My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison
twitter.com
twitter.com
I 100% honestly feel like tech saved my life. My first job immediately gave me hope that I'm not defined by my past. Went from working in a factory making $7/hr (about 10 yrs ago), to now grossing well over 6 figures (currently making west coast type wages).
Run a small consultancy now and can even subcontract out work to a few friends. I know there's alot of talk on how to make the industry more inclusive (which I agree we need to do better at). But I can't think of any industry as meritocratic as tech.
In fact, in one very sad case, I showed up to my first day of work as a sys admin and was walked out after 2 hours because the HR department neglected to go over my application and see the felony checkbox until that day, despite having been hired over a month before!
I have no idea how well that would work, but it seems like the only variable you can control.
This never gets enough visibility among freelancers / contractors / consultants - it can be really hard to get paid and for smaller amounts of money it often would take too much in legal fees to actually get paid.
This is an important one, as is a clause in your contract that will force them to pay legal fees in the event you have to sue to get them to pay.
>Don’t work until payment is made?
I'm a fan of arrangements where clients pay something up front, then receive work, then pay the rest. No client in their right mind is going to pay the whole amount up front and frankly nor should they. But, if they pay 50% up front, you do work, and then they decide to stiff you for the final payment, you'd better have a good lawyer and a tight contract.
Edit: background checks are standard practice for employees and contractors usually.
I've done a lot of consulting and small contracts on the side and have never been aware of any background checking. I don't even think most have my SSN, just the info for my bank account. And I have a pretty common name. There's convicts even in my state with the same name I can find on search. Often there's not even a formal contract, just a handshake.
Also you can make money this way all over the world.
There are always waivers so to speak. I've hired people that have had bad pasts, as long as they've shown they're on the right path. If we're not going to give people opportunities after they've completed what we as a society have deemed as recourse for their actions, what's the point in it all.
You may not be able to get a clearance or work in some finance positions, but there are ways.
So I have no ability or desire to try to hide from my past, at this point. I'm just trying to own up to my mistakes and do better.
Have you thought about changing your legal name? It's a bit of a chore, but it might allow to permanently shed a lot of baggage if you change to a common name.
You either haven't worked bottom-of-the-barrel jobs or lived in areas where this sort of thing wasn't allowed.
For our business, larger customer MSAs often have requirements about criminal convictions.
We additionally require -- per soc2 as well as MSAs -- to background check our contractors.
As the twitter author said, it's a thing that I could potentially work around, but there's only so many hours in the day. And I would probably have to be able to permanently guarantee that eg an employee with a felony conviction never had access to certain data.
Freelancing was the approach I saw some people do successfully, but there were lots of projects we couldn't put them on.
We even saw clients that refused anyone who had even a misdemeanor, at which point I discovered how many of our consultants had misdemeanor DUIs or arrests for various non-violent reasons.
It's very easy to get slapped with a misdemeanor in the U.S and even many other countries, often for absurd, bullshit reasons that had more to do with the mood of the authorities in a given context than a person being at all an abnormal danger to society.
The stigma with former felons is why there's a lot of repeat offense, why people stay stuck on the social ladder, and of course why the US' attempt at democracy is laughable.
If you know you're not going to pass the background check then you're probably better off working at a startup.
That might be your problem. From what I heard it's a more sensitive role so they will take a stricter stance.
Hell, even if you committed a murder that doesn’t make you any more likely to steal company secrets.
If that mattered, all of antidiscrimination law would be struck down.
discrimination is prohibited towards protected categories. i.e. gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation... on top of it, most of those aren't things that you choose yourself.
With the possible exception of religion (you're born into a certain culture, so "by default" you might feel affiliated to a certain religion, so asking people to renounce that would definitely be oppressive), and veteran status (which is not a protected category around the world, I think... though it is in the US)
If you self-select into a segment of the population that no one is born into[1], yet it's lawfully discriminated against (i.e. felons ITT) I'm afraid that you don't have a good case to protect yourself from such discrimination.
[1] Unfortunately, systemic racism and the plea/prosecutors/bail system make it so that people in certain segments of the population are more likely than others to end up involved in crimes.
If there never was any racism there would be no need for laws forbidding discrimination on race, conversely if we where deeply elitist based on height there could exist laws about height discrimination.
With regards to felonies the two question I consider focal are:
1) what is the long-term plan for convicted criminals, and
2) how much extra-judicial/social punishment should we tolerate on non-public figures for non-public crimes.
1% of 988 murderers were arrested for a new crime (yet not another murder). Is that higher than average? It sounds like it is.
Keep in mind also that being an ex-con in a community likely puts you at the top of the PD's suspect list for new crimes, and that reintegration with society is difficult, so imprisonment (regardless of crime) makes recidivism more likely.
Intuitively, it makes sense that "statistically, it does", but if words have meaning, than "statistically" means literally there are statistics demonstrating the assertion, and so far, bupkis
The world is a disappointing place sometimes.
If you want to minimize the extent to which people use demographics as a proxy for qualities they want to select for, then make it as cheap and reliable as possible to measure those qualities directly.
More realistically, the (un)likelyhood of a felony conviction going unnoticed on a background check means that whether or not you check the box, if the employer does a background check it will become known, but some places don't run the check and some don't actually care about the results but they're required to run the check.
https://sfgov.org/olse/fair-chance-ordinance-fco
https://sfgov.org/olse/sites/default/files/FCO%20poster2020....
1. Go to a big city where software folks are paid a lot
2. Apply for roles at startups or small companies who find it hard to compete with big companies paying a lot.
3. Profit
During lunch, I pop my head in the manager's office, and let them know how thankful I am for the position. I'm excited to have the opportunity. Manager never had someone do that before.
Later on that afternoon I got a called in to that manager's office. Change of plans, no need to come in again. I could collect my things (what things? First day.) and go.
Getting a gig in a security context is going to be hard. While most places can't openly not hire you due only to you being a felon, that's how it's going to be. It's not great, but that's how it is.
Most of the real earners in security are making proof of concept code for vulns, and a huge swath of them are felons. Zerodium has generally the best payouts if you don't want to bother networking and building a client list. They do not care about any previous felonies. They only care that your code works. They will pay hundreds of thousands to a million dollars for PoC in some stuff. If you can find two exploits in mid-tier stuff a year, you can earn a six figure living.
There's also the crypto economy.
Another big tip is to move where cost of living in extremely low (Eastern Europe, Cambodia, etc) to make your freelance money last longer while you look for good bugs. I'm a former felon -- my felony conviction was vacated but nobody really seemed to care after I left prison by flipping the false charges on appeal that I wasn't technically a felon anymore. There were no real job opportunities and I had to make my own.
I'm clueless. What would lead to serving life?
Bottom line is people are absolutely horrible to each other if they're given even the slightest pretense. It's just a disgusting facet of our psyche, I guess. Those convicted of a crime are condemned to continued punishment by anybody who cares to look at their record, long after they've repaid any debts. I remember asking a police officer when I was in my early 20's why every time I handed my Id to an officer I was searched, arrested, or charged with something. She replied simply, "Because you have a yellow stripe painted down your back."
The fact I had an outstanding warrant for a speeding ticket in another state and doing stupid and illegal things aside, once you have a record it is very hard to escape it. Most are relegated to menial minimum wage jobs. I was lucky, I have a social safety net, confidence, I knew I could get around it. Decided to focus my studies on something so specialized an employer wouldn't try looking for reasons not to hire me. I don't think anybody has actually checked my record since I graduated. The only applications I've been handed were basically a token for HR and I simply mark, "No" under the, "Have you ever been convicted of a crime?" question. Because it doesn't matter. It should be illegal for anybody to access resolved criminal records if they don't have a direct reason pertaining to the safety or security of others. It's not your job as an employer or hiring manager to judge someone's mistakes, only their aptitude to perform a job.
> It's not your job as an employer or hiring manager to judge someone's mistakes, only their aptitude to perform a job.
I have no horse in this race, so my opinion is mostly out of ignorance, but I believe that this formulation isn't entirely correct. In a sense employers should be allowed to make stupid decisions; the problem is when too many employers make correlated decisions leaving out a innocent chunk of the population.
If few employers do background checks that ex-convicts have easy to access alternatives it is not a problem, if enough employers use that a new social class of unemployable people is created it becomes a serious problem.
I like the idea of forbidding discrimination based on unrelated offences, but am not particularly informed on the topic.
Much respect for your friend, and congrats on her success! It’s not easy at all to actually self rehabilitate behind those walls.
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ht5krp/prisons...
https://the-stack-overflow-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/w...
Many TLM grads have returned home after decades in prison and gotten good jobs in tech. The key is making useful resources like coding classes available to those inside seeking opportunity.
By the way - TLM is hiring a Dev Ops & IT Manager, if you want to help us grow our in-prison tech program: https://thelastmile.org/work-with-us/#2321
Another job at a startup in Germany that worked in less tightly controlled spaces has never asked me to produce my criminal record, nor could they legally. An employer can only ask questions that are reasonably necessary for them to make a fair consideration about me as an applicant. You could ask an accountant about embezzlement convictions, a pharmacist about drug convictions etc., but that is not applicable to software engineers.
This is the only sane way to do things.
Would the only valid crimes be related to computer hacking?
Espionage, theft, and violent crimes... That's a different situation (I don't want someone coming after me after I liter their PR with comments)
Point is that it's relevant under those circumstances, and fair play for an employer search. Drunken and disorderly is not.
They also apparently have poor judgement and/or security practices, if they got themselves convicted under CFAA or similar. And possibly questionable moral integrity depending on what and how they were hacking.
Background checks are not intended to evaluate skills but to find risks. Having a hacking conviction is generally not a positive signal.
For all you know, they could have 'hacked in' via the password on the post-it on their coworkers monitor.
Or willingly install Windows Server facing the internet directly, that would be the other one ;)
Not necessarily. When working for a fintech or a bank, financial crimes can be very relevant. Writing bad code is, lucky me, not directly punishable as a crime.
This is what the American justice system is like.
In a saner world, (only) people who are a danger to others would be separated from the society, and being set free would be and indication that you are no longer a danger.
In the US, being released from prison signals you are more dangerous than if you got away with your crime.
The person who hit him was charged with manslaughter.
Citation needed.
If someone is more likely to do it again because they are mentally unstable, they shouldn’t be released.
Ever see office Space? ;-)
Should a person convicted of theft, who's served their time, paid the fine, made the victims whole, and learned not to steal, be discarded from consideration as a useful member of society? In case it's not clear, I think they should have the same rights as any other human being.
No one seriously advocates the death penalty or life imprisonment for petty crimes. But depending on the ability of a society to forget (which the information age is rapidly making very difficult) and the ability of a society to forgive (which the climate of fear is also making difficult), a conviction in your record can ruin a life.
