6 ms·

Brings up the broader question of "are people with criminal records simply unhireable?" Give people a second chance, a few of them screw up, and it's your faul

by rco8786 10y ago

Brings up the broader question of "are people with criminal records simply unhireable?" Give people a second chance, a few of them screw up, and it's your fault for hiring anyone with a record. Don't give anyone a second chance, and having a criminal record becomes a ticket to lifelong unemployment.

jessriedel 10y ago
I'm OK with violent offenders being effectively banned forever from transporting people alone in a car. In this case, the driver was "facing 17 additional...charges" including "weapons possession, arson, armed robbery, burglary, vehicle theft".
- DannyBee 10y ago
  Of course you are okay with it, because it's out-of-sight, out of mind. If it was your one friend who got drunk and in a bar fight and charged with assault when he was 20, maybe you'd think differently :) Even if you restrict your view to felons, in california, for example, there are plenty of assault charges that are easily classifiable into "stupid thing you did once and did not cause long-term harm" but still felonies. At some point, what folks are really saying is "i'm okay assuming this person is a bad person likely to do something bad". This is, for better or for worse, at this point, pretty unrelated to whether they have a criminal record or not.
  - sickbeard 10y ago
    Disagree. it's the same reason people who are categorized as sex offenders arent allowed around kids. It's not that they can't work but really it makes sense to prevent a violent offender to be the driver of a taxi.
    - nilved 10y ago
      It might be the same reason, but that isn't a good reason. The sex offender registry is a product of some politicians pandering to a maternal instinct. It's not grounded in evidence or ethics, and it's not effective.
      - sickbeard 10y ago
        it is a good precaution. There are many many examples where safety is regarded over ethics.
        vertex-four 10y ago
        > it's not effective > it is a good precaution Do you have any evidence as to its efficacy?
        nilved 10y ago
        It's not a good precaution; if it was, we would apply it more broadly than just to sexual offenses. Sexual abuse, especially with regards to children, is our generation's red scare, and that is the one and only reason why the registry exists.
        sickbeard 10y ago
        It does apply broadly. There are certain professions where you can't work if you have a certain kind of criminal record. this isn't new news
        DanBC 10y ago
        > is our generation's red scare The widespread abuse of children actually happens though. Sexual offender registers aim to prevent the loophole widely used by abusers of getting a new job in a different town. (In the case of priests and nuns that move was arranged by their employer). They also stop some familial abuse. Someone who sexually abused their nieces/nephews would not be able to adopt and would be under greater scrutiny from child protective social services when they move to a new area.
        pavel_lishin 10y ago
        That doesn't make those examples a good reason to do this.
        DannyBee 10y ago
        "it is a good precaution." Based on what evidence?
  - rantanplan 10y ago
    Legit question: Let's say that we'd do what you suggest and we'd allow them to drive, unsupervised, random people back and forth. Let's say that something bad happens and they assault a client or whatever. Client finds out they have priors. Asks you if you think you made a wise choise, or if you'd change something in your hiring process. What would your answer be?
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      Sure. My answer depends on data that shows that this rate of assault/etc is likely higher for these people, and how much higher. Without that data, i can't really say anything at all. Every piece of research i've ever seen basically says "intuition is wrong here, they don't actually assault people at a higher rate". IE people who repeatedly are arrested for dealing drugs are not likely to have a higher rate of assaulting people while driving ubers. But, again, i'm data driven on this, if we have data/research, and the scientific consensus is that they are worse, and significantly worse, than yeah, maybe it's worth doing something. From what i know, most of this is driven by gut feelings and politics, and not actual data.
      - rantanplan 10y ago
        Fair answer. And another one a bit more provocative :D You alleged above that your parent commenter would think differently if the driver was a friend of theirs. If the passenger/client was a friend of yours and you knew the driver had priors, would you advise them against getting into the car or not?
