8 ms·

There used to be the notion in this country that after a person was released from prison they had "paid there debt to society" and should therefore be able to g

by tgflynn 11y ago

There used to be the notion in this country that after a person was released from prison they had "paid there debt to society" and should therefore be able to go on with there life. How did we get to a place where no one seems to believe this anymore ? I would think that a punishment for a crime that includes forced destitution for life independently of the nature of the crime would be considered cruel and unusual. But the Bill of Rights doesn't seem to be taken seriously anymore either.

plorg 11y ago
If my local politicians are any indication, the ones who were in office during the 'tough-on-crime' era, particularly of the 80's and 90's, tend to speak as if the convicted are reprobate, can never fully 'repay' their victims, and are destined for a life of crime. I suspect some of this rhetoric bled into their perceptions of the point of criminal penalties, leading to much more retributive and much less restorative/redemptive sentencing practices and laws. But it's hard for me to separate that all from the general Calvinist/religious culture of the area where I live.
csense 11y ago
> How did we get to a place where no one seems to believe this anymore? It's technology's fault. Before the advent of widespread computers capable of indexing large amounts of data, in order for someone to know a person had a felony, they would have had to know where you were convicted, travel to the courthouse in that county, and go through stacks of dusty paper files. This struck a good balance between making court records public (anyone can look at them), and the privacy of individual defendants (few people bothered because it's time-consuming and inconvenient, therefore expensive). Of course software's eaten this market, there are companies that have digitized and indexed all those public records, and now you can run background checks on people with a few mouse clicks and a few bucks on your credit card.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- x0x0 11y ago
  It's clearly technology's fault. Just like police never assaulted black/brown people before everyone had video cameras on their persons 24/7. And ufos stopped visiting. On a serious note, you're running perilously close to google and the right to forget. I strongly agree with you, but it's the google party line that there's no difference at all between (1) the ability to conduct a background check on someone as long as you're willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars, and (2) the ability for anyone to conduct and publicize a background check for free. You'll note also that asshole Eric Schmidt simultaneously suggested people should change their names if they want youthful indiscretions not to follow them for the rest of their life while using his billions and lawyers to erase his mistresses' stories from the internet.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > It's technology's fault. Its our fault, not technology's. Technology is just a tool; we've failed to properly address how it should be used. See: Drones, NSA spying, etc as well.
  - CyberDildonics 11y ago
    True. We're still broadcasting most of our internet traffic in the clear for fuck's sake.
  - m_mueller 11y ago
    Anything that can be done, will be done, to whatever degree people can profit from it, as long as it isn't regulated. If a majority of people are against these privacy violation, then it's simply a failure of the political system to come up with a solution.
  - ovi256 11y ago
    Tools shape society just as much as society shapes tools.
- _delirium 11y ago
  Traditional tort law also put some barriers in the way of doing various negative things you could imagine doing with the public information. For example photocopying a bunch of public records about someone you don't like, and then mailing them to the person's employer, flyering the neighborhood with copies of them, etc., or following the person as they go apply for employment and handing a copy to the prospective employer, would all fall afoul (in some jurisdictions) of economic torts and anti-harassment law. But running an "information service" that does this systematically for everyone doesn't have the same element of targeted harassment, so avoids these torts, while still harming the person in question.
NoCulturalFit 11y ago
My theory is that people are dissatisfied with what the "debt to society" is. How can you blame them. If you have loved ones who were attacked, how would you feel if the criminal only got 180 hours of community service for sexual assault? http://www.stoppa-pedofilerna.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Sundsvalls-TR-B-1018-15-Dom-2015-06-24.pdf http://www.stoppa-pedofilerna.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/...
- ploxiln 11y ago
  Well in the US, "sex offenders" (including public urination and some people not actually convicted of doing what is alleged) are marked for life and need to inform their neighbors of their shunned status whenever they move. (On the down side, some people like me don't take "sexual offender" status seriously because it's so often mis-applied.)