That's the issue at hand. Serving a prison sentence doesn't mean that you have learned not to steal. It's difficult for the company to verify that you have "learned your lesson".
If the job is minimum wage, of course, then it's not possible to lower the wage further.
Also, discovering the theft and proving it was that employee might be difficult.
There was an article a little while back about a company tracking the employees behavior on the computer, and a lot of people mentioned that ‘if you are not trusted regardless, what incentive do you have to be trustworthy’.
This is the exact same thing.
How do you know they "learned not to steal"? Can you look inside of their heads?
There are jobs with less opportunities to steal, for example. Trust has to be regained, simply "having been in prison" is not really worth much in that respect. You would stay in prison, regardless of your mindset, because you are forced to be there.
The equation isn't "bad person -> steals". Its "person maladapted to society / with unhealthy community -> steals". Why would someone be a thief if they have a stable job and community?
And how do you expect someone fresh out of jail, with no connections and community, to make a stable life for themselves if nobody will give them a job?
If you don't think somebody having done X before makes them more likely to do it again than normal people, I don't know. (More accurately, people who did X are more likely to be people who would do X again). We just have to disagree - but you can not enshrine such beliefs in law.
As I said, trust has to be regained, merely doing something you are forced to do anyways does not prove anything about your real attitudes.
In "How To Change Your Life In 7 Steps", the founder of the homeless magazine "The Big Issue" John Bird describes what he had to do to be able to have homeless people work for him. I have high respect for people like him.
'cause I mean...if not, what was the point of the jail term? Depending on perspective, it might be rehabilitative, or it might be punitive, but either way, time served should equate to a clear record, no? If not, you're either saying they need further punishment, or you don't believe that they've been rehabilitated, in which case why were they let out?
I don't think you should necessarily spend all that time in prison, but not having access to trusted jobs is not comparable to being in pain every day for the rest of your life.
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind if more punishments were metered out in the form of community service.
In the US at least, having a felony conviction (and the bar for that is not that high) is effectively a lifetime punishment. It’s incredibly difficult for someone with a felony conviction on their record to get a job with potential. That’s a big part of why the recidivism rate for felons is so high. They often don’t have many options to make a living.
This is a poor argument: the judicial system has also determined, by lack of prohibition, that it's appropriate for employers to discriminate based on criminal record.
It really was.
> Prisons and prison population
>There are 12 prisons in the Republic of Ireland with a total bed capacity of 4,106 as of 31 December 2009. The daily average number of prisoners in custody in 2009 was 3,881. However, most of these prisons currently operate at or above capacity.[13] On 25 January 2011 the prison population stood at 4,541. There were about 80 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants in October 2015,[11] and in Northern Ireland it was 78 per 100,000 in February 2016.
But even without taking it to its conclusion, I'd contend "fairness" as you define it there isn't necessarily the best outcome for society; an ex-hacker is probably an excellent choice when hiring for electronic security, an ex-robber an excellent choice for hiring for physical security, etc. Even a murderer can go on to great things that benefit society. I mean, hell, Miguel De Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, the first modern novel, wrote his first published work while in prison. The Birdman of Alcatraz (Robert Stroud), a murderer, published major works in ornithology, and found a cure for a bird disease. Rehabilitated criminals can still benefit all of us, as well as redeem themselves in their own eyes by doing good for themselves and their loved ones.
But all that aside, you're saying you believe the additional punishment should be societal scorn carried out by vigilantes (i.e., average citizens deciding the person shouldn't hold a job even though they've paid the price the courts decided on)? That hardly seems just or 'fair'.
There are problems. For example, breaking a professional tennis player's arm may be much more career-damaging, and arguably "worse", than breaking a professional chess player's arm; and excessive retaliation is itself a crime. In that case, it may be good to get a judge or some such to evaluate the severity before carrying out the retaliation. That also goes for judging the evidence—obviously, punishing someone for a crime they didn't commit is itself a crime. So one could imagine this turning into something at least vaguely resembling today's court system.
There have existed societies in which the penalty for murder was to pay a fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weregild
Also, this doesn't insulate rich criminals from all repercussions. If they have enough money to pay the fines when murdering tens of people... well, you could try killing the criminal directly. You can do that today as well, if you're prepared to pay the price.
A really rich criminal could hire bodyguards, of course, but those would be costly, imperfect, and have some chance of turning against their employer. Ultimately it would become a rich guy in charge of an organized criminal gang, which... is also something that exists today.
> ...If they have enough money to pay the fines when murdering tens of people...
It's not about "murdering tens of people". It's killing someone whilst drunk driving, or murdering someone in an argument. These situations clearly still happen in the current system. But with what you're saying codifies that, if someonene is rich, as long as their crime is not against someone else rich, they can generally avoid any repercussions. Blood libel is still a thing, can literally see it in action in countries which have legal systems that allow it.
I have to say "almost" as there is the very rare criminal who is actually mean and targets people the way the state does.
People denied access. Denied votes. Denied work. Denied the means to live.
Criminal convictions are perhaps not the best measure of trustability.
Do we? What does the average programmer working on internal business applications, b2b services or CMSs have access to that is of any risk?
But I would guess that programmers at Tinder/Grindr/$datingSite had access to production data in the early days. Probably many SaaS things, perhaps doing stuff in the HR/recruitment/time reporting area. For B2B I'm guessing many programmers have access to business sensitive data, that competitors would like to get their hands on. At the least I would guess that at least the average backend developer have access to all contact info / emails for all users in services they work on.
Obviously all best practices say that random Joe programmer shouldn't have access to these things, but I don't think that match the _average_ reality.
Unskillful or unlucky criminals are prosecuted by the law, more careful criminals often defy the law.
My guess is that is actually pretty fricking hard, as otherwise it'd be happening all the time. I.e. you can maybe make a backdoor to something without monetary consequences (even in a bank most systems don't handle money), but introducing a backdoor to the core system (i.e. a money-dealing one) in such a way that it is not noticed in code reviews or testing AND you can claim plausible deniability seems hard.
Well, this is the big part that's missing from the story. 13 years seems like it was a big deal.
Is it even legal to ask someone who was in prison what their crime was during an interview?
But UK convictions become 'spent' after a certain amount of time (Depending on the length of the prison sentence served, with 4+ year sentences never becoming spent) after which they leave the person's basic criminal record, and there's no obligation to tell a prospective employer about them.
Only a few jobs (such as teaching) are allowed info on spent convictions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_punishments_for_murder...
Case in point for this specific case it was violent crime, which I'm sure we can all agree is way worse than a racist tweet.
But percentage-wise, when you add up federal, state, and local prisons and jails, drugs are not as large a percentage as you'd think. Another half million people in prisons or jails haven't been convicted of any crime at all, either because they can't afford bail or because they're just being processed today. If you had to guess what someone went to jail for, and you only knew they were in a State penitentiary, violent crime would be your best guess.
Here's a bit pie chart: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
Further, because there would be shorter sentences, you're far more likely to encounter a candidate with a lesser sentence.
I would argue (having been in jail myself multiple times, and, by the way, thanks to a lot of factors, now very happily and gainfully employed) that drugs are at the very least a co-factor on the vast majority of crimes in the USA.
What I'd like to see is the junkie to just get drugs from the government. It's cheaper for society to pay for a $20 fix (That costs $2 to produce), then for $500 dollars in property damage, a stolen $200 item that gets fenced for $20, a cop to show up to do a police report, and then, months down the road, an arrest, prison time, etc, etc.
The same thing is true about the homeless. Homeless services are expensive. It's cheaper to get them apartments, even if you still offer them all of the support services you were offering before.
But whenever you propose these things, social conservatives seem to come out of the woodwork and argue that it's not fair for prisoners or homeless people to get expensive stuff for free. Why should you get something good for doing a bad thing? Why should the homeless guy get an apartment that you'd paying $1000 a month for? Why should your taxes be buying drugs for that junkie? Even if you have to spend more taxes by not giving them these things, your sense of justice demands it be so.
We already do that, though, through things like food stamps and section 8 housing. It's expensive, but it works, because it keeps a lot of poor people fed and sheltered.
The visible homeless that you see are people who tend to have additional problems, on top of being poor (Untreated addiction and mental health problems are two big causes of this.)
For instance it could be a junky who needs to feed his own habit. It could be that the profits available from dealing in some area motivate gangs to take control of it. And it could also be just that people taking drugs have impaired judgement, and do things they would avoid while sober. Would you care to guess how much of each goes on?
For alcohol, I guess it's mainly the 3rd (DUI, and manslaughter, etc.) and a tiny bit of the 1st (shoplifting to buy a drink).
I know correlation doesn't imply causation, but that's not the argument I'm making here.
If only that were accurate. Prison time in the US is not given out in proportion to the seriousness of the crime, and the amount of prison time is highly variable depending on locale, race of offender, race of victim, and many other factors.
Perhaps this comes because a murder can be seen as a sad result of circumstances. Perhaps the criminal only had to murder because they had a bad upbringing and needed the cash and it was a horrible mistake. On the other hand, people perceived as racist are permanently marked as being ideologically dangerous. Mainly, I think this comes because racist tweeters can be seen as more directly responsible for their actions than a murderer.
Of course, this line of reasoning is nonsense, but it appears to be quite common.
Jon Ronson has a great TED talk about this, titled "How one tweet can ruin your life": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAIP6fI0NAI. I would recommend that the grandparent post watch this.
This is pretty demonstrably untrue. Cenk Uygur comes to mind, off the top of my head - he's lost out on opportunities from things he said in the past that were perceived as racist, but nobody in good faith / nobody who matters considers him to continue to espouse those views. It helps that he quite vocally criticizes those views.
What is probably actually true is that, statistically, many people who were racist in the past are still racist, and many people who murdered in the past and went to prison commit no further violent crimes (for many reasons).
a) Understand violent criminals have made amends and are rehabilitated
b) Believe that people who were once racist are no longer racist
Both issues are, to me, a 'sad result of circumstances'. So all of that seems fine.
The point I was trying to make was that there isn't really a "path to rehabilitation" for people who have made very minor missteps online. In the case of the linked TED talk, the persecuted woman made a mistake, and was not a "career-racist". I think even accusing her of racism is a distortion of the word — she made a bad joke in bad taste.
Meanwhile, there is an established, albeit broken path to rehabilitation for ex-convicts. There is also a certain faction of the left which seems to be more willing to accept prison reform than "tweet-reform".
I think it should be far more easy to rehabilitate oneself from a bad tweet than a murder, and that they are entirely different classes of offences.
You can say that all "though crimes" are incomparable to legal indictments, and when you are hiring people that is your right as well.