    - erikpukinskis 10y ago
      "We screen using all available research on driver safety. What you are asking us to do will actually make you less safe. It is also deeply unethical."
  - throwanem 10y ago
    > your one friend who got drunk and in a bar fight and charged with assault when he was 20 ...doesn't have a felony record, even if he was convicted, because simple assault is a misdemeanor charge. The cases really aren't parallel. (The rest of this comment seemed general enough to promote to top level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11780434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11780434)
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    You misunderstand. I'm very happy to create a complicated hierarchy of evil and give different penalties for different crimes. (I.e., send "violent" to "sufficiently violent".) I wasn't trying to say "all people who've every committed something that could be called violent should be banned from interacting with humans". I was just refuting the simplistic parent comment "are people with criminal records simply unhireable?", as if the fact that we clearly want to allow some reformed criminals to have some jobs means we can't permanently ban some other types of criminals from some other types of jobs. And you know what? If I'm sending my kid on something like Shuddle, http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/15/shuddle-ride-sharing-service-shuts-down/ http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/15/shuddle-ride-sharing-serv... I don't want the driver to have ever been in a bar fight ever. And for what it's worth, I do have a friend who got in a fist fight in a grocery store parking lot in college. It's certainly not damnation and I think he paid his debt, but I also think that incident accurately reflects on his character. He's a good guy most of the time, but I don't want him driving my grandmother around.
azinman2 10y ago
Which only leads to more crime. It's a bad state of affairs considering how much of the US population is in prison (let alone large swaths of certain groups). That said, there are certain professions I'm not sure I generally want to risk a second chance: childcare, drivers, etc.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  > That said, there are certain professions I'm not sure I generally want to risk a second chance: childcare, drivers, etc. Depends on the crime, right? I don't particularly care if my taxi driver embezzled $500k from his employer, or if my daycare provider stole a car when she was 23.
  - ghurtado 10y ago
    > I don't particularly care if my taxi driver embezzled $500k from his employer, or if my daycare provider stole a car when she was 23. Ok with the first example, definitely not OK with the second. Car theft is a pretty serious crime which oftentimes is correlated with other violent crime.
    - chadgeidel 10y ago
      I can think of many scenarios where someone could be convicted of car theft where it's not even remotely related to other violent crime. Young person A (23) drives friends home in friends (person B) car after a party as a designated driver. Parents of person B (who own the car) don't like person A and claim it's theft (even though they got the car back with no issues). Person A gets grand theft on his record. because A couldn't afford decent lawyer. Maybe this is contrived - I don't know - I can think of a lot of things that are equivalent to "grand theft auto" but no actual harm was done except for a few miles on the car.
  - azinman2 10y ago
    I would care, personally.
DannyBee 10y ago
If the point is rehabilitation, and you never give anyone an actual second chance, .... If the point is punishment, well, the reoffense rate for those prisoners that never are put into rehabilitation programs is 67% after 3 years, and 75% after 5 years. http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welco... So i'm going to suggest that unless we have a scheme for warehousing large numbers of people pretty much forever, and supporting them, we literally have to do something different.
- morley 10y ago
  The source you cited never mentions rehabilitation programs; just that 67% or prisoners reoffend after 3 years, rehabilitation program or no. Am I missing something?
  - birdmanjeremy 10y ago
    Probably that prison and probation are not rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is not part of the criminal justice system in the US. Punishment does not, by itself, rehabilitate successfully.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    (not sure why you were downvoted) IF you dig into their links, you can get to the data that separates out those in some sort of rehabilitation program and those not.
