1973]

Just go and ask your solicitor, he or she will be able to tell you whether or not it is spent. It depends on the type of sentence you were given...e.g a crime resulting in a prison sentence takes longer to be spent than a probation order, a probation order longer than a simple fine etc.

As dzug pointed out, for some jobs it is never spent....examples include some types of civil service jobs (especially those involving law enforcement), or any type of work involving children or vulnerable adults. Such a record does not mean you will automatically be disqualified from the application, but they will of course take it into account. Again, the same does apply for visa and immigration purposes for certain countries. Some will make more difference than others, for example if someone has a drug conviction it is far more likely that they will get stopped by customs at an airport than someone whose record is clean in that regard, but a theft conviction is unlikely to result in that kind of thing occuring.

[Buenchico]

As has been stated above, convictions never become spent for certain purposes (e.g. when applying to work with children or with vulnerable adults OR when dealing with foreign administrations, such as when applying for a visa to enter the USA).

However the majority convictions do become 'spent' for most other purposes (including when applying for a Personal Licence, which I'm assuming you're referring to here) after a set period of time. For the THIRD time of telling you (by me, plus plenty of other posts from other people on here) a conviction which is dealt with by a fine becomes spent 5 years after the date of the conviction. (i.e. in 2010 in your case). The only exception to that would be if you were under 18 at the time of conviction (in which case the conviction became spent after only 2½ years) or if you've subsequently been convicted of something else. (A conviction can't become spent while you still have other unspent convictions).

Chris

[SnowQueen1973]

Indeed, a 20 pound fine is a very small penalty. If I am correct on this, community sentence takes longer to be spent that a fine, a probation order longer than that, and prison of course takes longest.
When I was very young I had a conviction for low level fraud (using a stolen chequebook). Not exactly being a professional thief I failed to get the sig spot on and was given a 1 year probation sentence. It took about5 years to be spent, so yours should be long spent by now. Looking back, that was probably the stupidist thing I ever did as a youngster, it was an older man who suggested it and I went along with the ride because I thought it would be exiciting, and like with a lot of youngsters shoplifting had already given me a buzz. It aint so much of a buzz in the cells and in court though.....as most people who get on the wrong side of the law always learn.