Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hash872 | Hacker News Reader

Using the logic of some people in this thread, the day after a convinced child molester gets out of prison, he should be able to start working at a day care. Why not? He served his time- you don't want to punish him indefinitely, right?

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?

I don't think that someone who commits homicide should be allowed into a job that enables the employee to be violent, like policing. The same way I don't think a pedophile should work at a day care, and someone convicted of insider trading shouldn't be working at an investment firm.

But that doesn't mean they should be excluded from professions that don't put them in an escalated position to recommit.

Let the child molester work in a bank and the fraudster work in a daycare.

You're not making a good argument for your position. In this context, being a pedophile (distinct from the act of abusing children) is closer to being a racist (distinct from the act of abusing people of a different race) than to being a bank robber.

Also, why construction and retail? A remote-work programming position seems less dangerous for the public, even following your reasoning.

I think there’s a reasonable middle ground, which is: employers can discriminate based on record only if that crime has a direct relationship to the nature of the employment and the position provides a clear opportunity for abuse in the same fashion as the original crime. Ie people who commit fraud can’t work in financial services, people who hurt children can’t work in education/childcare, people convicted of corruption can’t become cops, etc. But there should be a process, over time, to cleanse even these records (although perhaps in practice there would be carve-outs for particularly heinous offenses...). This doesn’t seem particularly limiting, from my perspective, but protects against the extremes you outlined.

Sure, I kind agree. But- as an employer, am I mandated to hire a pedophile for my software developer job? I just object morally, and the company is my private property. Is this really a good use of state power, to compel me to hire an evil person?

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

No one's calling for any mandate, given that the system is currently so stacked against former felons that this worst-case scenario you've posited would require a complete 180 swing into the opposite direction. We're talking about any action that would nudge the status quo, not flip it on its head and introduce dramatic new problems.

> 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.

Really weird example. So a daycare should hire a pedophile if he wasn't ever convicted?

Your comment has its share of weirdness as well.

Much of crime is driven by poverty. If the consequence of poverty-driven crime is more poverty, then this negative feedback loop turns society into an incarceral state.

This is the US in a nutshell.

Being a pedophile is driven by poverty?

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?

I'm not sure you're arguing in good faith. I suggested no such thing about pedophilia, and numerous articles about research into the cycle of poverty and crime are trivial to look up (e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7234816/).

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.

If someone committed a violent crime and we were worried about them behaving violently again, I would NOT hire them for retail. You have to deal with some real assholes as a retail employee. Sitting at a computer programming is much less infuriating than someone yelling at you about their food order being late.

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