- rco8786 10y ago
  > unless we have a scheme for warehousing large numbers of people pretty much forever, and supporting them, we literally have to do something different Well, there's always the prison system.
SilasX 10y ago
You can support better work options for convicts, without supporting this option -- or others that involve being 1-on-1 in a moving vehicle with many people. (With that said, I agree that there's a lot of contradiction in the hive mind. One day, people are like, "How horrible to turn someone down merely because of a crime they already paid their debt on!" And the next day, "Wait, the bad driver had one time been suspected of a felony? How was he allowed to see sunlight in the first place?!")
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Ain't no hive mind. Different topics attract the attention of different people, and thus you get varying opinions. Why pulls and such are so damn hard to get right. Just the way the question is asked will get a change in response. And that is on top of the issues of race, class, and whatsnot that you want to get a representative mix of to get as objective a result as possible.
legulere 10y ago
The way this works in Germany seems pretty reasonable to me: Criminal records are not really public, but you can get your personal criminal records easily from the police and it will cost quite some money. Some employers will ask for it, but they're only allowed to if they have a good reason for it (e.g. handling confidential information, etc.). After some time (5-20 years depending on the crime) crimes will be removed from your criminal records again. Most employers won't ask for your criminal records so you simply have to find such a job. For driving people around commercially you need a special driver's license. Your criminal records will get checked as a part of that driver's license.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  What you're describing is a CDL. Felon (possibly not all classes, but definitely the serious ones) = no CDL for you. driving drunk/high = no CDL for you. Major traffic violations = No CDL for you. Fail company drug test = No CDL for you. Our CDL system is really restrictive to the point where it can be a serious PITA since state laws tend to vary a lot in terms of what's a misdemeanor. Towing an unregistered car/trailer in Maine is a misdemeanor, in Vermont it's legal under some circumstances, some States don't even require registration on small enough trailers. Taking someone else's junk to the scrap yard for a few bucks could be the end of your CDL. In Virginia 15 over is a misdemeanor and having an out of state plate would paint a target on you. Traffic flow on most highways is 15-over at times. Obviously many people manage to get and hold CDLs but a zero tolerance based system does have its flaws. A basic criminal records check costs ~$20 here FWIW
brianobush 10y ago
There are several jobs that don't require high levels of trust, like an Uber driver. Many entry level jobs, like: fast food, gas stations, etc. The type of convictions are very relevant here: theft is very different than assault with a deadly weapon.
URSpider94 10y ago
I think there's a legitimate question over whether a single conviction should stay with you for life. I don't think there's much question that this person has no business driving people around alone in his car.
CydeWeys 10y ago
The guy in the linked article didn't just have a criminal record though, he was still actively being a criminal, as could be confirmed by the recency of the records on his criminal report.
will_brown 10y ago
>Brings up the broader question... How about this question: Are people with records as a direct result of performing services for Uber simply unhireable by Uber? Example: In Miami, Uber/Lyft drivers are issued citations for violating various municipal ordinances (i.e. for-hire; chauffeur violation) which carry a maximum of $1,010 fine and/or 45 days county jail per violation. Uber provides drivers with a lawyer, represents they will reimburse the fines and even provides training on how to avoid getting citations. However, after sometime Uber also fires these drivers/stops send them rides.
ncr100 10y ago
Felons can be blocked from working in positions where they've proven themselves to do felonies, AFAIK. A food-worker who has been convicted of poisoning food ought to be able to be blocked from food-working. But a food-worker who's been convicted of wreckless driving would not be blocked from food-working. Second chance within reason.

