To use religious terminology - repentance makes up for the sin. In other words, the explicit reflection on your past and determination to do better is indeed a transformational thing.
The thing is, "repentance" is not a given and I would say that most people do not go through the introspection and evolution process, so there's no reason to assume that mere passage of time has transformed one into a different person than he who has transgressed.
In your case, the thing that would make me not worry about your "apparent integrity being called into question" is the fact that you yourself are calling yourself out for having done badly. That would be quite different than someone who's done the equivalent amount of aging but didn't recognize and evolve from their past.
Of course there are some things where mere recognition is not sufficient. For example where the misdeed can be correct or otherwise accounted for, they ought to be. EG if one has the opportunity to go back and undo/apologize/repay/whatever but they don't, then their repentance is itself in question (if you don't go back to fix the thing, are you really beating yourself up for having done it, etc?) At most extreme cases, it can mean confessing to a crime and throwing yourself at the mercy of the court or whatever.
- They have empathy for the person they harmed and recognise that they should change their actions to avoid doing such harm again.
- After being caught, they regret how their own freedoms are now jeopardised by their past actions. So they regret their actions, but mostly (or only) because of how it affects them (now) and not how other people may have been harmed.
The problem with latter is that they are sometimes irredeemable, they may pay back their victims, but they see it kind of like losing a bet, they got caught this time so need to pay up and the lesson they internally learn is to not get caught.
And I think it's always reasonable to keep an eye out for the extent to which patterns are still repeating. Some of us become better people over time, and some of us just get better at covering up.
I am glad you are trying to put skin in the game. But your examples are all non-sentimental. Let's pick a different one. If that guy used to touch children in public swimming pools (not rape) decades ago, would you let him babysit your child? Or what if that guy just used to flash himself to children?
I agree that people change. And I am willing to take the risk of working / hanging out with someone who has dealt drugs or stolen cars or even robbed banks. That's bec no one was hurt (at least intentionally) during these activities. But what if he intentionally hurt someone? Would you feel comfortable with that person roaming in the streets where their next target could be you or your family?
Socially, we probably should adopt something similar. Depending on the crime (non-violent, low cost to society, one time), we should all pretty much pretend it didn’t happen after about 5 - 10 years.
Would you want to hear the crazy stories of a two decades ago child murderer too?
I didn't think so.
I've been reading a translation of Water Margin; here's a bit from the story of Wu Song:
Actually, first, here's Wu Song's dictionary entry in the Hanyu Da Cidian:
> 《水浒传》中人物。勇猛刚烈，曾在景阳冈徒手打死猛虎。后参加梁山农民起义军，到处诛除强暴，是人民群众所喜爱的英雄形象之一。
[A character in Water Margin. Brave, fierce, strong, and violent, he once beat a man-eating tiger to death with his bare hands in Jingyang Pass. Afterward he joined the peasant uprising in Liangshan, with brutal killing [and rape?] everywhere, he is one of the heroic figures that the common people love.]
OK, now, the excerpt from Water Margin:
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[Wu Song has been framed for theft by a conspiracy of three men, beaten, and exiled. He has just returned to the home of the highest-ranking conspirator (General Zhang), beheaded all three of them at the self-congratulatory party they were holding, and left a note claiming responsibility in blood on the wall.]
From all this killing the pavilion was swimming in blood, bodies could be seen lying everywhere in the flickering light of the candles. Wu Song said to himself: "It had to be all or nothing; kill a hundred, you can only die for it once." Sword at the ready, he went downstairs.
"What's all the hullabaloo upstairs?" the General's wife was inquiring as Wu Song rushed in. At this monstrous sight she shrieked: "Who are you?"
But Wu Song's sword was already flying. It caught her square in the forehead and she fell with a shriek right there in front of the pavilion. Wu Song held her down but when he tried to cut off her head the sword wouldn't cut. Baffled, he saw by the light of the moon that the blade was completely blunted. "So that's why I couldn't get her head off," he thought.
He slipped out of the back door to get his halberd again and threw away the blunt sword. Then he turned and went back to the tower. A lamp could be seen approaching. It turned out to be the singing girl, Yulan, the one he'd had the trouble with before. She was accompanied by two children. When the light of her lamp fell on the General's wife where she lay dead on the floor, Yulan screamed: "Merciful Heaven!"