I mean that it takes a particularly screwed up and deranged individual to think that murder and racist thoughts are somehow equivalent on the moral scale. Also, I'm not claiming that this is the position you are taking, only that it would be deranged if it is the one you are in fact taking.
Murder is a very clearly defined criminal act, to tweet something racist is an expression of free speech. Racism is inexcusable, but in an entirely different way than murder.
Trying to consider any of these things in isolation is worthless and not really something that makes sense to discuss, it's just a sillier version of the trolley problem. Context is going to be everything.
Could someone convicted of murder be worth hiring? Yeah, sure, I'm not willing to say that that's not the case - what if they had an untreated medical condition, just as one potential contextual element? It's not worth discussing because it will end up with a "but what if but what if but what if".
The point I will definitely make is the original point I made - that if I determine someone to be a racist that is important to me, and if I find that someone is a criminal I will need more context before I determine that it is important to me.
I don't think this is necessarily true. We just haven't seen many racist people make amends and ask for forgiveness. I believe people can change and if they do, they should be reintegrated into the workplace.
I hadn't given it much thought before, but I asked myself if I would hire or work with a former criminal qualified for the job. It's a touchy subject, but I decided I would if they are rehabilitated: shown remorse, served a sentence, and working to integrate society.
And I realized the same goes for a racist statement (or sexist or anti-LGBTQ). Racism get tried in the court of public opinion, and then there is a sentence of being shunned in the form of unemployability. But if the formerly racist person shows remorse and publicly states they have changed, I would be willing to hire/work with them.
Placed in high government office?
To rehabilitate someone who made a joke in bad taste should be far, far easier than to rehabilitate a murderer. The two just cannot be equivocated. One is a criminal act, the other is expressing an opinion, albeit a very bad one.
There's also a problem with the verb "to rehabilitate" because much of the rehabilitation comes from the subject themselves and can't be imposed by society. The murderer who serves time, shows remorse, and studies programming to reintegrate society is different from the racist who doesn't apologize sincerely or believably for the bad joke and complains that nobody will hire them.
Finally, look at the environment that the rehabilitated person gets put into. Someone who got into drugs and gangs as a teen, went to prison, and then turned their life around is not a threat in an office environment. A racist or sexist may still cause disruption in a diverse and gender-equal work environment. The ex-gang member can't go back to the 'hood, but the racist or sexist has made it much more difficult to work in any office--or with people so that's pretty much any job. Though like I said, if they apologize and repent, I think the racist should be given a second chance as well.
You're right. Your line of reasoning is nonsense.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 46.2% of inmates are in for drug offenses[1] and there is definitely disagreement about whether that should be a crime, let alone an extreme crime. Additionally, 78.6% of inmates are serving sentences longer than 5 years[2], which by necessity means that a large portion of those are for drug offenses.
[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen... [2] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_sente...
Among those in state prisons, drug possession is about 3% of cases (about equal to DUI plus fraud cases). Other drug charges make up about 10%.
You're going to need to source that unbelievably low number.
In my state, drug crimes represent the second largest proportion of prison inmates - a bit fewer than criminal sexual conduct a bit more than homicide: https://mn.gov/doc/assets/Adult%20Prison%20Population%20Summ...
Minnesota's 17% isn't that far off the national number it seems. They don't give a breakdown for simple possession. Violent crimes at 55% are again a majority.
You're unlikely to find any realistic statistics on usage vs "distribution" due to that.
Do you think we all agree that these are extreme crimes?
[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
whereas what you're calling "thought crime" is more analogous to saying "i intend to commit statutory crimes in the future".
I have no interest in discussing who is or isn't racist, I'm saying that an already defined as racist tweet would be something worth considering in a hiring process.
- The standard of proof in criminal law is very high. There are very specific definitions of most criminal acts and these must be proven "beyond reasonable doubt"
- The definition of "racist tweet" on the other hand is as fuzzy as it can be. Usually it drills down to "someone whom I don't like said something that I have interpreted in the way I don't like"
If we think that racist tweets should bear harsh consequences, we need a bit better criteria of what "racist" actually means.
Society has switched what it is racist about many times in the past. Just 100 years ago (WWI was just over) it was worse to be German than black in the US. Someone told me that in the 1870s the KKK had many black members - the group was against Catholics not blacks, but they changed (I do not know if this is true, but even if false it isn't unlikely). It will switch again.
Whatever your law is needs to cover all cases, otherwise it will be worked around quickly.
The whole idea of these rules is to avoid discriminating people based on something outside of their control: color, gender, height, age, country of origin and so on.
It wasn't until the revival of the "second wave" of the KKK during 1910's and 1920's that they even started taking on anti-catholic stances. It was during this era that the burning cross, anti-communist, anti-catholic and anti-jewish stances came into being.
Finally, I have no idea where you got the idea that the KKK had "many black members". As far as I'm aware, no credible evidence for that has ever been put forward.
The definition of "bad things" is left as an exercise to the reader.
It seems like quite the tall order, but then humanity has a very long list of conquered tall orders, because some people were willing to pursue the "impossible", and we also happen to be blessed with some very powerful tools (some of which often work against us).
"Usually" ...
LOL ...
More recent nongovernmental sources paint a very similar picture [2][3]
So whatever your feeling about the standard of proof in a criminal trial, the vast majority of those incarcerated never actually went through one.
[1] https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=3498 [2] https://www.innocenceproject.org/guilty-pleas-on-the-rise-cr... [3] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/26/plea-bargainin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/nyregion/testilying-polic...
This is nice theory which in practice often comes down to: you can not afford proper defense (unless you want government lawyer who will happily sleep through the whole case), you do not have enough to make bail so here is the deal: plead guilty to this lesser crime or we would f,,k you up royally later on.
One is an accidental mishap due to the extreme cruelty and unfairness of our modern society.
The other one is a sincerely held unacceptable belief which endangers the progress of humanity.
/s
[0] https://www.history-of-emotions.mpg.de/texts/revolutionary-c...
I would much rather hire someone who grew up poor and fell in with gangs and felt pressured to join in an armed robbery 10 years ago and understands that it's wrong than someone who had a demonstrated bias against some minority 10 years ago and still does today. This isn't about whether they're a "good person" or anything, this is a mercenary calculation based on business value. I don't expect the former gang member is going to engage in similar violent crimes if I employ them. I do expect the biased person is going to have trouble working productively with people in my company who are part of that minority or is going to negatively impact those folks' productivity.
I'm not in the business of determining the magnitude of your moral transgressions. That stays in the confessional. I'm in the business of hiring folks who will deliver business value.
But past that, the general principle you advocate seems to be "try not to hire people who will not be able to work with others", right? It doesn't matter whether they're biased against minorities or non-minorities, as long as they're biased and will be acting irrationally in ways that piss off those around them.
The reason why people lose their jobs for racist tweets is because companies are reacting to the emotional sentiment of the masses and pulling a PR maneuver.
In short, for commercial jobs, it doesn't matter your crime, or the degree of your crime or whether you committed a crime at all, it's about business and a negative public emotional mood against you at this current point in time is usually bad for business (or stock prices).
Case in point, Let's say hypothetically that the OP could have mentioned that this woman's violent crime was repeatedly beating a 8 year old child for no reason and the public's emotional reaction would be drastically different. I'm not sure what her crime really was, but there is definitely a reason why it was omitted: The OP likely made a rational judgement about the crime and is likely very aware that the emotional reaction to the crime by the masses would be drastically different than her own rational judgement... thus from this line of reasoning she has chosen not to mention what the crime was.
It's a fine line here. I think if I really got to know a person and I can really understand a person, I feel even a child beater or can be redeemed in my eyes but I can see how in the eyes of the public this can never happen. (Also let's be clear here, I'm not saying the womans crime was beating a child, just using that as an example).
People are rarely rational and when you measure the reactions of people in response to stimuli in aggregate you will find that the bigger the aggregate the more emotional the reaction is.
This is how a criminal who committed a violent crime can get public support for finding a job, and an innocent man who made a mistake and wrote a stupid tweet can lose any prospect at finding a future career.
edit: Of course, universities still don't hire violent offenders, but I don't think the reasons for not employing a Twitter-pariah and not employing a murderer are closely related at all.
Well, not sitting-in-the-oval-office people, but anyway.
Thus, why would you consider having a criminal record to be "a [big] blemish" that justifies employment discrimination, yet no personal views extreme enough to allow an employer to disassociate from their employee?
When you consider that the ratio of those affected by criminal record-based employment discrimination to those impacted by twitter-based discrimination is on the order of millions to one, it seems strange to be more concerned about the latter than the former.
The US system probably is overly harsh -- in Ireland it's probaby overly lenient and the pendulum affect is that we've criminals being called in to court with literally hundreds of prior convictions and then they're let off with suspended sentences and then go straight back to what they were doing.
Equally frustrating -- to see the guilty just walk off and laugh as it is to see the redeemed struggle having conceded their mistakes. Justice is very important, hard and complex. I don't doubt that but their clearly is room for improvement on both sides.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/woman-most-c...
Incidents like these get in the national press precisely because they are rare and hence interesting. Do you think there are tens of people, hundred of people or thousands of people with >100 criminal convictions?
> Through its monopoly on violence, the State tends to pacify social relations. Such pacification proceeded slowly in Western Europe between the 5th and 11th centuries, being hindered by the rudimentary nature of law enforcement, the belief in a man’s right to settle personal disputes as he saw fit, and the Church’s opposition to the death penalty. These hindrances began to dissolve in the 11th century with a consensus by Church and State that the wicked should be punished so that the good may live in peace. Courts imposed the death penalty more and more often and, by the late Middle Ages, were condemning to death between 0.5 and 1.0% of all men of each generation, with perhaps just as many offenders dying at the scene of the crime or in prison while awaiting trial. Meanwhile, the homicide rate plummeted from the 14th century to the 20th. The pool of violent men dried up until most murders occurred under conditions of jealousy, intoxication, or extreme stress. The decline in personal violence is usually attributed to harsher punishment and the longer-term effects of cultural conditioning. It may also be, however, that this new cultural environment selected against propensities for violence.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/147470491501300...
———
[0]: https://nltimes.nl/2019/11/22/morocco-refusing-speak-nl-taki...
That of course depends on your value system. There are many that consider sending an innocent person to jail far worse than letting a guilty person walk free, and I’m sure you can apply a similar worldview here as well.
I disagree.
If your legal system executes people, they are inseparable questions.
I would generalize to say that the more severe your sentences, the more those two questions are related.
If I get a parking ticket unjustly, it may piss me off, but it isn't a big deal. If I am convicted of a serious crime unjustly, it matters far more.
Whereas the grandparent, I think, is asserting the guilt or innocence is (or should be) an objective fact independent of what anyone does about it.
"Did Joe kill Dave?"
"Given that we've decided that Joe did kill Dave, what should Joe's punishment be?"
