One of the things I truly don't understand about our justice system. If time served is "repaying your debt to society" then why do anyone but law enforcement have access to your record? If it isn't, then why do we incarcerate people at all?
We incarcerate people because we have to do something and incarceration is something. Nobody thinks it's ideal, to force a bunch of criminals to hang out with only other criminals and expect their criminal tendencies to somehow go away. But it's not obvious what a better alternative would be.
So yeah, not ideal, but aging people out of violence still kind of works.
Additionally, there is an element of risk-aversion among employers. Why take a risk on hiring an ex-con when you can hire someone without a record for the same effort/cost?
The effects of all of these vary widely, and many of them have very long-running debates on their merits (or lack thereof). I think it's premature to claim that any one of these concepts has a primary purpose, let alone a universally agreed-upon one.
It should not be allowed in court to use the fact that someone has paid their debt to society to punish the company that hired them.
The solution would be to forbid all insurers from factoring in former convictions from calculated premiums.
Some contracts also make it difficult for companies to do business with them if they hire someone with a criminal record. Government contracts in particular.
Finance sector companies (especially banks) have a lot of concern about theft and fraud, and one of the ways they try to mitigate this risk is by having policies restricting the employment of people who have criminal records for theft and fraud. (If you've done it before, you are more likely to do it again.)
Often, those policies will be extended to apply to vendors. So vendors will be asked to ensure that none of their employees working for that client have a criminal record for those sort of offences. They usually satisfy this requirement by running background checks during the hiring process.
An alternate solution might to give prisoners the ability to open access to their records. Yes, you committed crime X, but the records at the prison show that you kept your head down and did X qualifications.
The reason people don't hire prisoners is that it comes with risk. If we open up information, you can lower that risk.
That has its own issues but at least it'd be consistent.
It also has the downside of not allowing employers to avoid hiring people who have committed crimes in relation to their occupation. I might be fine hiring someone who embezzled as a software engineer, but I probably wouldn't hire them as my CFO.
But that shouldn't be the reason alone to make it a protected class.
Why would providing people info on past incarceration history be contrary to either of those goals?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punishment#Possible_reasons_fo...