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Comment by sgift | Hacker News Reader

> This isn't 'right' or 'wrong', it's just reality.

Government-supported reality. You can say that this is okay, but please do not make it look like this is just the way it is: The government could disallow access to all felony records (probably with an exemption for police) and even (if it wanted) provide people with a fake background story for the time they were in prison. Discrimination can only be based on things someone else knows, if the government didn't provide the information, how could the employers be "picky"?

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> The government could disallow access to all felony records (probably with an exemption for police)

So instead of searching government records to find out if you have been convicted of a felony when you apply to work for me, I use Google to find a newspaper report of your conviction. Not as reliable, but will still probably turn up most applicants with serious felony convictions.

If we are in one of the 40 state that does not prohibit employers from running credit checks on applicants (or if we are in one of those states but the job is one for which there is commonly an exception that allows credit checks, such as jobs in banking) [1], then I can find addresses of banks and loan providers you have used, and possibly more addresses, giving me geographical areas you have probably been in. I can do searches of the local newspapers there, which would be more likely to cover any less serious felony convictions.

Same goes for the locations of any past employers on your resume.

The internet greatly increased the difficulty of leaving your past behind. Even if the primary record (like the government record of your conviction and sentence) is blocked, you leave plenty of breadcrumbs on your way to the present, and the internet preserves them.

[1] http://www.esrcheck.com/Articles/States-with-Laws-Regulating...

I give you that with very high motivation you can find out anything about anyone, more or less. I still think that the count of employers who would use such measures is miniscule compared to the count of employers who check felony records (because it's easy).

Additionally, according to this paper(1) around 8.6% of people have a felony conviction in the US. I have a hard time believing that all - or even most - of this felonies get reported by a newspaper/Google, so even for very noisy employers this seems to be a small risk (yes, if you are the "Slaughterer of <some town>" people will probably find you on Google even without a public felony record).

All else given: Start with removing access to felony convictions, then remove access to credit information and go from there. I didn't say it was easy, but at the moment the government (in the US) seems to do its best to make the life of people who have been convicted of a felony very hard.

(1) http://paa2011.princeton.edu/papers/111687

Each company might not go through that on their own, but it will only be a matter of time until companies are started up whose business model is doing just that.

For $49.95 we will find any past convictions that any of your new hires might have!

If you are a big enough company, hiding those illegal discrimination practices becomes harder.

> The government could disallow access to all felony records (probably with an exemption for police) and even (if it wanted) provide people with a fake background story for the time they were in prison. Discrimination can only be based on things someone else knows, if the government didn't provide the information, how could the employers be "picky"?

No.

We have this system because that is what people want. Maybe not you, but clearly the majority.

Employers can be legally responsible for crimes their employees commit.

If you employ someone who has been found guilty of a sexual assault crime and hire them to work at a carnival where they assault someone, you will be sued.

You don't have to like it, but the reality is that the US is a country where the majority of the public wants to be able to know when someone committed a serious crime.

> We have this system because that is what people want. Maybe not you, but clearly the majority.

Laws and regulations are usually designed to protect the minority. Our country would have made very little social progress if we only enacted reforms that the majority wanted.

I don't disagree with you, but, it is going to take a lot work to convince the US public that convicted felons are a minority group worth protecting.

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