For instance:
1) Did Joe steal that apple?
2a)Do we chop off Joe's hand, like law says?
2b)Do we make Joe repay the apple, and get community work?
FWIW, it's not evenly distributed in the US. We have jurisdictions like Chicago where violent offenders are released on probation after a few months or years only to reoffend. Further, these violent crimes aren't evenly distributed across Chicago, but rather they disproportionately affect poor, typically minority communities. It's well-known that crime (esp violent) is driving businesses (and jobs) out of these communities and perpetuating the cycle of poverty. Presumably these light-on-crime policies (and similarly "defund the police") are a misguided attempt to help these communities, since the criminal justice system is biased against the poor and minorities (and men, but that seems to not factor into any calculus); however, they're exacerbating the very problem they purport to solve. Indeed, Chicago appears to be on track for its most violent year since the gang wars of the early nineties, after decades of consistent, remarkable, commendable progress.
For me, this underscores the importance of properly understanding the dynamics of the problem we're trying to solve--it's not sufficient to be well-intentioned or to have the right bumper sticker. It also highlights the importance of free-speech and open inquiry, since we can't collectively understand these dynamics without the kind of robust debate that proponents of political correctness and cancel culture aspire to suppress. And note that their intentions are presumably good--they don't want (at least some) hateful talking points to be espoused; however, the well-being of these communities isn't worth trading in exchange for the suppression of hateful talking points (never mind the more abstract reasons for preserving free speech, such as "what happens when your ideological cohort falls out of power and someone else gets to decide what speech is permissible?") and moreover prior to the mainstreaming of restrictive-speech ideals (let's say circa 2014-2015 but this is all pretty fuzzy), this really wasn't a problem--American society did a pretty good job of marginalizing those who would openly espouse hateful viewpoints (although some will advocate for a meaninglessly broad definition of 'hate' or would argue that any speech from anyone they don't like can fairly be considered a 'racist dogwhistle', but those kinds of bad faith arguments notwithstanding...) and things were gradually improving for everyone.
Anyway, I apologize for going a bit off track. Hopefully this stream-of-consciousness prompts productive discussion and introspection.
Chicago isn't a warzone. Last year I bought my first home here. I wouldn't live here if it were a warzone. But it does have problems and I have a vested interest in their resolution (or more realistically, reducing their impact). I think I explained pretty clearly how I see cancel culture, etc relating to these problems. If you have specific questions, I'm happy to try to answer (I don't claim perfect knowledge, I'm only sharing my perspective).
> "The well-being of these communities shouldn't be exchanged for free-speech(?)". I'm not even sure what the last point was meant to be about other than showing angst at the idea that racist comments are largely derided and marginalized.
I don't know how you got "angst at the idea that racist comments are largely derided and marginalized". I explicitly noted that marginalizing actual racism is a good thing. The problem is that a lot of necessary debate is considered beyond the pale such that we are only allowed to talk about the solutions which (pretty obviously) are only going to exacerbate the problem, such as reducing policing in the communities most in need and letting violent offenders out without the necessary rehabilitation. Your comment (inadvertently, I'm sure) lumps these concerns in with "racist comments", illustrating perfectly my issue with political correctness. I understand the desire for a simple worldview with a group of purely good guys and a group of purely bad guys, but I'm interested in solving real world problems and the real world has a lot of nuance to be explored. We have to be able to talk about that nuance in order to solve these problems. We're not doing these communities any favors by avoiding unpleasant complexities.
Most people that I talk to opposed to net neutrality are opposed it solely because this point is deeply concerning to them.
Broadly speaking, people are quick to give the government additional power when it aligns with their interests, but are critical of the government when the additional power is used for things they disagree with.
(note that I'm a different 'throwaway' than the OP)
The US system is overly harsh to some groups of people and overly lenient to others, and the imbalance creates its own set of problems.
I would love to see sane prison reform based on data and science.
Instead of hitting the weights every day, they can engage in productive learning. We all benefit.
Interestingly, that's less than half what it is in Australia and UK.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#:~:text=Statist....
It's worth noting that it also leaves their children a smaller chance at success as well[0], and then the cycle continues. When you add this to the fact that Black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1 percent longer than similarly situated White male offenders [1], this adds up to one aspect of systemic racism in America.
0 - https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/captive-lives/
1 - https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/demographic-d...
Is there any reason to believe that Federal judges are more racially biased compared to State judges? I'd be shocked if State judges as a group are more color-blind than Federal judges.
It may be the case that in state courtrooms judges are the same, worse, or better, but making that inference on the basis of federal-level data is probably unjustified.
1. The most egregiously racist judges probably work in districts which they rarely encounter minorities.
2. Regions with large minority populations have to deal with much more crime in general, so may have lighter sentences for equally severe crimes.
3. Minorities are more likely to plead out and never go to trial, skewing sample size.
To be clear, I doubt that state judges are better than federal ones. After all, criminal justice corruption in smaller towns in America is staggering. Not too long ago, a judge was indicted for being bribed by the owners of a jail to hand down severe sentences to minority offenders.
Statistics is hard, and the entire reason there's leeway in sentencing is to account for situations which are resistant to statistical regularity.
There is, or was, a pretty obvious source of disparity in US law: freebase cocaine was a felony at much smaller quantities than cocaine salt, and the former was more likely to be used and dealt by black Americans.
Would that show up in such an analysis? They were different convictions, after all. So the only answer can be "yes or no", and so on ad infinitum.
https://www.businessinsider.com/racist-origins-marijuana-pro...
Although it's important to note that alcohol was illegal, and tobacco is becoming increasingly low-status and accordingly restricted.
The end of Prohibition meant that the enforcement apparatus for it needed something new to do. I believe this was another contributing factor to continuing the broken logic of Prohibition with new substances.
Sometimes I do wonder how much better we could all get along if some substances had relaxed or dropped restrictions.
When you think about it, there's the mental toll on users about public disapproval amplified by the legal status. On top of that, the divide on the non user side about someone being a "lawbreaker".
Just seems to cause a lot of division. On top of the illegality of harder drugs leading to the rise of cartels and gangs.
Just thinking out loud. What if the US said 'screw it', try making everything legal for 5-10 years, produce what it can locally, and just see what happens. The hope with this idea is that one could starve out the cartels while perhaps providing a path to rehabilitation.
All of that said, I am still a believer in the Rat Park experiment. If we solved some of our more real problems people perhaps wouldn't need to turn to such substances, as examples by the reports of drug use increasing under lockdown conditions. Reality seems to match the experiment. The thing about that experiment, they found if the rat's other needs were met (food, shelter, socialization) they actually would start to prefer normal water to drugged water again.
Hmmmmm
And the implications of this are what?
See, that's the problem with these claims. They serve no purpose other than to suggest that some people are inherently better or more deserving than others. But we live in a liberal democracy based on equality before the law. It wouldn't matter if some people are more predisposed to crime or smarter or whatever. The law should be blind.
This is an important implication because it completely undercuts many extremely important power structures, which use accusations of discrimination as their legitimizing argument. Which is why the science on this is resisted so hard.
The idea of anyone being inferior to anyone else is completely something you brought into the conversation. Normal people understand that being short does not make one inferior, nor does skin color, nor personality, nor intelligence. It just changes statistical outcomes. Not moral value.
If you think genetic differences between people make some people morally inferior, I would say that's a moral problem with you. Because even on the individual level, if not the group level, genetic differences are obvious and undeniable. Do you really think someone who scores low on an IQ test is morally inferior to you or deserves to suffer? I don't. If not, what's the problem with accepting the science on genetic group difference, especially given that it helps us reduce suffering in the world?
If this evidence is provided, I am happy to agree with you that there is systematic racism in the justice system.
Don't be willfully ignorant and don't expect other people to do your homework.
Again, don't be willfully ignorant and don't expect other people to do your homework for you.
It became a problem when we hired someone with a record of fraud... who had not disclosed it. And who would have had access to credit card info. He was promptly fired.
We were willing to work with him, and said as much. He wasn't willing to take the risk. So he took a bigger one, and lost.
It's worse than that. I've been denied an apartment for having an arrest on my record, even though I wasn't convicted.
We DO need more of this. It's going to take a lot of time and effort, and (sorry growth hackers) it won't scale.
Since it was for the police, a background check would be required. I politely told my department head that I would not pass that, and a short summary of my case. At that time I had worked for about 2 years and got a kind "we would never have guessed" and "you will get another project then".
As a side note: In our country, an employer needs a legitimate reason to do a background check, and they won't see crimes that are not relevant, or for some crimes - too long ago.
I remember when I lived in Australia, my friends told me that many crimes do not show up on background checks after 5 years. Also in Australia, the sex offender registry is confidential, and can only be checked for very specific things (jobs involving children, certain types of housing, etc.)
In the US, there are ways of getting records expunged for some crimes, but due to freedom of speech laws/1st amendment, typically background check companies are free to hold on to older records if they were at one time public.
I know in the EU, many countries have right to be forgotten laws, but the EFF has historically stood against them due to the fact they've often been used by wealthy individuals to hide their crimes.
Ironically, the country itself was at that time well-known for its opaque finantial practices.
Programmers can get a free pass for a lot of things here though.
Fun fact is that you need this note even if your dealing with another government agency.
When applying for Bulgarian citizenship, I was required to obtain such note. I would have guessed that they have more reliable ways of telling if someone actually is in an active police case, but no, they want that “note”. No web service to actually do this. I mean they could have just called the police department or something... I had to spend a good part of a day waiting there just to get it... </rant>
These are not even really relevant, since in most places it's considered unethical or even illegal for journalists (or anyone really) to publish names of suspects or convicted common* criminals. You will generally read "Man/Woman convicted for X" and sometimes just their first name.
This is a consequence of systems that mostly focus on rehabilitation and reintegration. Having your name show up in newspaper articles would seriously hinder that.
If your main focus was punishment instead, then publishing the names of criminals just goes well with that.
And finally you can't just ask to see the criminal history of X, and it would be illegal to discriminate based on such knowledge if it is not relevant to the job. In Germany only yourself can obtain your own criminal record (Führungszeugnis) - your employer can't obtain it directly. It's generally thought to be illegal for an employer to ask you for this (it was never tested in court though, because nobody was stupid enough to try). The only exception are if you will be working with minors or if it's specifically relevant to your job (compliance officers, financial stuff...).
*If you are a high-profile individual you are fair game. For instance the Wirecard CEO and COO.
That is true, but it is however often illegal for employers to base a hiring or firing decision on expunged records. So background check companies do generally try to comply with record expungement as it protects their customers from liability. However due to the complexity and variety of laws on expungement and lack of direct consequences for them they frequently fail at it.
