This shouldn't be shocking and should be more common.
You are limited on grants, student loans, SBA loans and most programs in areas like the medical field will not even accept people with criminal backgrounds at all due to the low likelihood of finding employment post training (when there is a waiting list felons will be at the bottom).
So add on top of that the fact that most people won't hire a felon...where do you go. Difficult to find gainful employment, less chance of training and then you are limited in finding funding for a small business.
Edit: In this world to In the US
Also, housing. Having a felony can exclude you from rentals entirely. Most property management companies will not rent to felons regardless of time since last conviction.
Thanks to European data protection laws at least this kind of discrimination is illegal over here.
But the rest is valid in EU too, it might not be an express "we don't hire felons"/"we don't loan to felons", but good luck trying to "cover up" a stint in jail. A few months, maybe a year tops might be excusable as "I went to India and found myself" (and still if your employer ever finds out you doctored your CV, he's eligible to fire you at an instant, even in Germany)... but anything above a year, much less a decade in prison, and you're SOL for anything but literally mowing lawns. And of course being in jail also does nothing to help your credit, quite on the contrary - lawyer bills might send you into bankruptcy too, so you're stuck with no job, no money, no credit and next to no chance to get back on your feed without serious external help - the chances are higher if you're white and speak the language, though.
There's a reason why recidivism rates are so damn high, and a massive systematic underfunding of the "after-jail-services" is a huge part of it.
I think it’s improbably to expect felons to write legal briefs that the SCOTUS examines and it’s also improbable to expect felons to become law professors are a prestigious law school.
Lots of lawyers will work their entire lives and never have either of those two situations.
If you are saying that you wish there were more extraordinary people in the world, nobody is stopping anyone from doing that.
How many extraordinary people have had their lives ruined by being asked to conquer one too many obstacles?
This story shows that there is potential in prisoners and despite the deck being stacked against him this one person succeeded. How many others would have done the same if they received support instead of discouragement?
You could do a random sample of non-prisoners and you'd get as many potential Georgetown law professors as in prison.
I don't doubt that there are a lot of prisoners that would thrive with encouragement, but you also aren't being realistic: the people who end up prison often end up there because they made a series of very bad choices which were the result of being raised in an unfavorable environment. Some people in prison will never be rehabilitated and they certainly aren't going to became Georgetown law professors. Prison tends to select for people who aren't law school material, so the likelihood is not surprisingly very low. It's not something that can be fixed by pleading to the better angels of our nature.
These incarcerations have killed my career and ruined very important relationships.
My crimes? Both were rather low level drug charges where I was guilty of deep carelessness and rather bad luck more then anything else.
I guess you can call them a "series of bad choices", but only if you think overzealous US drug laws are a good thing.
Ignoring the existence of US drug laws through “deep carelessness” is a bad choice independently of whether the US drug laws are a good thing.
Even moreso after having been imprisoned once for that.
This has nothing to do with whether the law is good/fair etc.
Even if you the have right of way at an intersection, wouldn't you wait for the truck to pass if you see that it has no intention (and/or chance) of stopping to let you pass?
You're ignoring the most fundamental assumption of the American criminal justice system. The presumption of innocence.
You also miss the lesson that can be learned from the article. If prison is treated as rehabilitation criminals can change their path to go in a positive direction. What your comment supports is the idea that consequences have permanent and devastating consequences on future potential. This is an attitude that hurts everyone.
Your last paragraph makes no sense to me. Presumably the truck driver is breaking the law and should go to prison?
I'll clarify again that I've not stated which side of the fence I'm on when it comes to who should go to prison and what prison's purpose is. I was just saying that as a rational being, if you end up in prison and do _not_ want to be in prison after you are out, you should do something about it and not expect that doing the same thing will not have the same result again.
As for the hypothetical truck driver, I was trying to say that, in such a situation, saying "I have right of way" and just going ahead is not going to save you from the accident. Though, at that point, it is unfair to you, it is still the safer option to let the truck pass. How much effort one is willing to put into doing something about the errant truck driver depends on the individual who's experiencing this and his/her circumstances.
I worked in detention, at a military facility. There was a sign where we went from the staff area to the secure area. It read, 'There but by the grace of God go I.' I'm not religious, but it has stuck with me all these years.
I've probably done everything the OP has done, and more. The only difference is that I wasn't caught and/or have enough wealth to not have been looked at in the first place.
One thing they always have access to is the Law library.
You say that some prisoners will never be rehabilitated and say they won't become Georgetown law professors. This ignores the possibility that they could become something better than a prisoner. Note that the comment you replied to did not claim that all prisoners should be Georgetown law professors.
You admit that prisoners could have better outcomes with encouragement then make unfair generalizations that reinforce our alarming incarceration rate.
This is a huge cultural problem in the United States and we need to start being honest with ourselves about these biases.
I had an uncle die in prison, I've known people that were in and out of prison. I don't judge them on that, but there's not an insignificant number that's not really capable of reform and ended up back in jail due to their own personal issues. Some of course, do change.
I'd like a better society, too, but change is based in reality, and if reality is "biased", it's not gonna do you any good to ignore it.
The reality is that our criminal justice system does not do a good job of rehabilitating people because it is focused on punishment.
Just because someone did crime and did time, doesn't mean we should continue treating them like criminal.
Where is this point coming from? If you got caught stealing candy at age 14, you're not going to become a convicted felon. NEVER. When you commit an armed robbery, I think it's fair to label someone as a former criminal.
Do all of these brand you with the mark of Cain, for the rest of your life? If so, why do we even let criminals out of prison? Haven't they served their time?
[1] One of my acquaintances went from being a drug dealer to a very successful franchise owner (I met him after he made the transition.) Prison wasn't the catalyst for him, but getting shot at by a competitor was. Would we all had been better off if he were shut off from 'good jobs' for the rest of his life?
Where is the benefit to society in labeling someone a criminal for the rest of their lives? Are you arguing that prison ought to have no rehabilitating effect?
This is not at all hypothetical. I've seen estimates that 1/4 of all convicted sex offenders were themselves minors at the time of conviction, and 14 is the age at which you are most likely to become a registered sex offender. Which will for the rest of your life affect where you live, what jobs you can take, and force you to be registered on a database where your neighbors can see that you're awful but get no useful information about your crime.
As a parent of pre-teens I'm far more concerned about them being caught up in this life-destroying lottery than I am about, say, their being kidnapped if they are so unwise as to talk to strangers.
https://www.salon.com/2017/10/16/alvin-queen-american-born-j...
It seems that he renounced his citizenship in order to avoid paying U.S. income taxes, so I don't think you can call him a "US citizen living overseas" anymore.
Some version of this exists for juvenile records already, because we recognize that people can grow and learn.
I could also see arguments for allowing the above for misdemeanors but not felonies.
You'd be surprised at how many petty offenses are considered felonies. Shortly after high school, a friend of mine took a stop sign and put it in his apartment. A few years later, the police came for some reason (he might have gotten robbed) and they saw the stop sign. He was arrested on a felony charge because the stop sign cost more than $500. (the second jaw drop is the stop sign company duped taxpayers at the tune of $500 a sign).
There is also the installation, which must conform to various specifications and is limited in placement, meaning a certain level of expertise is required.
In short, don't get caught stealing signs. They are expensive and it pisses people off. Seriously, that paint is very expensive, as is the coating over it.