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Comment by yetanotherphd | Hacker News Reader

I don't see why this is a good thing. One of the consequences of committing a crime is that your conviction becomes part of the public record.

I am all for trying to convince employers that certain past crimes are not relevant for employment, if that is really the case. But I don't see why the government should be forcing employers to ignore past convictions, or why employers should have to prove that the information is relevant.

Of all the categories we might seek to protect, be it race, gender, religion, etc., past convictions strike me as the least worthy of protection.

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"But I don't see why the government should be forcing employers to ignore past convictions, or why employers should have to prove that the information is relevant."

You're framing this as a laissez faire, libertarian, sort of view. "Keep your government off my hiring decisions!" But, in this case, it was the state that created that problem for this candidate in the first place. A significant percentage of felony convictions are for nonviolent drug offenses. In a world where the government stays out of free trade of goods between people, those convictions wouldn't have happened, at all.

And, as others have mentioned, selecting for criminal background is effectively racial profiling, when implemented on a large scale. Blacks are convicted at a rate several times that of whites for the same crimes; not because they commit more of those crimes, but because they are arrested more often, they are convicted more often, and they are imprisoned more often. Time in American prisons virtually guarantees re-offending (which is a whole discussion unto itself). So, white kids who get caught and don't end up being run through the prison system (getting off with community service or similar), get to escape the system before it escalates to felony charges, in a lot of cases.

Whether my reasoning, if applied consistently, would have implications for drug laws is not really relevant to this debate. The question to me is, given that we have decided to make certain things illegal, should we restrict employer's ability to make use of the public information about which laws people have broken. If particular laws are unjust that should be dealt with by changing those laws.

The arguments that convictions can be used as a proxy for race is weak for two reasons. First, the crimes that are most prone to racial bias are also the least serious crimes and therefore the least likely to appear on a background test. Second, not much quantitative evidence has been given on how much the conviction rates for Blacks is distorted, relative to the true ratio of rates of crime.

"Second, not much quantitative evidence has been given on how much the conviction rates for Blacks is distorted, relative to the true ratio of rates of crime."

I'm not sure what this means, but it sounds kinda like you're saying, "I've seen the research, but I think it's probably wrong, and black people are actually being treated fairly by the criminal justice system despite the huge swaths of evidence of dramatic imbalance in arrests and convictions and imprisonment...because of...um, distortions."

It's trivial to google examples of blacks being arrested at a much higher rate than whites, including for crimes that whites commit at similar or higher rates, for example, the first thing I found when googling for something relevant to this particular case.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/04/race-ma...

"distortion" referred to bias created by discrimination in the criminal justice system. So you have interpreted me wrong, which seems to be a recurring pattern here. I am saying that while there may be discrimination, it's not clear how much this discrimination is able to account for different rates of convictions, and how much is due to Blacks committing more crime.

You seem to have ignored my point about the discrimination being greatest for less serious crimes (a point made in the article you linked). The article also claims that even these crimes can be a problem for job seekers, however I think the effect is smaller, in terms of how long it stays on a person's record, whether it appears on a background check, and how employers would react.

Apologies for misinterpreting you.

Here in the UK, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act means you only have to declare a criminal conviction for a specified period (three to ten years, depending on your sentence). Exemptions exist for certain professions, mainly those involving vulnerable people such as medicine and teaching.

IMHO this approach strikes a very good compromise - it allows for reformed criminals to re-integrate into society, without allowing recidivists to hide their criminal past.

I think that in the context of the US, this would correspond to removing certain crimes from a person's record after a given amount of time.

This seems reasonable to me too, since it allows a uniform way to control the public information on a person's background. A conviction, even a violent one, that happened 30 years ago, is not necessarily something that should be part of the public record.

As far as I understand it, in France there are something like three "levels" of convictions, the lowest ones are not kept on record, the middle level convictions are kept for a short time (three years?) and the highest level ones are kept forever.

I think the judge has some leeway to decide the level of his decision.

Also, only some government organisations and such have access to the middle level records, but a regular employer can't get them. Or they can't after a number of years, or something like that. It's been a while since I haven't checked the details of the procedure.

Also, nobody can get them behind your back, the process is they ask you for them, give you a certificate that they are allowed to if they are asking for the higher level records, and you ask for the records yourself providing the certificate and some id, etc. It's a bit heavy and lengthy, but it means you always know who has access to your records, you also know exactly what they see, and the administration knows who asks for it so they can check if there's too much abuse.

I'm not sure about the details, but basically there are both different access levels and different keeping duration. I think it's a good system.

If I remember correctly, the last job I applied for (my current position) asked about felony convictions in the past 7 years.

This is in the US.

Because people behave irrationally as regards convictions, and this produces an undesirable class of essentially unemployable people who are thus incentivized to commit more crimes because they are unable to work. It's entirely appropriate for government to regulate to prevent the perpetuation of this socially undesirable phenomenon.

I would expect a stronger argument than a generic appeal to irrationality, before introducing a law that would force an employer to hire someone convicted of a violent crime.

How do you know that people's decisions are highly irrational, and that forcing people to behave another way would be more rational?

And it seems like the bar for government intervention is pretty high in this case as the government intervention may not only cost people money, but interferes with people's ability to protect themselves from harm.