Working with children may require that you provide extract from the criminal record, but only certain crimes (violence, child abuse, sex offences, drug offences, human trafficking etc.) are considered.
due to the fact they've often been used by [anyone who commits a crime] to hide their crimes.
Some examples that I know personally: sports club gun trainer (precision shooting is an Olympic game); policeman; any job as security guard, driver on armored cars that carry money from banks etc.
I think for cashiers there is a similar requirement, not 100% sure. It was ~ 20 years ago, but laws change from time to time.
Not so funny is when I had to go to the police section, take such a "clean bill of criminal record" from one office and give it to another policemen at the next office 5 meters away. It was the third time that month because I needed some certificate that had cascaded requirements to have other certificates that also depended on this bills and each required a separate bill in the list of documents.
Denmark - I have a friend who was asked to provide something like a proof of not being prosecuted for a an engineering position, while another colleague who applied and for the same position wasn't asked for one. The difference between the two was the country they were from with, I'm guessing, appearance of the former one playing a role. The guy looks like a bouncer with his 1.90 height, 100 kg of muscle and a crooked nose from being an ex amateur boxer (under the appearance he is a teddy bear).
I have never really thought about it that deeply but it seems like a decent way of doing things. I really like that your employer can't just look it up.
We also have a system known as police vetting, which is a far more intrusive background check, and includes not just actual convictions but also mere encounters with the police, warnings, etc. Police vetting can only be requested for roles that involve working with vulnerable adults or children.
In all cases the candidate must (a) consent, and (b) be supplied with a copy of the results. Overall I think this is a good system though there are some areas for improvement.
obviously I don't pursue jobs that require a clearance level. I once got in an exchange with a recruiter:
"do you have [clearance]?"
"I wouldn't want to work anywhere that requires it"
"Oh, you wouldn't be able to work here without it"
"No, I wouldn't want to work with you if you require it"
"No, you wouldn't be able to work here without it"
...
- I guess we were both rite.
A background check is, in my experience, unusal for renters in Canada, but that might just be my bias, having mostly rented from slumlords and acquaintances.
I know some of this has historical/data underpinnings on experience, but fear most of it is based on biased expectations.
In my experience you will more likely see it if you are in a shop that is paying below market. I.e. Devs there make 10k less than other local shops.
We wound up with some interesting folks. Got to see what someone going through methadone withdrawals looks like. On the other hand, a few people got some really meaningful second chances at a career there.
EDIT 1: A quick look shows a guidebook for employers which references this, but the link to the Texas state code talks about in-home employees. https://www.twc.texas.gov/news/efte/references_background_ch... I'm still unsure about the law related to other kinds of employees.
Restriction on action which does not involve using violence against others is restricting freedom in any proper liberal model of the word. That goes for everything from prostitution to drug use, and it absolutely includes being able to research information about other people you're going to work with.
It's hilarious that a place like Norway, which eg thinks publishing open salaries is to be touted, is then magically closed on checking other information about a person. So which is it, open information or not culturally? It's contradictory, arbitrary horseshit is what it is.
The position is philosophically identical to claiming that speech must be heavily restricted to be truly free (ie free of "hate" etc.). It's nothing more than intellectual infantilism, part of the mental immaturing and weakening of the West. It's Orwell-think, inverting everything; more restriction on personal action is freedom, more restriction on speech is free speech.
> It's Orwell-think
Hilarious in a comment stating the US position is the correct one. I'd like to know of an example of another nation that is more or even on the same level of Orwellian as the US? I can't even think of one historically, far from it today. Of course the US way of thinking would require you to yell CHINAMAN or RED RUSSIAN now as loud as you can, but in reality neither have near as Orwellian a state as the U.S. of NSA.
No, infantilism is being unable to contextualise freedom and see it in its proper communal and social context. Handing private entities the ability to engage in surveillance against their fellow citizens isn't freedom, it's eroding the very basis of freedom. It's creating a private panopticon in which everyone is constantly conditioned to behave and comply. That is actually what modern American society is by the way, literally infantilized. Students are being policed by their universities, children by theire hyper-religious parents, minorities by their neighbours ring doorbells, and workers by their companies, no state required.
The proper way to understand the liberal tradition and apply it today is to understand that the liberal tradition is concerned with threats to individual freedom, period. 200 years ago, in early capitalist times, citizens were equal and the state was powerful. Today private power and surveillance is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than anything the American government can come up with.
The liberal tradition applied today, by the spirit rather than the letter of the law and its proper intent, must be concerned with stopping citizens and private firms from controlling each others lives, rather than be obsessed with some 18th century homesteading logic or 'voluntary contracts'.
People with access to power or money either don't need to interview for jobs, or don't have criminal records that complicate that process.
So, they are more free by default. Not only do these checks not affect them directly, they create a nerf on a whole set of other people, which creates a contrast of freedom.
I do not think many would go out in public and say they like seeing the poor unfairly burdened. However, I believe in many cases groups in the United States have chosen "power over principals."
This is where the choice to protect power supersedes choosing to act principals or professed beliefs.
I do not think this is a new thing, though I think it has never been so public and given today's politics the contrast is particularly stark.
On the contrary, many Americans support policies that are against many ideas of freedom such as the disenfranchisement of felons.
For example, someone might use an example of being able to deny a LGBTQ person a service as "having freedoms" but ignore the fact that by denying them that service, that person is also simultaneously less free.
"Freedom" is used a lot when politics comes up not because it is a way to justify political positions but because politics is to a great degree the arguing of whose freedoms trumps another's under what circumstances.
Not at all, that's not what freedom of religion is.
I can practice a Mayan or Inca religion by myself - that's freedom of religion - but I cannot allow it to affect other people's life e.g. by organizing human sacrifices.
Also not being able to practice ritual sacrifice if it is part of your faith is a violation of your religious freedom. We as society have made the decision that the right to life is a greater right than your right to freely practice your religion but it is still a violation of your right. It is just another example of how in a functioning society decisions have to be constantly be made regarding whose rights are greater than someone else's under what circumstances.
That's a strawman.
> Also not being able to practice ritual sacrifice if it is part of your faith is a violation of your religious freedom.
No, it's not. The ritual is not illegal in its religious aspect. Harming the other person is illegal.
By the same logic I could claim that running someone over is freedom of movement. It's not.
In some places that are less free, these things are frowned upon.
Edit: you can read about the freedom to move about in nature in certain countries here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam
Take for example the freedom to move about freely in nature without having to worry about property lines. This most definitely affects the property rights of others and their freedom to do as they wish with their property. I'm not saying that your freedom of movement shouldn't out rank their property rights and the freedom to do as they will with their own property but it certainly impacts their freedoms.
In my opinion, someone having a problem with people taking a walk in their forest need help.
(And yes, I grew up on a property that has a forest, and yes, when encountering people going for a walk or gathering mushrooms, one says «hello» and smiles)
At the time I worked at a small web hosting company, we had her personal homepage for free since she was my sis.
Suddenly she calls me from the states telling me I need to go into her website and edit out some links.
Apparently lawyers working for the school where she was applying to work had found her homepage (which she made under an alias and afaik had no references to her person) and didn't like some of the links on it.
I'm still blown away by this. The links were about certain sexual fetishes, but again, her website was under a pseudonym. I have no idea how they connected it to her. Could have been something dead simple like her using an e-mail address on the same domain, or using her pseudonym in her e-mail address on hotmail. She wasn't that careful about remaining anonymous, it was just a thing back then that people would have alter-egos online.
It matters to some degree for sure but it's really overblown.
It's sad how that's overshadowed by their corporations, politicians, and somewhat intentionally broken system - but I choose to believe that good sense will prevail eventually, when enough people care and do something about it - as they've done time and again through history.
The check is only for crimes against children so you can be convicted for violent crimes and pass this check.
Any entries in your criminal record will no longer appear in background checks after some time (depending on the severity of your offense). However, any offense against a child will always appear on this special background check no matter how long ago it was committed.
You have to approve that this background check is performed but if you can't produce a clean "child certificate" then you are prohibited from working with children by law.
That can be a manslaughter or second/first degree murder in some states
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_punishments_for_murder...
If so, should we instead increase the length of the sentence for such a crime? To how long?
I will however say that there is opportunity for multiple interpretations with the little information provided; for example I think bludgeoning someone to death is perfectly acceptable if that person is trying to harm you or your family and a hammer is the nearest available weapon. Your coworker could have been in a similar situation in which self defense was warranted, and that may be why he did not get a murder charge instead.
This sort of nuance is why this issue matters a lot; you could do the right thing and still end up with a charge that severely impacts your ability to get a job, even though you're not actually some kind of violent murderer.
They do.
You do have that right, because you can switch jobs at will (unlike that person), in case you don't want to work with someone purely due to their past and not something they are doing at your workplace.
I don't think we should be blocking people (who have already paid their dues for the crimes they have committed in the past) from getting a job solely for their past, just because you might be uncomfortable with that.
It isn't like you are trapped, you always have an option to leave. The person who paid their dues to the prison system doesn't have any options if they become unhireable solely due to people's prejudices about their past. And at that point, what other option do they have other than turn their head towards crime again? Rent and bills aren't gonna pay themselves.
Not the best solution, but I don't think that denying someone a job based on your discomfort about their distant past is reasonable at all. Of course, as long as they weren't in-and-out of jail multiple times for the same crimes, because that's an indication that they are likely to re-commit.
But kudos to Jessica for giving a shit and the person in question for keeping at it.
Great comment and thanks for sharing that perspective.
More: https://fair.org/home/media-just-cant-stop-presenting-horrif...
Wow:
- "The United States holds more people in jails and prisons than any other country by far, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of population."
The numbers are stunning. Around a quarter of all Americans have a criminal record.
- "Almost no one gets a trial"
- "The blue icons are the portion of incarcerated people who got trials, around 2%"
My mind boggles at this. Conviction is without trial in 98% of cases? People avoid trial when they don't think they'll get a fair one or they can't afford a decent lawyer? No wonder it's a hotbed of racism.
No, wait, I was assuming conviction:
- "Unconvicted Americans are the 4th largest incarcerated population in the world"
Now my mind boggles even more. There are more unconvicted Americans incarcerated than convicted people incarcerated in almost all other countries.
- "What if you've spent your whole life believing that you live in the freest country on earth, when the reality is precisely the opposite?"
Good question...
Most of the statistics I cited are already weighted by population; they are per-capita and percentages: "as a percentage of the population"; "a quarter of all Americans"; "almost no one gets a trial"; "2%".
Those population-weighted values are astonishing.
I agree the 4th largest thing is not weighted, but the astonishing part of that is that USA unconvicted incarcerations rank significantly at all, when compared with convicted in other countries. USA population size is not sufficient to explain this.
It's the opposite of what I'd hope and expect, for a country where people talk of "land of the free" and "rule of law".
