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Comment by legulere | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

> "The people who are on the list are not guilty until they've been prosecuted and taken to court, and the system makes that very clear", Simon says - and under the Data Protection Act "if anyone misuses that data there are very significant fines".

Probably someone will follow you around the shop or ask you if they can help you instead of you not being let in into the shop. Those are already pretty common tactics.

Those tactics also don't feel nice though (I experienced them first hand, when I was in a foreign country and was a bit nervous in shops - not because I was shoplifting but because I wasn't sure wether I would be understood by the cashier).

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So, they are put on a list and discriminated against _after_ paying for the original crime, on the belief that they are incapable of reforming.

Personally, I'm not comfortable with that concept.

The stats are not in the favor of your argument:

"Property offenders were the most likely to be rearrested, with 82.1 percent of released property offenders arrested for a new crime compared with 76.9 percent of drug offenders, 73.6 percent of public order offenders and 71.3 percent of violent offenders."

http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welco...

The stats don't matter, IMHO. It could be 99% of them who re-offend; to segregate and discriminate against them after they have paid for their crime is a strike against the basic human rights of those people.

Previous conviction record is not one of so-called protected characteristics (gender/race/religion/etc), it is completely legal to discriminate based on that.

Basic human rights include a lot of things, but the list of those does not include a right to be trusted despite your prior actions, and it does not include a right to be served in particular location - those are privileges or interpersonal relationships that may be granted or withheld as the others believe is best for them.

> it is completely legal to discriminate based on that.

Unless you're breaking the rehabilitation of offenders law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_Offenders_Ac...

Yes, most jurisdictions have some kind of expiry for criminal record.

However, for good reasons, this doesn't happen automagically at the end of a prison sentence, it requires much more time than that and many thieves (the profession having a high rate of re-offending) spend most of their out-of-prison lives without this expiry/rehabilitation occurring.

No it isn't. If 81% of them are re-arrested (which means much more than 81% commit the crime again), a little inconvenience and suspicion is fully justified.

As long as there are adequate safeguards for incorrect data (as should be provided by the DPA in the UK), I don't see any problem with this.

It's no different to companies choosing not to do business with people based on credit history, financial standing, etc.

Imagine, for a moment, that I shoplift as a teenager as a drunken dare. I'm caught, and pay the fines and a bit of community service.

Or, perhaps I'm just suspected of shoplifting because one of my friends did shoplift while I was with them, and I'm added to the list. The doubt is reasonable enough that it wouldn't get me convicted, but it's enough for this system to add me and keep me in it.

For the rest of my life, I would be treated as a criminal by shopowners, even if I never commit another crime.

It's down to the retailer if they want you on their property, and that's how it should be.

If they opt for a stricter system (which would cover the edge cases you describe) that loses them some genuine custom, that's their loss.

The target is of course persistent offenders, not the kind you mention.

Any list like that sure sounds like slander/libel. If you are treated as a criminal by a shop-owner because someone else is making claims about your reputation, this is the exact type of situation that slander/libel laws were created for.

Also, I could be badly mistaken, but isn't slander strongly enforced in the UK? Wasn't there a scandal involving forced apologies?

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