  - tgflynn 11y ago
    Not to mention that many (maybe even most) felony convictions are for victimless "crimes" like drug possession or for property offenses where no one has suffered any kind of irreperable harm.
  - kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
    Murderers get better treatment after release than low level sex offenders who committed victimless crimes. A sad reflection on a society that consumes violence for entertainment but is deathly afraid of all sexual matters.
    - the_ancient 11y ago
      That is because in todays society Violence is Acceptable, Sex is not. Porn is icky, disgusting, and distasteful A movie with torture, graphic violence, and gore is a fun friday evening.
      - lsaferite 11y ago
Kinnard 11y ago
> How did we get to a place where no one seems to believe this anymore ? I think for some groups in this country, we're not just getting to this place, this is where we've been for a long time. It's just that the masses are better able to access information about it now. Blacks being killed by police with indiscretion did not start in 2013. I'd guess in fact that that the past 5 years were way better for black live than the 5 years before them. People just happen to be paying attention now.
- mindslight 11y ago
  People being killed by police with indiscretion will not have started in 2023, or whenever it is that this issue stops being derailed by your racism.
- Retric 11y ago
  The Black lives matter movement was catalyzed as a marketing campaign by companies that sell police cameras that went viral. http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
    Do you have a citation or is that just your personal theory?
    - Retric 11y ago
      A marketing guy working for one of those companies mentioned pushing the story in an NPR interview. It was not 100% clear if they where waiting for an event to capitalize on, or noticed the story get traction and then started pushing it.
      - Kinnard 11y ago
        I can't say that I see anything unethical about a police sousveillance company catalyzing the Black Lives Matter Movement
comrh 11y ago
Take away a person's right to vote and in a democracy they're no long part of society.
- knodi123 11y ago
  society: the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. There's a lot more to american society than standing in a voting booth. I agree it's a steep price, but there's no need to exaggerate.
  - baudehlo 11y ago
    So you're fine with suffrage in general, or just for people who have paid their debt to society?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - eru 11y ago
      Just be charitable in your interpretation. Knodi123 probably wants ex-cons treated well, but doesn't believe that they are not part of society, even without voting rights. Kids have no voting rights either. Or legal aliens. Or visiting diplomats. Etc.
      - baudehlo 11y ago
        I said nothing about being part of society (whatever that means - it's a very vague statement). I asked a specific question about suffrage.
        lotharbot 11y ago
        Putting a question mark after a seemingly-accusatory statement doesn't make it a question. If you were genuinely curious, "what's your opinion on voting rights for convicted criminals?" would be a better way to ask.
fweespeech 11y ago
I think this is a case of local crazies doing something crazy. The courts will shut it down when challenged, I'd hope.
imaginenore 11y ago
And what's really crazy we force sex offenders (which includes the people who got caught peeing in a public place) to announce themselves, not allow them to live within X feet of schools, and there's a public database of them. But we don't do the same with kidnappers or murderers. How insane is that?
- harshreality 11y ago
  I suppose society gets restless if it doesn't have some class of people it can very publicly brand, so if needed it makes one up semi-arbitrarily. Modern day scarlet letter.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    Quite - look at the increasingly ludicrous proposals for building walls thousands of miles long, rounding up millions of people and deporting them and so on. There are some unrealistic proposals from the left too, but they tend be more boring ones like jacking up taxes on incomes and swingeing tariffs on imports - economically foolish but logistically quite easy.
- Frozenlock 11y ago
  Interesting... This means I can prevent a school from being built near my house by peeing in a public place... :-)
  - sitkack 11y ago
    I assume they would make you move, or have you fired, or both.
  - eru 11y ago
    No. They will force you to move.
  - the_ancient 11y ago
    No they will likely announce the school and before it is even built arrest you and lock you away for many many years
a3n 11y ago
As an individual, I would be cautious about hiring a former convict, but it's not out of the question. Intuitively (I'm not an actuary), it seems that insurance companies get away with charging you more if you've had a prior accident. It seems a person who has broken the law may be more likely to break it than the average person. I think it stinks that this local govt can tell a business to fire a felon though, that just compounds the problem of re-entry. I smell a Supreme Court case in the future.