And make no mistake, the ubiquity of "are you a convicted felon?" on every application form is cruelty. Bear in mind that can (depending on the state) include, for example, possession of even small amounts of cannabis.
Mark Wahlberg is a convicted felon for what seems to be a pretty vicious race-based assault 30 years ago. Even as someone who is famous and extremely rich this actually causes him a lot of problems, so much so that for awhile he petitioned the Massachusetts governor for a pardon.
Personally I was (and am) against a pardon for him. There was enough of a backlash that the request was dropped. The problem with him getting a pardon is that's (yet another) exemption for the rich and famous. Kind of like how only people with 100K Twitter followers can be customer support on anything these days.
What about all those people who are convicted felons for minor drug offenses including drugs that can now be legal for recreational use? They don't have the wealth and fame to bypass this scarlet letter.
Even worse, this can be triggered by more cruel measures like three-strikes laws that disempower judges from making informed decisions.
The problem here is the permanent scarlet letter and there shouldn't be exemptions for wealth, fame or power.
The level of incarceration in the United States should be a huge source of shame. It's an institutional failure and yet more cruelty, especially given the prevalence of prison rape.
It's good this woman learned a new skill and (even better) is allowed to use it. It's just sad that this is such an exception it's newsworthy.
When the dev swung by the office one day I chatted with him and was surprised to learnt that he'd gotten his start coding in prison as well. He hadn't used computers at all before being incarcerated, but got hooked in his first class when he typed something at the command line and got an error in response. He muttered something like "I'll show you, stupid machine" and committed then and there to getting the device to do what he wanted it to. Ten years later he had a successful business building and maintaining systems like the one I was using for small businesses all over the area.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea. For example, you don't want let a sex offender coach a kids team. And I don't care if that person already paid their dues. But you cannot ruin the life of someone who has a minor offense from years ago. People should be able to rehabilitate and improve their life. I don't know what employers do when a background check is not clean. If they actually consider the severity of it or immediately reject the candidate.
Does a background check in the US imply that they'd never consider anyone with any blemish on their record whatsoever? Surely it just means they have to make an informed decision.
No, but federal jobs usually get dozens or hundreds of applicants. Removing felons is usually one of the first filters they use to narrow the field.
(Insert snide remark about elected/appointed politicians here.)
But this person committed a "serious, violent crime" that sent them to prison for 13 years. Are you comfortable sitting next to someone who is capable of a "serious, violent crime"? Are there certain crimes that cross the line for you? Would you expect your employer to inform you of their record?
Edit: Just want to remind people, 13 years could very well mean that they murdered someone. Context around the charge is key, and no one seems to be acknowledging that.
Context is of course key, but a blanket statement of "hiring someone who spent 13 years in prison for a serious, violent crime is a good thing" seems wild to me, which is the vibe on this thread.
Because you’re asking a safety/comfort question, but it’s dependent on the answers to the above.
I truly can't believe that HN thinks this is some offensive opinion.
Murder is considered one of the worst offenses in any society. But this person was already punished by society, and seen fit by the law to return to it. So what could explain your continue (and very understandable) discomfort? Is it because you believe that the penal system did not properly make this person safe to return to society? Is it because that once someone has committed such a terrible crime that they are inevitably going to be able to do so again, because they have the psychological profile to do it? Such a person is more likely to slip into violence? Finally, does it mean that such a person is forever marked as fundamentally dangerous and unworthy of reintegration?
After the visceral recoil that is an instinct that preserves safety, you have to examine why you are so opposed to working with someone who has committed such a crime. Because we claim to live in a free society that gives people the liberty to pull themselves up from the bootstraps no matter their circumstances, yet discriminates against those who have done the time. Because we claim this society is built upon Christian and post-Christian Enlightenment principles, yet we reject the power of redemption and modern methods of recovery. It's fine to have such an opinion, but you have to justify it, because it's an example of how our society operates.
I absolutely don't believe the penal system makes people safe after they serve their time.
> Is it because that once someone has committed such a terrible crime that they are inevitably going to be able to do so again, because they have the psychological profile to do it?
If a person killed someone without a damn good reason, why would I think they wouldn't do it again?
> Finally, does it mean that such a person is forever marked as fundamentally dangerous and unworthy of reintegration?
Correct. And maybe I'm caught up on the murder aspect. Murder isn't a small little crime. It takes a certain type of person to be able to intentionally murder someone. And maybe most of this thread can be summarized by: I think if you intentionally murder someone without a damn good reason you should spend life in prison. Right now, second degree murder can include that and often is not life in prison.
> I absolutely don't believe the penal system makes people safe after they serve their time.
Fair, and understandable.
> If a person killed someone without a damn good reason, why would I think they wouldn't do it again?
Why would you think they would do it again? Given that someone spent over a decade in prison, shouldn't it have deterred them from killing again?
You'd have to actually look into recidivism rates to see how this works out in reality, unless you believe that for psychological and moral philosophical reasons that such a person who's committed murder is both willing and likely to do so again.
> I think if you intentionally murder someone without a damn good reason you should spend life in prison. Right now, second degree murder can include that and often is not life in prison.
Okay, so your personal standard is that murder does not have to be premeditated to deserve life in prison. That's fair. But I think that goes beyond discomfort with working with such a person who has been through the prison system; that's believing that such a person shouldn't be out of the prison system at all.
I understand your reluctance, but the alternatives to "let the released felon work" are not great.
Are you going to keep them in prison forever? Are you going to let them out, to be jobless?
We should be concerned about creating the best society for everyone. That means sometimes we need to suppress our immediate/unconscious reactions.
I'd guess pretty much everyone you sit next to currently is capable of committing a serious, violent crime under the right (wrong) circumstances.
What is scary is those who enjoy violence and causing harm. My grandma worked in the next cube over from a guy for years. "Nicest guy ever." He spent his weekends cutting people into parts and mailing the the parts around.
If you consider circumstances where society would generally consider violence justified then maybe.
Historically even in combat only a small percentage of people would intentionally shoot to kill.
I've had a relatively easy life, all things considered. I've never been truly desperate. I've never wondered where my next meal will come from. I never made any major mistakes, like messing around with drugs or alcohol.
I'm not planning on committing any violent crimes, ever. But I could. You should beware.
If they are still dangerous after serving their time, then they should be held in prison longer.
The person doesn't leave prison ready to productively reenter society, they leave prison indoctrinated into prison culture.
If you made a programming error at work, and instead of someone spending time to teach you how you ended up making that mistake, and working to give you the knowledge and tools to not make it again. But instead made you stand in a corner for a fixed duration of time, it would be illogical to assume you would be a better programmer after standing in the corner, its the same with the US prison system.
Society decides that their crimes earns them X years of punishment. After they've done their X years, there should be no need to punish them more. I sympathize with the victims of the convict's crimes which depending on the crime, no value of X would suffice. But we are all human, and sometimes showing a shred of compassion is what motivates the real reform.
It has to start somewhere. Like...giving them a good paying job in a thriving industry. You're contradicting yourself and you only wrote 3 sentences. You've being shown the proof of how we can rehabilitate and then going "but IDK, doesn't seem good enough..."
However, when you do rehabilitate, even violent offenders can lead mostly normal lives as is the case here.
I agree, it has to start somewhere, but because our current system acts as a self fulfilling prophecy, it’s going to be very hard to enact change, though I’m all for it.
Edit: The downvotes that this comment is currently receiving actually illustrate the problems outlined in this thread. If you disagree with the idea that people can change, you will never hire someone with a criminal record, and you will perpetuate the problem. The unemployment rate among felons in the US less than 2 years after release is 31.6% [1]. The unemployment rate at the peak of the Great Depression was 24.9% [2]. It is always the Great Depression for the felon population, because of the incorrect belief that people can’t change. Among any population with unemployment this high, there will be a drastically higher crime rate.
[1] https://www.esrcheck.com/wordpress/2018/07/16/report-finds-o...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/05/19/3-reasons...
Please indicate the page where the data supports your statement.
If you want a more summarized article you can find one here https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/recidivism-am...
I originally posted the pew one as I feel the chance of biased against offenders is lower from their research, but this article does a better job of summarizing, as well as offering their full report.
After looking over the data again, it seems that nearly half will commit another crime but only 28.4% will be a violent one.
with these adjusted numbers, it still is inaccurate to say "...Chances are she would be less likely to engage in violence than the people you currently sit next to,..."
But there is data on people doing under 5 years, and if you compared to that you would likely be right, but don't have the data to prove it.
There is also a further sub division of felony based on a class code which determines sentencing.
Regardless, it is very rare for someone doing that little time to do so in a state of federal prison, and most studies on this data are based on the department of prisons data, which is why it's not typically included.
Many felons get probation after serving time, this is the only term I've heard felony probation applied to, what are you referencing to mean?
In the United States, where the felony/misdemeanor distinction is still widely applied, the federal government defines a felony as a crime punishable by death or imprisonment in excess of one year. If punishable by exactly one year or less, it is classified as a misdemeanor. The classification is based upon a crime's potential sentence, so a crime remains classified as a felony even if a defendant receives a sentence of less than a year of incarceration.
Also, no, I wasn’t referring to post-release supervision (which is usually referred to as parole or supervised release). Many hundreds of thousands of people every year receive a sentence of probation for felonies, primarily because countless “tough on crime” measures have increased maximum sentences for minor crimes, which automatically turned them into felonies where they used to be misdemeanors.
Sure, a violent crime is worse than some bone-headed mistake made at a college party, or whatever your worst moment is. But how much have you grown up since then? Would you do it again? Or are you older and wiser? Well, they are probably older and wiser, too.
I mean, I'm not sure how relevant "knowing" anything is, but age is an incredibly strong predictor of criminality. Gender is another one. The majority of crime, and the overwhelming majority violent crime, is committed by young men. One factor that likely contributes to this reliable statistical phenomenon is that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for decision-making, self-control, emotional self-regulation, and other aspects of executive function, doesn't fully develop until around 25 years of age. For one example of how executive function relates to criminal behavior, look into the connection between ADHD (a disorder linked to deficiencies in the prefrontal cortex) and crime.
I agree that most people haven't killed anyone, but I also don't think that there's any reason for any of us to assume that 'we' would have behaved any differently when placed in the circumstances of those who have.
Additionally, there are countless contracts that require you specifically not have anyone with criminal convictions, and require full background checks to be awarded the contracts, even more so if it was a violent felony.
Those are two very serious liabilities to a company, I understand that people deserve a second chance, but do you put your company at risk to give it to them?
Rehabilitation, is the most important aspect for a person who has been in prison to be able to return to society. Storing people in a hellish place does not fix them, it only punishes them, with out counseling and education, how is a person who is released in anyway more prepared than when they went in?
