There is no legal need for jails and police to release all of the details and photos that they do. A simple notice that a person is in police custody fulfills the argument against hidden arrests, while also not providing enough to damage a reputation. Announcing arrest reasons before charges have even been laid is unconscionable in a world where googling a name is this easy.
But the US has moved much more towards "no smoke without fire", leaving the release of names in an antiquated place.
Bogus charges get dropped all the time, but the mugshot and uncharged arresting reason are still posted for all.
This is a dangerous tool in the hands of a flawed institution. We know that people get arrested for trumped up charges, or outright fabrications that later get silently dropped.
Point being, if all you do is maintain a list of names of who you have in custody, you are fulfilling the American Habeas Corpus requirements. There's no constitutional requirement that mugshots need to be released publicly on the internet, there's no rule that the police need to announce what crime a person is suspected of before a charge has been laid. Americans can maintain a healthy distrust of police without wholesale public release on the internet of the details of an arrest.
An innocent unless proven guilty law. Employers, et cetera, may not conclude adversely from criminal charges absent a guilty plea or conviction.
We already have discrimination laws on the books in the US that can't reliably be enforced for this exact reason. I have heard multiple accounts of very clear discrimination taking place in org hiring practices, but they are never documented and when discussed everyone is very careful with their words.
It won't be entirely effective. But it gives companies plausible deniability. I've been the one who voiced up because a sealed marital-dispute arrest came up in an archival background check. Having such a law would have meant doing so was unremarkable, a routine comment.
In the US at least, being arrested (or even accused) of certain things can end your career. Because, even it it's proven you didn't do it, no company will touch you with a 10 foot pole, because people (who don't care/know that you were innocent) will avoid the company if they hire you.
There is no known solution to this problem.
Could you face the same because of gay/trans/etc hiring? That's the point of anti-discrimination laws - that nobody is allowed to discriminate and thus the public outrage is diluted if all are hiring the "undesireables".
Yes, that's the point of such a law. The company gets to deflect blame to it.
I do agree though, there's no good solution to the problem. That's one of the biggest indicators for me that state regulation, at least enforceable regulation, isn't the right answer.
Companies, employees, industry organizations, etc can all come up with their own solutions that they're happy with though. A primary feature of federalism is allowing smaller groups to try different solutions, its pretty good at more quickly finding a solution that may actually work well enough universally
Are you going to erase their memories Men-In-Black style ?
Anti-discrimination laws also fail to protect people from the social consequences of the unwarranted publicity.
According to the constitution, innocence is an intrinsic human property.
I didn't say it was right, but I do believe that looking at it from the perspective of the burden being placed on a company is looking in the wrong direction. The names should not even be released unless convicted or settled--or at earliest at pre-trial (since more evidence can come forward if it's there). Those without charges should not have their name in the public, and that's where the focus should be.
> how would that work for types of people who maybe are arrested without being charged as a result of a protected attribute?
As I said, I am unsure how it works for hiring, but for firing it could be a violation of company policy and that's what the firing is for, not a protected attribute.
Lines like this can't be drawn easily. When in doubt inaction from the government should be the default. In this case that would mean the government not publicizing names at all, just process a case and move on.
The public has direct interest in the company. More importantly, an arrest record alone means very little and if the person wasn't convicted they are supposed to be presumed innocent.
The idea is simple though, and I don't think it requires anything other than old ideas.
A person is innocent until proven guilty. Period. End of story. An arrest proves very little and says nothing of guilt, just take it for what it is.
The news may portray things wrong but people should be expected to, and given the trust to, think for themselves. The news can talk about an arrest however they want, its up to hear it, think critically, and take whatever meaning from it that I choose to take.
I'm on board with this only to the extent of better supporting informed consent. The answer, in my opinion, is never to have someone in charge that believes they know what is best and forces that solution on everyone.
That model is just too fragile, to dehumanizing to the those being mandated to, and too centralizing of authority that can be abused by someone later.
It does, though you have to take that with a grain of salt. It isn't hard to find examples of arrests that go no where and were based on weak probable cause.
The wright one puts behind probable cause also depends a lot on how much they respect the police. When people call for defending the police, for example, I wouldn't expect they care at all about an arrest record.