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Comment by cubano | Hacker News Reader

In a world of selfies and shared profiles, how can someone whom has painful memories of seeing themselves in photos ever since childhood supposed to join the party?

How can someone who suffers from a pretty serious criminal record ever feel comfortable meeting new potential partners who will almost surely run a background check and discover unsavory things that really cannot be explained away?

I ask these question because I live them every day.

Self-esteem and confidence about your looks is the elephant-in-the-room here. I often feel Social is like welfare for the rich.

The people whom benefit the most are perhaps the same ones whom need it the least.

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Is this much different than many other technological changes in history? Most benefit a large group of people, while having negative consequences for the smaller group.

I'm not sure what you mean about the photos thing, but there is obviously a benefiting party from the digital background checks. People can get a sense of folks they might date, and potentially avoid dangerous situations. It sucks that that hurts you (assuming your criminal record is not one that people ought to consider dangerous -- if it is, I'm really not sure what to say). But there is a huge group of people that benefit from the increased safety potentially offered by the ability to check up on potential dating partners.

Or, to put it succinctly, why does your interest in hiding your past outweigh the interest of others to know who they are dealing with?

I don't think it's trying to bury information. I think it's fear that people will jump to conclusion.

Say you do a background check on a promising candidate and they have a felony. You may automatically pass on them. Even if they don't, you're branded as a risk for ever.

Let's say you murdered someone and you e done your time. You're a risk. Maybe it was a crime of passion, but you're more liable to do again than someone who has never done it. So, pass.

While it makes sense from a cold, society level view, what is that person supposed to do if they really want to rehabilitate? Start an online ebay business I suppose...

> While it makes sense from a cold, society level view, what is that person supposed to do if they really want to rehabilitate?

Build trust - it will literally take years, or even decades, but with time and effort you can earn the trust of the person in front of you, and build from there.

Most benefit a large group of people, negative consequences for a smaller group, and provide extreme benefits to a small tiny group.

In terms of Social - Look at youtube videos with millions of views, people spending more time than ever reading about celebrities every ten minutes instead of people around them. Before internet people look at celebrities once a day during their TV sessions, and even before that, only listen about them on radio.

And because people's attention is generally a zero-sum pie, without taking into account population growth, people who weren't good at attracting attention to begin with will lose out.

Do you shop at supermarkets? If the store isn't Whole Foods, chances are that the checkout aisle is racked with People Magazine, US, and goes on down from there.

>Is this much different than many other technological changes in history? Most benefit a large group of people, while having negative consequences for the smaller group.

Not sure. Some seem to benefit small groups while having negative consequences for the larger groups.

I'm an outsider, too, but for different reasons. In my experience, you have to stop trying to fit in, and live for yourself. Forget about attracting a mate, or friends who cares about that stuff. They would be bad acquaintances anyway. After you can make yourself happy, you honestly won't care what others think of you.

A quote from Diogenes:

When some one said, "Most people laugh at you," his reply was, "And so very likely do the asses at them; but as they don't care for the asses, so neither do I care for them."

I found some people who felt like me by doing that, and we became better friends then I think most normal people ever do.

Although I do agree that is has become harder to start anew without your past catching up with you, in my experience of growing up in a small community, if you did something bad or just had a bad name, people would learn about it two towns over when you would start dating someone there, or trying to get a job, or moving there. The "social network" might seem all revolutionary, but what has changed most is the scale of the network, both in nodes, geographical spread, and memory, not the social aspect as such.

However, where we could escape the confines of the small-town community by moving to the city or even further away, nowadays even moving to the other side of the world isn't going to help much any more unless you find someplace off the grid. It is something to worry about.

Maybe changing your name might work, though, as long as Internet search engines aren't smart enough to connect your new name to your old one that's plastered all over the Internet.

>>How can someone who suffers from a pretty serious criminal record ever feel comfortable meeting new potential partners who will almost surely run a background check...

What? People do this?

Lol...you are obviously not over the age of 40.

I don't know if this suggestion will work because I don't have a criminal record, but this is what I would do if I had one - taking a page from the founder of public relations - If you make it to first date try admit your criminal record then, and tell a story of your emotional life since then to show how you have evolved since then.

"Tell the truth, because sooner or later the public will find out anyway. And if the public doesn't like what you are doing, change your policies and bring them into line with what people want."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Lee

Try doing that for a decade or two and you will find out it never works. Not only that you start to feel bitter towards a society that continuously labels you as a felon even though you served a full prison sentence and paid your debt to society (the debt they decided you owe). Eventually you realize that you don't owe anyone and just want to continue on with life. So you hide your background because it is the only thing you can do if you want to succeed in society today.

* Do not have a background myself but I have a family member who does and has been through all of this. He has a loving family, is a brilliant man, and it is very unfortunate he still can't get a job (or at least hold on to) worth anything.

Yeah, he only has the benefit of youth, whereas you have all this wisdom...

Of course people do. I'm sure there are apps that aggregate that type of at a for you in one easy search. Not just for dating, but for employment, renting and other things as well.

To the OP though - if you have a serious criminal record you're going to have to disclose that up front. That's the way it is these days, and as the majority of people don't have a criminal record at all, it's not going to change. You can hardly blame them, as past behaviour is an excellent guide to future behaviour.