I agree the current system makes it damn near impossible for someone with a conviction to get a second chance. That issue should be address at the corrections level, and the services provided after conviction.
But most companies do not have the resources, education, or ability to help rehabilitate someone, so should we blindly hire on hope that this person won't cause harm to the people a company is responsible for, should the company forgo the opportunities that require your staff not have convictions, that is just an unrealistic expectation.
Think about it like this, say there was a piece of equipment that had malfunctioned and caused serious injury to someone, and your company then wanted to bring that piece of equipment into your office, knowing that there is a 44% chance that it will malfunction in someway again, and there is a 25% chance that the malfunction would cause serious harm to someone, would you be comfortable with that choice, if that malfunction happened do you think the company would and should be liable for this?
There are too many situations, where trying to make this right for someone with a record would have too many of my employees face situations I don't think they should have to in a work place. with 1 in 5 women being the victim of sexual assault or rape, how could I ask any of them to work side by side with someone who was convicted of it, I can't insure their safety, and I don't feel it just to put them in that situation. Same with someone who has been the victim of any violent crime.
I think it boils down to person choice I suppose, and for me, I won't put the people I am responsible for at risk, not the company that I helped built. If that makes me a bad person, I think I can live with that.
If states were to specify some rules around when a 'Negligent Hiring' liability suit could be pursued against a business, business owners would be more willing to hire and provide chances. If the state is liable should something happen, the burden on the state then becomes to proactively rehabilitate felons who meet the set of conditions such that their future litigation costs are reduced.
To me, that is a much better alignment of incentives though not perfect.
People are well justified in their claims not being comfortable, but convicted people getting a second chance is a must though.
A couple of bad decisions made as a teen and you’ll see yourself involved in violent events at a young age.
I would sit next to any of them for any length of time. They pose zero threat to anyone.
This is for two reasons: 1. Generally, violent crimes are done by very young and poor people. By the time they get out of prison, they aren't very young any more. If they have a good job, they aren't poor either. 2. If a prison lets someone in an educational program, you know the system considers them safe. The system buckets inmates; behavioral offenses are harshly penalized; everyone in a classroom is an angel, and they won't stop being an angel on the outside.
I would not feel comfortable sitting next to someone who was substantially more capable of committing a serious, violent crime (which might indeed have been murder if she did 13 years) than an average member of the population and I would expect an employer to take my welfare and safety into account.
The question is whether someone who did do that and went to prison for it is so much more likely to commit such a crime than average. I don't know the answer to that but I don't think it's outrageous to think the answer is "no".
I work with a guy who did some time, but I'm not sure what for. Probably drug-related, if I had to guess, but I've never asked. He's a model employee, as long as you include a snarky wit in your model. And I feel perfectly comfortable around him.
There are people around who DO creep me out, but that's not even slightly correlated, in my little sample, with the people who've been to prison.
Like a lot of people in IT ? Not necessarily anti-social but you need to be asocial to some degree to want to spend 8+ hours in front of a screen talking to a computer. It's usually easy to pick out programmers from general population.
100% this. Going to prison is a traumatic experience, and would be even in a country that had a real commitment to safe rehabilitation. In the US, it's all too often multiple traumatic experiences one after the other. Nonetheless, I think former felons absolutely deserve every chance to reintegrate. I just worry about their psychological safety when things get tense and others get combative. This is just one more reason why more people in tech need to grow the hell up and treat people around them with basic respect.
You’d feel more comfortable working with the actual criminal than the innocent person who spent 13 years in prison?
1. If everyone says that they will no longer want to work with such a person, especially rich people, who can enforce that want, that person will end up working with poor people. The rich people are making a classist argument.
2. Worse, if that person, cannot even get bad jobs, they will be forced to commit more crimes in order to live. Now, the first crime might have been because they were a bad person, but the second crime is on the people who refuse to work with them.
3. What are other possibilities?
You get out of this conundrum by making prison about rehabilitation. Ensuring that people who come out are changed people who are not inclined to commit more crimes. Then you treat them like normal people. And hopefully, that world, while not perfect, will be better than this world.
I think my revised opinion is that if you intentionally murder someone without a damn good reason, you should spend life in prison. This can include second degree murder, which is often not life in prison in the US (And also happens to line up with the OP scenario).
A lot of conversation needs to happen on this, and we need to constantly reevaluate our positions.
We can't make the punishment the same, or he would just murder her, yet I don't think such a person should every be let out.
Murder is the "easiest" crime to use to make my arguments. And even then I have to specify stuff like "intentional without a damn good reason".
Luckily many places around the world solve it differently so we can look at those systems and observe.
Do you believe people can change? Or perhaps more generally, what do you think the purpose of a prison should be when considering rehabilitation vs punishment?
It's fine. Most criminals are fine most the time.
What's your alternative? If you go to jail it's just for life because creampuffs can't handle sitting near someone who did something bad? Why is society comfortable with white colar criminals working when they cause more damage (both to the companies and to society as a whole)?
Why was Tom in a wheelchair? Tom killed his wife years earlier in a crime of passion after catching her with another man in their bed. He grabbed a gun, shot both people. She died. Tom walked out and the lover came behind him and shot him in the back.
Tom went to prison for a very violent crime. I raked leafs for him as a kid, and so did my kids. I wouldn't have had second thoughts of asking him to keep an eye on the kids for a while if needed. Tom was a member of our community who had a very violent past that all the adults knew about and were accepting of.
Alternatively, there are folks who have sterling records that I would not let my kids do chores for.
In the same vein, anyone could be rehabilitated.
Many systems disagree with this and have sentencing systems which allow a true life sentence. Sometimes this is due to a mental health aspect.
Have you never been violent, not even once? With anyone? Were you old enough to be tried as an adult under the right circumstances? Even the slightest physical conflict is only a dice roll away from turning into a horrific accident that does lasting damage.
And what is your alternative? Keep offenders in the system forever? Do we believe in the "Correction" of "Correctional Facilities" or not? Forgiveness? Rehabilitation? Redemption?
At some point you have to stop passing the buck to someone else to let people back into society, otherwise you're just being a predestinationalist by your deeds.
> Would you expect your employer to inform you of their record?
No, I would find that offensive. Similarly I wouldn't want to know about their military record, substance habits, childhood, credit score, or the last mean thing their spouse said to them. That's all personal.
As long as it wasn't "murdered coworker over TABS vs SPACES argument".
Although, I guess it would depend on their stance?
TBH, my answer to that is "I don't know." It has never come up, so I haven't given it a lot of thought.
But it is a legitimate question, IMO, and I don't see why you're being downvoted for simply raising the question. I gave you an upvote to help offset that, FWIW.
That would be 100% of people who isn't either a baby or has somehow no way to move arms and legs enough to wield a knife, gun, poison, etc. It is not a question of capability but the situations you are put in and live through. Otherwise you are saying criminality is in the genes.
I do it several times a week (pre-covid, now it's just a couple).
When I was 19 I went to federal prison for computer-related crimes. After I was released I tried getting "normal" jobs - Dominos, McDonalds, etc, but had less than stellar luck on that front. I started my own thing doing affiliate marketing and made enough to pay bill. Thankfully this was before I had a family.
Now I've been in the consulting and contracting space for years, worked with/at Fortune 10 companies, HIPAA and PCI regulated shops too. Recently, after a failed start up, I needed to get a "real" job. After the first two offers were pulled back, I changed my interview tactics.
Now, on the very first phone call with a human, I bring up my nearly 20 year old conviction. It's never come up on a background check due to how the vast majority of commercial background checks work. My name, however, is quite unique and news articles are still some top ranking sites about me.
One of my pie-in-the-sky goals is to try my hand at another start up, and in the process build out a program to train other felons with how to program. With all the folks I've been around throughout my career, some of the smartest of them were people I met in prison. There's so much wasted talent there.
One thing that I can tell you, is that there's no way to apply "one size fits all" templates to them all. Some will shine like you wouldn't believe, if given the chance, and some would, at best, be crappy employees. I doubt there would be a problem with workplace violence, with most, but it's entirely possible that you could end up with a "dud."
In short, each case needs to be handled on an individual basis, with careful, extensive human interaction. Lots of "tell me a story" interviews. Coding tests are likely to be useless.
Since that kind of employee search seems to be a thing of the past, in our industry, it can be tough for these folks to get in the door. This woman went to bat for her friend. There's not a whole lot of folks willing to do that.
BTW: The US is horrible for that kind of thing. Even a small misdemeanor can be a scarlet letter for life. I knew a guy that was busted in [an Ivy-League] college for pot (a misdemeanor), and pursued a career in banking. Even a quarter-century later, that bust followed him, and stunted his chances (he was real good).
One of the most intelligent people I ever met (and I have met a lot of really smart people) was a violent felon that went away at 17, and was profoundly twisted by the experience. He was never able to readjust properly. That marvelous intellect was never able to benefit us.
Once it's on the record, though, HR will always find it.
I've known folks from the finance industry for thirty years. They are...interesting characters. The Wolf of Wall Street kinda made them look like choirboys.
George Taylor (previously President of Untappd) has been working with active gang members to start a brewery called TruColors. Turns out a lot of gang violence can be attributed to the economic situation of a community and providing employment opportunities to people who have been previously incarcerated can improve the economic situation of these communities. https://trucolors.co/
"In Your Shoes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GdT_4gFuuw
I remember seeing some general statistics, most crime are committed by men of a certain age range, and rarely after 30 do people commit more crimes. Some of it can be explained by hormones and life pressures.
Now there's exceptions, but you need to trust the prison system (I know that sounds hard) to figure out who is still a likely deranged individual needing to be kept locked up some more, and who is rehabilitated.
A rehabilitated person that has served its time, if not given a chance to equal opportunity afterwards, is more likely to again be put under life pressures that doesn't set them up to be law abiding. Even if they're law abiding, we still lose on good work they could do, by not giving them opportunities.
This is the things I try and remind myself of when I feel the unease. But rationally speaking, I don't see any better alternatives. The problem doesn't go away by just ignoring it so...
He had come from a really poor back lground. His first year in college he saw all these kids with BMWs with rich parents. He decided he wanted one too so he made it happen.
Being given a second chance worked for him.
The OP was trying to find materials to teach programming to a friend in prison and couldn't find satisfactory results.
[1]https://needgap.com/problems/152-offline-programming-course-...
The Last Mile seems like a great program to share our tech skills and knowledge with people who really need a leg up. I will be signing up as a volunteer today.
If you have enough felons for them to affect the outcome, your problem isn't that they have the right to vote, it's that you're arresting too many people.
If you emphasis punishment rather than rehabilitation, you are setting the scene for discrimination post release. It’s a sort of chicken and egg situation.
I appreciate the irony in claiming this in a thread on someone’s hard earned achievement post release.