by tgflynn 11y ago

plorg 11y ago

If my local politicians are any indication, the ones who were in office during the 'tough-on-crime' era, particularly of the 80's and 90's, tend to speak as if the convicted are reprobate, can never fully 'repay' their victims, and are destined for a life of crime. I suspect some of this rhetoric bled into their perceptions of the point of criminal penalties, leading to much more retributive and much less restorative/redemptive sentencing practices and laws. But it's hard for me to separate that all from the general Calvinist/religious culture of the area where I live.

csense 11y ago

> How did we get to a place where no one seems to believe this anymore? It's technology's fault. Before the advent of widespread computers capable of indexing large amounts of data, in order for someone to know a person had a felony, they would have had to know where you were convicted, travel to the courthouse in that county, and go through stacks of dusty paper files. This struck a good balance between making court records public (anyone can look at them), and the privacy of individual defendants (few people bothered because it's time-consuming and inconvenient, therefore expensive). Of course software's eaten this market, there are companies that have digitized and indexed all those public records, and now you can run background checks on people with a few mouse clicks and a few bucks on your credit card.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
x0x0 11y ago
It's clearly technology's fault. Just like police never assaulted black/brown people before everyone had video cameras on their persons 24/7. And ufos stopped visiting. On a serious note, you're running perilously close to google and the right to forget. I strongly agree with you, but it's the google party line that there's no difference at all between (1) the ability to conduct a background check on someone as long as you're willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars, and (2) the ability for anyone to conduct and publicize a background check for free. You'll note also that asshole Eric Schmidt simultaneously suggested people should change their names if they want youthful indiscretions not to follow them for the rest of their life while using his billions and lawyers to erase his mistresses' stories from the internet.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
> It's technology's fault. Its our fault, not technology's. Technology is just a tool; we've failed to properly address how it should be used. See: Drones, NSA spying, etc as well.
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  True. We're still broadcasting most of our internet traffic in the clear for fuck's sake.
- m_mueller 11y ago
  Anything that can be done, will be done, to whatever degree people can profit from it, as long as it isn't regulated. If a majority of people are against these privacy violation, then it's simply a failure of the political system to come up with a solution.
- ovi256 11y ago
  Tools shape society just as much as society shapes tools.
_delirium 11y ago
Traditional tort law also put some barriers in the way of doing various negative things you could imagine doing with the public information. For example photocopying a bunch of public records about someone you don't like, and then mailing them to the person's employer, flyering the neighborhood with copies of them, etc., or following the person as they go apply for employment and handing a copy to the prospective employer, would all fall afoul (in some jurisdictions) of economic torts and anti-harassment law. But running an "information service" that does this systematically for everyone doesn't have the same element of targeted harassment, so avoids these torts, while still harming the person in question.

NoCulturalFit 11y ago

My theory is that people are dissatisfied with what the "debt to society" is. How can you blame them. If you have loved ones who were attacked, how would you feel if the criminal only got 180 hours of community service for sexual assault? http://www.stoppa-pedofilerna.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Sundsvalls-TR-B-1018-15-Dom-2015-06-24.pdf http://www.stoppa-pedofilerna.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/...

ploxiln 11y ago
Well in the US, "sex offenders" (including public urination and some people not actually convicted of doing what is alleged) are marked for life and need to inform their neighbors of their shunned status whenever they move. (On the down side, some people like me don't take "sexual offender" status seriously because it's so often mis-applied.)
- tgflynn 11y ago
  Not to mention that many (maybe even most) felony convictions are for victimless "crimes" like drug possession or for property offenses where no one has suffered any kind of irreperable harm.
- kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
  Murderers get better treatment after release than low level sex offenders who committed victimless crimes. A sad reflection on a society that consumes violence for entertainment but is deathly afraid of all sexual matters.
  - the_ancient 11y ago
    That is because in todays society Violence is Acceptable, Sex is not. Porn is icky, disgusting, and distasteful A movie with torture, graphic violence, and gore is a fun friday evening.
    - lsaferite 11y ago