by rco8786 10y ago

jessriedel 10y ago

I'm OK with violent offenders being effectively banned forever from transporting people alone in a car. In this case, the driver was "facing 17 additional...charges" including "weapons possession, arson, armed robbery, burglary, vehicle theft".

DannyBee 10y ago
Of course you are okay with it, because it's out-of-sight, out of mind. If it was your one friend who got drunk and in a bar fight and charged with assault when he was 20, maybe you'd think differently :) Even if you restrict your view to felons, in california, for example, there are plenty of assault charges that are easily classifiable into "stupid thing you did once and did not cause long-term harm" but still felonies. At some point, what folks are really saying is "i'm okay assuming this person is a bad person likely to do something bad". This is, for better or for worse, at this point, pretty unrelated to whether they have a criminal record or not.
- sickbeard 10y ago
  Disagree. it's the same reason people who are categorized as sex offenders arent allowed around kids. It's not that they can't work but really it makes sense to prevent a violent offender to be the driver of a taxi.
  - nilved 10y ago
    It might be the same reason, but that isn't a good reason. The sex offender registry is a product of some politicians pandering to a maternal instinct. It's not grounded in evidence or ethics, and it's not effective.
    - sickbeard 10y ago
      it is a good precaution. There are many many examples where safety is regarded over ethics.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        > it's not effective > it is a good precaution Do you have any evidence as to its efficacy?
      - nilved 10y ago
        It's not a good precaution; if it was, we would apply it more broadly than just to sexual offenses. Sexual abuse, especially with regards to children, is our generation's red scare, and that is the one and only reason why the registry exists.
        sickbeard 10y ago
        It does apply broadly. There are certain professions where you can't work if you have a certain kind of criminal record. this isn't new news
        DanBC 10y ago
        > is our generation's red scare The widespread abuse of children actually happens though. Sexual offender registers aim to prevent the loophole widely used by abusers of getting a new job in a different town. (In the case of priests and nuns that move was arranged by their employer). They also stop some familial abuse. Someone who sexually abused their nieces/nephews would not be able to adopt and would be under greater scrutiny from child protective social services when they move to a new area.
      - pavel_lishin 10y ago
        That doesn't make those examples a good reason to do this.
      - DannyBee 10y ago
        "it is a good precaution." Based on what evidence?
- rantanplan 10y ago
  Legit question: Let's say that we'd do what you suggest and we'd allow them to drive, unsupervised, random people back and forth. Let's say that something bad happens and they assault a client or whatever. Client finds out they have priors. Asks you if you think you made a wise choise, or if you'd change something in your hiring process. What would your answer be?
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    Sure. My answer depends on data that shows that this rate of assault/etc is likely higher for these people, and how much higher. Without that data, i can't really say anything at all. Every piece of research i've ever seen basically says "intuition is wrong here, they don't actually assault people at a higher rate". IE people who repeatedly are arrested for dealing drugs are not likely to have a higher rate of assaulting people while driving ubers. But, again, i'm data driven on this, if we have data/research, and the scientific consensus is that they are worse, and significantly worse, than yeah, maybe it's worth doing something. From what i know, most of this is driven by gut feelings and politics, and not actual data.
    - rantanplan 10y ago
      Fair answer. And another one a bit more provocative :D You alleged above that your parent commenter would think differently if the driver was a friend of theirs. If the passenger/client was a friend of yours and you knew the driver had priors, would you advise them against getting into the car or not?
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    "We screen using all available research on driver safety. What you are asking us to do will actually make you less safe. It is also deeply unethical."
- throwanem 10y ago
  > your one friend who got drunk and in a bar fight and charged with assault when he was 20 ...doesn't have a felony record, even if he was convicted, because simple assault is a misdemeanor charge. The cases really aren't parallel. (The rest of this comment seemed general enough to promote to top level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11780434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11780434)
- jessriedel 10y ago
  You misunderstand. I'm very happy to create a complicated hierarchy of evil and give different penalties for different crimes. (I.e., send "violent" to "sufficiently violent".) I wasn't trying to say "all people who've every committed something that could be called violent should be banned from interacting with humans". I was just refuting the simplistic parent comment "are people with criminal records simply unhireable?", as if the fact that we clearly want to allow some reformed criminals to have some jobs means we can't permanently ban some other types of criminals from some other types of jobs. And you know what? If I'm sending my kid on something like Shuddle, http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/15/shuddle-ride-sharing-service-shuts-down/ http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/15/shuddle-ride-sharing-serv... I don't want the driver to have ever been in a bar fight ever. And for what it's worth, I do have a friend who got in a fist fight in a grocery store parking lot in college. It's certainly not damnation and I think he paid his debt, but I also think that incident accurately reflects on his character. He's a good guy most of the time, but I don't want him driving my grandmother around.

azinman2 10y ago

Which only leads to more crime. It's a bad state of affairs considering how much of the US population is in prison (let alone large swaths of certain groups). That said, there are certain professions I'm not sure I generally want to risk a second chance: childcare, drivers, etc.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
> That said, there are certain professions I'm not sure I generally want to risk a second chance: childcare, drivers, etc. Depends on the crime, right? I don't particularly care if my taxi driver embezzled $500k from his employer, or if my daycare provider stole a car when she was 23.
- ghurtado 10y ago
  > I don't particularly care if my taxi driver embezzled $500k from his employer, or if my daycare provider stole a car when she was 23. Ok with the first example, definitely not OK with the second. Car theft is a pretty serious crime which oftentimes is correlated with other violent crime.
  - chadgeidel 10y ago
    I can think of many scenarios where someone could be convicted of car theft where it's not even remotely related to other violent crime. Young person A (23) drives friends home in friends (person B) car after a party as a designated driver. Parents of person B (who own the car) don't like person A and claim it's theft (even though they got the car back with no issues). Person A gets grand theft on his record. because A couldn't afford decent lawyer. Maybe this is contrived - I don't know - I can think of a lot of things that are equivalent to "grand theft auto" but no actual harm was done except for a few miles on the car.
- azinman2 10y ago
  I would care, personally.