Although practically, the sharks in the private prison industry have already tasted blood. They are smart enough to pivot, leaving us with the same perverse incentives, or worse. Way more people can forgive a drug conviction than an involuntary commitment to a mental health institution, and abuse is harder report.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is nothing more to say, than this also applies to ex-felons.
- Ghandi
Clearly we need some way to evaluate entry level employees who wouldn't have had time to build a portfolio, it just remains an open question as to what an effective method would be.
I'd argue that past accomplishments don't prove anything either. Or rather, it's impossible to tell whether they were actually responsible for those accomplishments. It's not just architecture you want to ask about. It's the practicalities of choosing libraries, making engineering trade-offs, running a team (if that's part of the job they're applying for). The trick is to ask them questions that they'd only know the answer to if they've actually been there and done that ("What want wrong" and "what problems did you face" are good ones). And to follow up with asking them why they'd make that choice.
That's a very strong statement.
Certainly there are a lot of people that fall into gangs, etc because they have no other alternatives. But rapists don't rape because their day job is boring. Serial killers aren't in it for the money, either. Don't be naive.
Here is a comparison to a maximum security prison in Norway:
I've been volunteering with Unloop for a few months, as both a guest speaker and 1:1 coach. I feel myself becoming less cynical about tech with every interaction.
A old cow-orker of mine had a bullshit felony for "computer hacking" from quite a while ago. Trust was never an issue with this person.
I don't know any career track companies that don't do background checks, there are too many services now that make them insanely easy to do, that it's basically uploading a resume and/or filling out the form and you can get results back the same day.
But I do not think its a fair expectation to say "most of them don't cause they don't want to spend the money on them or down right don't care about your past."
I've never seen anything that what would lead me to believe that "most" is accurate, and at best "some" would be closer to accurate.
Basic background checks aren't expensive, and take almost no time to complete, goodhire is an example where even small companies can get a background check done for $30-$50 per applicant.
Again, I'm not saying don't apply, but I don't think its a good idea to tell people "most don't care" because they are going to likely face an uphill battle, and that many people are going to hold a criminal history against them.
I do agree that being upfront about it, is the best choice, and if I was to make a recommendation, it would be to seek expungement where possible, and stack your training, certifications, and references as much as possible to attempt to overcome the issue.
I hope soon we can start teaching kids in Idaho where I grew up how to code as well....
Especially if I'm a founder with significant skin in the game, why would I risk my money, time and hard work on someone with a recorded record of making poor choices when there are hoards of others who haven't broken the law?
This assumes that your scrappy bootcamp grad hasn't broken the law. In fact the more likely scenario is that they have broken the law multiple times, they just were never caught and charged for it. Unless we are suddenly going to believe that young adults and teenagers don't have an affinity for recreational marijuana or underage drinking or doing any of the various stupid things young people do.
Your mentality applies to yourself as well: why would any investor or employee risk their money, time, and hard work on someone with no proven track record, when they could throw it at the hoards of other CEOs who have demonstrated the ability to profit? You wouldn't want someone to look over you just because you never got the chance to demonstrate your potential; it would be equally unfair to look over someone else who served their time and is now looking for opportunities to demonstrate themselves.
> (yes, once you commit a felony, even after serving time you are still a felon)
Then what is the point of imprisoning felons? Why don't we just kill them all? If there is no way to recover from being a felon, why let them live or let them out?
Sounds harsh, of course. The answer should be that once you have gone to prison and gotten out, your crime is behind you, and unless you are actively committing crimes again you should be judged equally with someone with no record.
non-felon > felon
Especially in terms of potential risks to my staff or property. Basically, would you hire a babysitter with a criminal record or one without a criminal record and good references?
Maybe my employees break the law when they're not at work, but that's none of my business. If one of my employees is indicted or cited for rioting / DUI, welp I'll fire them on the spot.
Also, re "all crimes are behind you once you leave prison" - how would you explain repeat offenders? At this point I'm trusting my business against statistics of a felon committing a crime again lmao.
I wouldn't hire a babysitter at all because I wouldn't trust strangers around my children. It doesn't matter what their record is.
But for my business? Property can be insured, code can be copyrighted, lawsuits can be filed. I have recourse if one of my employees does something stupid. And on the other side, my employee can quit or sue me if I do something wrong.
> how would you explain repeat offenders?
People choosing to hire everyone else over felons, leaving them no choice but to go back to the same bad people or the same bad crimes. Why would a felon go back to risking their life on a daily basis against other murderers and muggers when they could have a comfy $12-20/hr job in an actual workplace with civilized coworkers?
While it's illegal in the US for most places to outright not hire you solely because you're a felon, you'll have a hard time actually proving that.
If you go by the numbers, felons are more likely to break the law again than folks that aren't felons. You can argue up and down the _why_ around this, but that's the numbers.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's your right to hold your opinion and run your business in a way you see fit.
It's brazen, I admit, but the ex-con part can be substituted for other more fortunate people, like those with little experience, non-traditional backgrounds, those who never got advanced degrees (undergraduates mostly). The oh-so-different software industry isn't that different from any other industry these days in that it's more about who you know rather than what you know to find employment, but the added bonus for software types is that often enough it's both! Maybe I'll look back at this comment and feel it's overly pessimistic, but I hope that's because things changed for the better.
In the intervening three years since, my team and I have served on the front lines of the efforts to help the 70 million Americans--1 in 3 adults--with a record land a job.
First, the facts: there's a ~75% chance that after release from jail or prison, an individual will be rearrested. Nearly all of these people will be unemployed at time of arrest.
Contrariwise, those that do manage to land a job almost never recidivate, and in fact, go on to lead satisfying, productive lives.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, these folks do incredibly well on the job: a SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) report found that 80% of hiring managers believe that when hiring someone with a record, "the quality of hire is as good as if not better than when hiring someone with no record."
While many companies hang on to age-old myths relating to on-the-job behavior of this population (they'll be trouble makers, they'll commit crimes on the job, they'll be violent, they'll disrupt our workforce), the data suggest the very opposite. In fact, because they generally have so few opportunities, they tend to work harder with a better attitude than co-workers, because they know another job is not necessarily available.
I continue to find it shocking that companies that pride themselves on making data-driven decisions have in place hiring matrices that hearken back to another time when attitudes--and crimes--were very different. Most HR professionals have no idea why existing parameters are what they are.
It behooves us as a society to rethink our approach to criminal justice in general and reentry, specifically:
1. Almost everyone incarcerated will be released eventually. If they can't find a reasonable job, they can't buy food, care for their families and put a roof over their heads. What would you do under such circumstances. 2. The economic cost of reincarceration is estimated at more that $100 billion annually. 3. The social cost of recidivism is inestimable: lives are ruined, families are torn apart, communities are decimated, new victims are created, cops are shot, etc. 4. An intelligent plan to get folks working would directly correlate to reduced recidivism. The net cost would drop dramatically enough so as to fund the homeless crisis.
People with sophisticated skills--live programmers--have it much easier than the rank-in-file incarcerated population, who often have little education and less job experience.
Rarely are important social issues so cut and dry: Get people jobs and things get much better. Rarer still are issues that Republicans and Democrats can agree upon.
This is an imminently fixable problem.
Do you want to be exposing co-workers to someone like that?
Isn't an organization exposing themselves to liability? Suppose you knowingly hire someone with a violent history and they cause a violent incident.
*for non-violent stuff, like drugs, obviously you can. I'm referring to this specific example, which is described as violent. Non-violence shouldn't impact your future in the same way.
We can either admit that prison sentences aren't actually meant to rehabilitate criminals and they exist solely as a way of inflicting punishment (as you imply), or we can take the folks coming out the back end of that system and give them opportunities to rejoin society as a productive citizen. The attitude of "you made a bad choice, therefore you're no longer worthy of opportunity" is exactly why the United States has the highest imprisonment rates in the world: when folks come out of prison and have every door to rebuilding their life shut, what do you expect is going to happen? That they move away to become a monk in a cave somewhere?
It's funny to me to see HN comments so strongly opposed to "cancel culture" but then as soon as someone talks about folks being released from prison, it's "If after that time you find it to get a job, well, you kinda have to wear that."
If the empathy-allocating thing appeals to you, you can think about it in terms of externalities. If you can prevent recidivism, you can proactively "help the victims" by preventing their victimization in the first place. What drives recidivism? Primarily, poverty, unemployment, social marginalization, untreated mental health issues. People with no options will act as if they don't have options.
Do you imagine the victim of a violent crime wants to see the offender crushed by society to such an extent that they offend again? Do you imagine the victim wants the offender's children to suffer as well? How many generations of pain and suffering should be imposed? How many more victims will that spawn? How much misery should we be willing to impose and on how many people?
Also a convicted fraudster can start working again immediately in a bank, or as a financial advisor for your parents- after all, he served his time, right? And a convicted Mafioso or gang member can become a cop. Etc. etc.
I agree society should help reintegrate prisoners, and find them work. That work might just be as in construction or retail sadly. Unfortunately, if you did something absolutely horrific, the consequences of that may last your entire life. As an employer I am not 'society'- I'm not obligated to hire a violent felon because society in general owes him or her something. As an employer I'm free to make my own decisions, and I personally wouldn't hire someone who did 13 years in prison, likely for homicide. If you disagree, that's fine- it's a free country, you can hire them or even let them into your home, up to you.
If you really disagree, tell me how about how daycares should hire pedophiles after they get out of prison. They did their time, right?
This is the US in a nutshell.
Anyways, most social science research has not found a poverty-crime correlation. Would you mind answering some of my specific examples, rather than trafficking in generalities? Should a daycare hire a convicted pedophile? Should a bank hire a fraudster? Law enforcement, an ex-gang member?
Should you hire someone with a criminal record? Hiring decisions are extremely contextual. Your examples are nowhere near specific enough to address without generalization. But consider that people who have committed white-collar crimes sometimes are hired for their security expertise (e.g. Kevin Mitnick), and I see nothing wrong with that.
Also, why construction and retail? A remote-work programming position seems less dangerous for the public, even following your reasoning.
But that doesn't mean they should be excluded from professions that don't put them in an escalated position to recommit.
Anyways, it'd be impossible to enforce, because I could just say the pedophile failed my coding test. Even if he sued me, it'd be very unlikely to prove his case, and he's probably starting at a deficit with a court.
The issue is that people here are confusing levels of analysis- 'society' should help ex-offenders find gainful employment, but I am not 'society', I am just one company. Society should also clean up pollution, but that doesn't mean that I'm personally obligated to scrub a Superfund site myself
> but that doesn't mean that I'm personally obligated to scrub a Superfund site myself
No, but you should probably pay your taxes that go into such efforts, and corporate philanthropy does become a (socially) obligatory activity for companies that reach a certain size and success.