Wu Song raised his halberd and ran her through the heart. He also killed the children, a single thrust to each. He went to the central hall, bolted the main door, and returned. He found two or three more young girls and stabbed them to death too. "Now at last," he said, "my heart is eased. Now it's time to stop."
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This is the heroic figure that the common people love. The story is not short on villains, but Wu Song is not one of them.
Wu Song befriends a husband and wife who operate a series of inns, where they drug and butcher travelers who make the wrong impression in order to serve their meat to the other guests. They aren't villains either.
I think that most people do not.
Teenagers get calmer when they get older, so I can accept ignoring minor misdeeds that can be attributed to not thinking, but not anything more serious.
You seem to think that people do change, and maybe some do, but I think that's a rarity. Anyway that's the crux of your message: Do people change or not?
He knew the guy was going to trial and his comfortable life was more valuable to him than honesty or this other man's existence.
In the article's situation it was causing ongoing harm to another person so this is still pretty bad though
But note that, according to the article, lying to the police was viewed as a minor crime. The major one was giving his bank a false name. The bank isn't even, notionally, an arm of the state.
In any case, I guess-- it's complicated. We have this guy who was seemingly a different person for nearly 35 years, but then reverted to do something terrible (and similar to things he had done in the past) when it all threatened to come crashing down. And the other guy who was someone different for 19 years.
If he had stolen an identity from someone dead we'd probably all just kinda shrug.
Remove all entitlements, money and credentials from a middle-class person and throw them on the street and see how quickly that goes down.
You contradicted yourself here.
(I’m not agreeing, just pointing out that there is no contradiction.)
I'm all for forgiving people, but the guy was actively committing the crime against the other chap!
I can forgive but it also is wise to keep distance relative to the severity of the aberration.
If lasting penalties are right for sex offenses against minors, why are they wrong for everything else?
1. False conviction rate is unacceptably high
2. It’s financially similarly burdensome to do life imprisonment as death penalty
3. Presence of death penalty doesn’t seem to impact homicide rates
I am all for putting some people in prison and never letting them out (because of high chance of recidivism).
Should people be able to choose it over a life sentence?
IMHO nitrogen would significantly bring that cost down
Should people be able to choose it? In general I'm all for assisted suicide, but I worry that it could be done coercively.
If I was locked up again and had the choice who to hang with, it would be murderers all the way.
I'm still in contact with many of them on a day-to-day basis.
That depends on what the job is, isn’t it? If it would give them more access to children that would be cause for concern.
Same way about bank robbery. Previous bank robbery would give me a much bigger pause if we work on bank security or adjecent fields for example.
As they say, it takes a thief to catch a thief. Who would be able to protect the bank better than a former bank robber?
But then I read how thoroughly he fucked over the guy whose name he stole in 2019, or 30 years after he started using the name. So some people may not be the same 20 years later. But some of them sure the hell are.
Absolutes do not work and details matter. Maybe you just do not find the crimes you mentioned particularly disturbing. Now imagine that the coworker has comitted some crime that you personally are terrified of or disgusted by. Would you still just go get a beer and hang out? Would you trust the person around people you love or care about? Would you trust the person around potentially vulnerable people at your workplace?
Bank robbery? Well, I dunno. Armed robbery? Did anyone get hurt? Maybe that's not ok, no matter how much time has passed.
But yeah... drugs, whatever. Super petty crimes where there wasn't any violence or physical threats involved? Yeah, maybe no big deal if enough time has passed with the person leaving that kind of life behind.
But even then, it's hard to say. In this article, it seems like the faker didn't do anything that bad before stealing this other guy's identity. Like, the kind of stuff where, 20 years later, we'd probably just shrug and be like "yeah that guy's got some stories". But he ruined another man's life, causing a situation that led him to become committed to a mental hospital merely for claiming that someone else had stolen his identity. (Sure, the judge in the case almost certainly acted improperly, but that's not really the point.) I don't think that's something you just sweep under the rug, even in another 20 years.
After asking how I was going to manage on the streets, homeless (it was -30*C at the time), he did come to his senses somewhat and get me a couple of week's grace which let me find somewhere else to stay.
10 years in jail awaiting charges certainly means you waved off a speedy trial. Yet still, I believe you are leaving out a significant detail or two.
How is that even possible? What kind of system allows such a nonsense to occur?