> You can hardly blame them, as past behaviour is an excellent guide to future behaviour.

Oh really. What a very shallow view of things.

In what sense? Do you believe past behavior is not causally linked with present behavior?

He better not. His comment history pretty much guarantees he's worthless.

I believe everyone can make mistakes and deserves a second chance. It's not because you've done something bad in the past that you are forever lost.

I think that's a very idealistic thing to believe. But I'll bet you wouldn't wager your retirement savings on a financial planner previously convicted of embezzlement, your children on a nanny with sex conviction, or your life under the scalpel of a doctor who had done time for criminal negligence.

And if you would, good on ya. You can be the one to give everyone second chances.

Thank you. I will. Even to you.

>I think that's a very idealistic thing to believe.

And I think that the inverse is what creates the whole US mess with huge incarceration rates and a doomed black population...

I think you're assuming that I believe the extreme opposite, when in fact I believe a moderate opposite.

No, I don't. I think it's well-correlated, but that correlation varies and people's estimation of it is likely subject to a severe Dunning-Kruger effect - most people likely consider themselves to be above-average judges of character.

Now, as for causality, the more social and economic opportunities you withhold from ex-felons - never allowing them to vote, continually expanding the scope declaration requirements, etc. - the more attractive an option recidivism into criminal activity becomes, in proportion to the degree to which you discount their likely future contribution to society. Put another way, if there's no benefits on offer for going and staying on the straight-and-narrow, then why bother?

The belief you're expressing is known as the 'fundamental attribution error' - a tendency to overestimate the explanatory power of inherent characteristics and discount the role of circumstances. This is no wiser than taking the view that everyone is fundamentally good and that they're mindlessly conditioned by social factors.

It may be fundamental attribution error. Has that been conclusively demonstrated in this particular case? If so, what proportion of the propensity to commit crime is based on circumstances? Presumably not 100%, considering psychopaths exist and are quite difficult to rehabilitate.

As far as I'm aware, there's not any conclusive data to show that rehabilitative approaches are much better for recidivism. I'm in favor of the state doing whatever it can to make a more peaceful society. But that does not extend to assuming in my personal life that treating felons as if they were not makes them equally safe to people not already known to have committed serious crimes.

> I'm in favor of the state doing whatever it can to make a more peaceful society.

This sort of thinking has historically led to a lot of problems. It is also trivially false. For example, the United States would be a perfectly peaceful place if all Americans were dead. Would you implement such a solution?

I'm mostly nitpicking here, but you're talking of a peaceful location, whilst the quoted text talks of a peaceful society.

Assuming a society must consist of humans, a peaceful society depends on the existence of a society and thus the existence of humans, so you can't just kill everyone.

Well, time to update your priors. There's a lot of good evidence about the impact of different strategies on recidivism rates. Here's a fairly recent comprehensive overview: http://static.nicic.gov/Library/023358.pdf

Ah, downvotes for supplying actual research, gotta love it.

Thanks for the link. I could not find the part where it said that rehabilitative approaches significantly reduce the risk of reoffense, but I'll assume it's in there somewhere. Nonetheless, I don't see anything in the document suggesting that, even with rehabilitative approaches, the risk is low and it is safe for private citizens to engage with ex-cons as they do with non-ex-cons.

Eponysterical.

Hopefully with greater connectedness, culture will change to be more accepting. We're making great strides knocking down more obvious forms of prejudice, my heart believes all forms will fall in time.

> How can someone who suffers from a pretty serious criminal record ever feel comfortable meeting new potential partners who will almost surely run a background check and discover unsavory things that really cannot be explained away?

You could always meet them face to face and, if you're not comfortable with your past, you need to find a way to be so that you can sell that "the past is past" to those potential partners. Convince yourself in order to convince others.

Depends on the record. While I suppose sexual assault will be dealbreaker, a burglary or drug dealing or fraud is not a big deal in the dating pool.

Burglary and fraud would be a big deals to me for anyone I'm considering for a long-term relationship.

Sorry if this is a silly question-- but if that hangs over you like that, can you just (legally) change your name?

In the US, you're required to share information about past felony convictions on job applications and so forth, plus there are companies that specialize in tabulating that sort of information. So trying to start over by concealing your past is treated as inherently suspicious.

Criminals in America sound like they're treated as a de-facto permanent underclass. Less rights (no voting, custody, criminal suspicion, etc), less privacy (sex offender registry) and less opportunity with respect to job applications (job discrimination based on criminal record is legal?).

And then they're released back into the general population, expected to be upstanding, rehabilitated citizens that want to (and can?) contribute back to society.

You think sex offenders shouldn't be on a register?

In some states, urinating in public qualifies as a sexual offense.

I think that such a crime does not merit being placed on a list that is presumed to be comprised of rapists and child predators.

Depends. Rapists and child molesters, I certainly support long-term monitoring and strict parole requirements, in combination with treatment. Some teen sexting his teen girlfriend a picture of his dick? No. Quite a lot of 'sex crimes' prosecuted in the US are based on moral panic rather than any injury.

What makes them different from murderers, robbers?

All I was saying is that these individuals are now part of a permanent underclass. This after they've supposedly "paid" their debt to society by serving their allotted jail sentence.

Whether there should be a registry for sex offenders, or anything else. That's a really big, and complicated problem, though.

How can this possibly fail? /s

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