I guess the important part of your comment is the "violent" part. To my mind, an employer could very easily justify not hiring someone with a background of violent crime (for the reason you state - their own safety). A crime like this one however, not so much.

Of all the categories we might seek to protect, be it race, gender, religion, etc., past convictions strike me as the least worthy of protection.

Certain types of convictions (especially drug-related) are more likely to affect Blacks and Hispanics[1], so at least in theory overlooking prior convictions would also eliminate a racial bias in hiring.

1. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/...

Last time I checked it was almost every class of conviction that Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be "affected" by.

But if the effect is only via the conviction, I don't see how this qualifies as racial bias, any more than requiring a high school diploma would qualify as racial bias.

Last time I checked it was almost every class of conviction that Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be "affected" by.

Probably not embezzlement, insider trading, fraud, computer hacking, or other white collar crimes.

I don't see how this qualifies as racial bias, any more than requiring a high school diploma would qualify as racial bias

Because racial profiling means you judge people based on appearance before checking their educational background, it stands to reason that even Blacks or Hispanics with the same educational background as their White peers would still have higher conviction rates. Therefore a bias based on convictions would still favor Whites.

It's been shown that while blacks have similar rates of drug use, blacks have a much higher rate of arrest, conviction, and higher sentencing. I think this is the point that was being made: the criminal justice system itself is racially biased, thus eliminating past convictions as a factor is in the spirit of eliminating racial bias.

There is some evidence that Whites have higher rates of marijuana use than Blacks or Hispanics, which makes their lower rate of arrest and conviction more surprising.

http://marijuana-arrests.com/graph5.html

I'm 50/50 on this. A pot conviction doesn't matter - a murder conviction might (depending on circumstances, I guess). Why should someone be shamed for life for something that isn't a big deal, and has no bearing on professional accomplishment/ambitions. If you think a pot conviction hinders someone from doing their job, then I think it's up to you to explain why.

If Person A has an engineering degree from Stanford and passes in-interview personality tests, and person B has the exact same degree and is just as likable/desirable as an employee, but person B has a one-time pot conviction record - then both people are still equally hirable in my mind. I just don't see the disconnect where that needs to be weighed at all in the hiring process.

You might have your own opinion on what information is relevant to an employer. However as a society, right now we only protect certain categories, like race and religion. An employer does not have to prove that all information they use is relevant.

My question is why are we seeking to protect a category of people who have been placed in that category by a particularly fair and rigorous process? And if a particular crime is not a big deal, then it shouldn't be a felony in the first place!

As a moral principle, I don't see why, if you are allowed to judge a person based on their personality or character, you cannot judge them based on acts which by their nature reveal a lot about that person's character.

There are numerous moral reasons why such information should be protected. Firstly, the whole idea of completing a sentence is that he or she has paid their debt to society. If they are released and are looking for a job, they should be able to get that job on their own merits. We as a society should not allow discrimination based on crimes that in principle are already paid for. A job is a necessary part of being a member of society, we should not allow employers to filter candidates for arbitrary reasons, whatever they may be.

From the perspective of society, it is against societies interest to hinder a convicted person from obtaining meaningful employment. Having legitimate access to income is one of the mains ways that a person can become and stay a productive member of society rather than a drain as a criminal. Society should do everything in its power to encourage this. Eliminating this barrier to reintegration is an obvious choice.

Lastly, the assumption that the process is fair and impartial has been shown repeatedly to be false. At least one can argue that an unfair or disproportionate conviction is not permanent, but it becomes that when people are subsequently barred from full reintegration in society through extra-judicial processes.

I think one difference between us is that you see jobs as a resource that the government should regulate in order to maximize the social good, while I see employment as a private contractual agreement between the employer and employee, where the government should respect the freedom of the employer. Hence the high bar I set for government intervention. The current very limited protections against discrimination that the law provides, are closer to my view than to yours.

While the government should not punish a person who has served their sentence, convictions to become part of the public record. Since this is the case now, it is implicit that the consequences of this public record are also part of the "punishment".

On the social benefit of reintegration, there is also a social cost to giving people who have committed crimes special rights or privileges. Doing so removes some of the social stigma of crime that is part of the justice system.

On discrimination in the justices system, it would be good to provide some quantitative information on how much of the increased Black conviction rate is estimated to be a result of direct discrimination, and how much is a result of Black people committing more crime.

>The current very limited protections against discrimination that the law provides, are closer to my view than to yours.

What is your argument for government intervention in the current class of protected groups? How would it not also apply to convicts?

Personally I don't support current anti-discrimination laws but I think they have more justification than what you are proposing.

Race, gender, religion etc. are categories that one the one hand don't have an inherent relationship to a person's ability to do their job, and on the other hand, are things that are either beyond a person's control, or we value a person being able to choose freely.

In comparison, convictions are within a person's control (except false convictions), and we certainly don't value protecting this "choice". There is the issue of discrimination in the justice system, I don't see how this could be addressed except for reforming the justice system especially in relation to drugs.

And there is a clear relationship between past convictions and whether a person is suitable for a job. It relates directly to that person's moral character and attitudes towards crime that could directly impact their behavior as an employee.

Do you think a murder conviction might hinder someone from doing their job? Supposedly they have paid their debt to society, so I don't understand why ANY past conviction matters.

Depends. If it was because someone in the office told them they were doing subpar work, then yeah, that matters.

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