Comment by crispinb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crispinb | Hacker News Reader

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Some indigenous nations here (Australia) used spearing in the leg as one form of sentence for serious crimes. This is popularly used as a stick with which to beat indigenous Australians for having been 'savage' (thus implicitly deserving of the 'civilising' process comprising land theft, exterminations, rapes, etc).

Yet truly belonging to a community is among the most fundamental of human needs, social beings that we are. And here's the rub: once speared, aboriginal offenders had paid for their crime, and were still fully part of their tribe, with all the requisite privileges and obligations. There were other technical mitigations of the apparent severity of the punishment (eg. the spear head used was specifically designed for the purpose, smooth and covered with antibiotic agents to reduce damage & infection), but more crucially: the punishment was executed within a context that said: "you'll pay for your crime, and it will be a painful price, but you're still one of us".

Employment, for better or worse, is a lynchpin fetish of our current social arrangements, central to full community membership. Denying it is tantamount to community expulsion: a truly savage punishment.

It's not a punishment, though. Employers' motivation is not to exact retribution.

It's just people not wanting to associate with others who are more likely in the future to commit dangerous or destructive acts, because they fear being victimized. They rightly believe that if this person committed such an act in the past, they're more likely to do so in the future, as compared to someone with no such record.

If you pretend the motivation is to punish the other, instead of to avoid being victimized, you'll never be able to understand this behavior and thus will never be able to change it or adapt to it.

Perfectly fair point. But there are 2 levels of analyses here, which have different uses.

If you're a US felon trying to make a life, thinking of employers' motivation as being to punish you would be inaccurate and probably counter-productive. I don't quite agree with your characterisation of employers' motivation (I think corporate management is as uninformed, irrational, and prone to post-hoc rationalising of unthinking reflexive behaviour as is any other sector of society), but that's a side issue here. If you have a criminal history, and want to get back on track, you have to deal with potential employers as you find them.

If you're instead concerned about policy & intent on analysing the system as a whole, employers' reluctance to hire is absolutely part of the criminal disciplinary system, interacting with many other parts (eg. cultural attitudes towards criminality, levels of legally required disclosure of criminal history, legal classification of crimes, etc, etc). In a society (for example) without permanent public records of criminal convictions, or where they are rapidly expunged, and with no duty to disclose criminal history, ex-cons de facto receive less punishment. Whether the more or less punitive system offers the best balance of goods for society is a topic for debate, but that employer reluctance to hire acts as part of the punishment system is just a fact, regardless of employer motivation.

True, it is a de-facto outcome that constitutes a punishment.

Still totally understandable from an employer's point of view. e.g. How much of a discount would you need to hire a nanny previously convicted or domestic abuse?

But, it still functions as a de-facto punishment. But the rationality of it is what makes it difficult to address, without taking away the freedom of free people.

Perhaps a solution would be to make judges explicitly state that part of the punishment is to have a really hard time finding work, to make them acknowledge what's being done. Then, if the judge doesn't wish to make this part of the punishment, he can order that the criminal's future employers be subsidized, or that the record be hidden.

The thing is, these are political non-starters. Even if the overall result is better, we know what'd happen the first time a felon with a hidden record or whose paycheck is government subsidized does something awful on the job. And that will happen, fast.

Former criminals are far more likely to commit crimes than random citizens. So it's rational to discriminate against people with records. This fact has to get acknowledged, and my sense is that a lot of people don't want to because it makes the problem seem really hard to solve.

Overall, given that employers should have the right to choose their employees with knowledge intact (see: nanny example), but criminals shouldn't be receiving life-long extrajudicial punishments, I think subsidizing their wages to some degree, if they find work, seems like a good policy option. I wonder if it's ever been tried.

> Former criminals are far more likely to commit crimes than random citizens. So it's rational to discriminate against people with records. This fact has to get acknowledged, and my sense is that a lot of people don't want to because it makes the problem seem really hard to solve.

What I'd like to see is how that number changes if you only look at those in stable employment.

One reason I'm wondering about that is that the re-offending rate in the US is really horrific compared to places like Norway for example. But it's not clear if that is because of the particularly brutal US prisons, or because of ability to run background checks (there are strict legal limitations on who can request background checks and for what roles, and what can be revealed, in Norway), or something else.

Yeah, there are a lot of confounding differences between Americans and Norwegians here.

History, terrain/density, climate, culture, and even genetics all likely play a role. Not just policy.

I would be curious to learn how the numbers compare between Norwegians and Norwegian-Americans. That'd cut a few confounders at least.

(Firstly: Hi @crispinb, I lived in Mullumbimby for a few months, Northern Rivers truly is a beautiful place).

In Australia, for a first offence of a not-particularly serious nature, it is possible to ask for "no conviction", at the magistrates discretion, even when found guilty, especially if a conviction would effect your chances of future employment or study options. This doesn't apply to sexual offences, and typically wouldn't apply to anything that goes further than the magistrates courts.

[ Yes, @TheSpiceIsLife, the Northern Rivers is marvellous, and Mullumbimby's a sweet little town (I'm in the bush over the Nightcap near Nimbin). We're in that part of the year though when many of us wish for some of your cooler Tassie days ;) ]

> They rightly believe that if this person committed such an act in the past, they're more likely to do so in the future, as compared to someone with no such record.

The rightly in your comment irks me. Isn't it a self-fulfilling prophecy? One's potential criminal behavior tends to depend, at least partly, on environment, and socio-economic factors. It makes sense that anyone facing difficulties in finding jobs, for things they supposedly have paid for, are indeed more likely to recidivate. It's a vicious circle.

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