Comment by eggpy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eggpy | Hacker News Reader

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No, I don't think someone should be punished forever. I think most people agree that our criminal justice system needs a major overhaul. Unfortunately "justice" seems to focus more on punishment rather than rehabilitation. As a cause of this, recidivism is rather high. I don't care about personal narcotics use, but a felony regarding minor possession is very different then a violent felony. Also I know a people can change and one mistake doesn't define a person.

Reading back I suppose my previous statement came off as callous. That wasn't my intention. But let's take a quick peek at felony recidivism rates [0] Spoiler alert: it's quite high and depends on what they were convicted for.

  > 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.

The system is really terrible and not particularly effective as evidenced by those statistics. I'm sure as hell glad I don't have a felony. But I'd also like to know if I were electing to employ someone that might significantly negatively impact my business. I won't write someone off because they have an asterisk, but the circumstances of a conviction would absolutely matter to me.

[0]https://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welc...

I'm glad you raised the objection with regards to recidivism. Let me offer two things:

First, what about the 30% some-odd folks who aren't recidivist? The individual should be smothered over the statistic of the many, because he's in a set of individuals (felons) and there's 70% of this set that repeats? How fair is that.

Secondly, if you're barred from professional or high-paying work because everywhere you go, you fail a criminal background check... Doesn't that mean you're MORE likely to return to crime? I don't know what it's like to have been a street criminal, but I can imagine I'd be a lot more likely to steal if no one hired me because of a past thing I did (like stealing). I'd say, the system is against me, it's corrupt and so forth, so screw it.

That last sentiment I described ("the system is corrupt anyway, it's stacked against me so screw it") is an attitude I see a lot in the (very large) US city where I live, and I know a number of people with criminal histories. They'll never end up in a cubicle farm making 180K writing code, that's for sure.

I'm really not trying to argue with you. I'm not making any broad sweeping statements like "I WILL NOT HIRE A FELON". Someone could have a criminal record and be a decent person, just as someone without a criminal record could be a terrible person. Hiring good employees is hard enough. It's not just about raw skill or ability or determination, when hiring you have to make a judgement call about that person. Can you work with this person? Is this a good investment on behalf of the business? Like I take someone's employment history into consideration, I don't think criminal history is irrelevant.

I'm 100% sure this negatively impacts the ability for those with records to get jobs. That really, really sucks for them. And like you mentioned, of course that would contribute to recidivism. Who's going to hire a thief to work unsupervised where they could just steal stuff again? That might be an unfair characterization, but I'd like to talk to the candidate about that and see if _I_ believed they were not going to steal my shit. If someone has a litany of drug convictions, I'd probably be hesitant to assume they were totally trustworthy to show up to work every day. But I'd like to talk to them about it. I guess your position is "it's none of your business", and you could be right about that.

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