People are losing their jobs because of offhand tweets completely unrelated to their occupation; how can we expect that a blemish as big as a criminal record will be overlooked?
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.
- 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/nyregion/testilying-polic...
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...
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.
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 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.
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).
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.
"Usually" ...
LOL ...
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Further, because there would be shorter sentences, you're far more likely to encounter a candidate with a lesser sentence.
[1] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
Do you think we all agree that these are extreme crimes?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Placed in high government office?
You're right. Your line of reasoning is nonsense.
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).
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?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_punishments_for_murder...
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.
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.
whereas what you're calling "thought crime" is more analogous to saying "i intend to commit statutory crimes in the future".
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.
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.
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...
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.