DannyBee 10y ago

If the point is rehabilitation, and you never give anyone an actual second chance, .... If the point is punishment, well, the reoffense rate for those prisoners that never are put into rehabilitation programs is 67% after 3 years, and 75% after 5 years. http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welco... So i'm going to suggest that unless we have a scheme for warehousing large numbers of people pretty much forever, and supporting them, we literally have to do something different.

morley 10y ago
The source you cited never mentions rehabilitation programs; just that 67% or prisoners reoffend after 3 years, rehabilitation program or no. Am I missing something?
- birdmanjeremy 10y ago
  Probably that prison and probation are not rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is not part of the criminal justice system in the US. Punishment does not, by itself, rehabilitate successfully.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  (not sure why you were downvoted) IF you dig into their links, you can get to the data that separates out those in some sort of rehabilitation program and those not.
rco8786 10y ago
> unless we have a scheme for warehousing large numbers of people pretty much forever, and supporting them, we literally have to do something different Well, there's always the prison system.

SilasX 10y ago

You can support better work options for convicts, without supporting this option -- or others that involve being 1-on-1 in a moving vehicle with many people. (With that said, I agree that there's a lot of contradiction in the hive mind. One day, people are like, "How horrible to turn someone down merely because of a crime they already paid their debt on!" And the next day, "Wait, the bad driver had one time been suspected of a felony? How was he allowed to see sunlight in the first place?!")

digi_owl 10y ago
Ain't no hive mind. Different topics attract the attention of different people, and thus you get varying opinions. Why pulls and such are so damn hard to get right. Just the way the question is asked will get a change in response. And that is on top of the issues of race, class, and whatsnot that you want to get a representative mix of to get as objective a result as possible.

legulere 10y ago

The way this works in Germany seems pretty reasonable to me: Criminal records are not really public, but you can get your personal criminal records easily from the police and it will cost quite some money. Some employers will ask for it, but they're only allowed to if they have a good reason for it (e.g. handling confidential information, etc.). After some time (5-20 years depending on the crime) crimes will be removed from your criminal records again. Most employers won't ask for your criminal records so you simply have to find such a job. For driving people around commercially you need a special driver's license. Your criminal records will get checked as a part of that driver's license.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago
What you're describing is a CDL. Felon (possibly not all classes, but definitely the serious ones) = no CDL for you. driving drunk/high = no CDL for you. Major traffic violations = No CDL for you. Fail company drug test = No CDL for you. Our CDL system is really restrictive to the point where it can be a serious PITA since state laws tend to vary a lot in terms of what's a misdemeanor. Towing an unregistered car/trailer in Maine is a misdemeanor, in Vermont it's legal under some circumstances, some States don't even require registration on small enough trailers. Taking someone else's junk to the scrap yard for a few bucks could be the end of your CDL. In Virginia 15 over is a misdemeanor and having an out of state plate would paint a target on you. Traffic flow on most highways is 15-over at times. Obviously many people manage to get and hold CDLs but a zero tolerance based system does have its flaws. A basic criminal records check costs ~$20 here FWIW

brianobush 10y ago

There are several jobs that don't require high levels of trust, like an Uber driver. Many entry level jobs, like: fast food, gas stations, etc. The type of convictions are very relevant here: theft is very different than assault with a deadly weapon.

URSpider94 10y ago

I think there's a legitimate question over whether a single conviction should stay with you for life. I don't think there's much question that this person has no business driving people around alone in his car.

CydeWeys 10y ago

The guy in the linked article didn't just have a criminal record though, he was still actively being a criminal, as could be confirmed by the recency of the records on his criminal report.

will_brown 10y ago

>Brings up the broader question... How about this question: Are people with records as a direct result of performing services for Uber simply unhireable by Uber? Example: In Miami, Uber/Lyft drivers are issued citations for violating various municipal ordinances (i.e. for-hire; chauffeur violation) which carry a maximum of $1,010 fine and/or 45 days county jail per violation. Uber provides drivers with a lawyer, represents they will reimburse the fines and even provides training on how to avoid getting citations. However, after sometime Uber also fires these drivers/stops send them rides.

ncr100 10y ago

Felons can be blocked from working in positions where they've proven themselves to do felonies, AFAIK. A food-worker who has been convicted of poisoning food ought to be able to be blocked from food-working. But a food-worker who's been convicted of wreckless driving would not be blocked from food-working. Second chance within reason.