Kinnard 11y ago

> How did we get to a place where no one seems to believe this anymore ? I think for some groups in this country, we're not just getting to this place, this is where we've been for a long time. It's just that the masses are better able to access information about it now. Blacks being killed by police with indiscretion did not start in 2013. I'd guess in fact that that the past 5 years were way better for black live than the 5 years before them. People just happen to be paying attention now.

mindslight 11y ago
People being killed by police with indiscretion will not have started in 2023, or whenever it is that this issue stops being derailed by your racism.
Retric 11y ago
The Black lives matter movement was catalyzed as a marketing campaign by companies that sell police cameras that went viral. http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
  Do you have a citation or is that just your personal theory?
  - Retric 11y ago
    A marketing guy working for one of those companies mentioned pushing the story in an NPR interview. It was not 100% clear if they where waiting for an event to capitalize on, or noticed the story get traction and then started pushing it.
    - Kinnard 11y ago
      I can't say that I see anything unethical about a police sousveillance company catalyzing the Black Lives Matter Movement

comrh 11y ago

Take away a person's right to vote and in a democracy they're no long part of society.

knodi123 11y ago
society: the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community. There's a lot more to american society than standing in a voting booth. I agree it's a steep price, but there's no need to exaggerate.
- baudehlo 11y ago
  So you're fine with suffrage in general, or just for people who have paid their debt to society?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - eru 11y ago
    Just be charitable in your interpretation. Knodi123 probably wants ex-cons treated well, but doesn't believe that they are not part of society, even without voting rights. Kids have no voting rights either. Or legal aliens. Or visiting diplomats. Etc.
    - baudehlo 11y ago
      I said nothing about being part of society (whatever that means - it's a very vague statement). I asked a specific question about suffrage.
      - lotharbot 11y ago
        Putting a question mark after a seemingly-accusatory statement doesn't make it a question. If you were genuinely curious, "what's your opinion on voting rights for convicted criminals?" would be a better way to ask.

fweespeech 11y ago

I think this is a case of local crazies doing something crazy. The courts will shut it down when challenged, I'd hope.

imaginenore 11y ago

And what's really crazy we force sex offenders (which includes the people who got caught peeing in a public place) to announce themselves, not allow them to live within X feet of schools, and there's a public database of them. But we don't do the same with kidnappers or murderers. How insane is that?

harshreality 11y ago
I suppose society gets restless if it doesn't have some class of people it can very publicly brand, so if needed it makes one up semi-arbitrarily. Modern day scarlet letter.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Quite - look at the increasingly ludicrous proposals for building walls thousands of miles long, rounding up millions of people and deporting them and so on. There are some unrealistic proposals from the left too, but they tend be more boring ones like jacking up taxes on incomes and swingeing tariffs on imports - economically foolish but logistically quite easy.
Frozenlock 11y ago
Interesting... This means I can prevent a school from being built near my house by peeing in a public place... :-)
- sitkack 11y ago
  I assume they would make you move, or have you fired, or both.
- eru 11y ago
  No. They will force you to move.
- the_ancient 11y ago
  No they will likely announce the school and before it is even built arrest you and lock you away for many many years

a3n 11y ago

As an individual, I would be cautious about hiring a former convict, but it's not out of the question. Intuitively (I'm not an actuary), it seems that insurance companies get away with charging you more if you've had a prior accident. It seems a person who has broken the law may be more likely to break it than the average person. I think it stinks that this local govt can tell a business to fire a felon though, that just compounds the problem of re-entry. I smell a Supreme Court case in the future.