4 ms·

> Felons often face considerable difficulties in finding employment and housing. This is the marketplace at work. It's not a government-imposed ban on access t

> Felons often face considerable difficulties in finding employment and housing. This is the marketplace at work. It's not a government-imposed ban on access to public services.

nkrisc 9y ago
What's the difference if the effect is the same?
- alexbeloi 9y ago
  It's the same as the difference between societal discrimination and government legislated discrimination. Both terrible, the latter seems more so.
- ams6110 9y ago
  There are landlords who will rent to felons and employers who will hire them. It's not a blanket ban.
  - johan_larson 9y ago
    People with felony convictions are barred by law from many professions in many states, including surprisingly innocuous ones like dentistry and massage therapy.
sgift 9y ago
The only way the marketplace can do this is with the support of the government. The government provides felony records after all.
- SamReidHughes 9y ago
  So you think what, the courts should be secret?
  - throwawayjava 9y ago
    There's a huge difference between secrecy and privacy. A court that doesn't publish felony records is not a secret court. In fact, non-secret courts have been around for centuries even though easily accessible felony records are an extremely recent phenomenon (post-internet).
  - mancerayder 9y ago
    Criminal background checks should be limited with regards to this criteria considered for employment.
    - eggpy 9y ago
      I feel like "violent murderer and/or rapist" is something Id like to know about when considering hiring someone.
      - sgift 9y ago
        I want to know many things, but I believe that if the punishment a court ordered is over you have paid your dues to society and that should be the end of it.
      - mancerayder 9y ago
        Except criminal background checks don't just aim at murderers and rapists. Felonies are often a drug-related, and often in states with stricter laws. And no, it's not your business if a job candidate got caught with a joint or even something worse years ago, on his own leisure time, or got a DUI in college a decade ago. Why should that continue to be allowed to be your business, if you hire (for instance) a programmer? Finally, what about time served? A person should be punished forever?
        eggpy 9y ago
        No, I don't think someone should be punished forever. I think most people agree that our criminal justice system needs a major overhaul. Unfortunately "justice" seems to focus more on punishment rather than rehabilitation. As a cause of this, recidivism is rather high. I don't care about personal narcotics use, but a felony regarding minor possession is very different then a violent felony. Also I know a people can change and one mistake doesn't define a person. Reading back I suppose my previous statement came off as callous. That wasn't my intention. But let's take a quick peek at felony recidivism rates [0] Spoiler alert: it's quite high and depends on what they were convicted for. > Property offenders were the most likely to be rearrested, with 82.1 percent of released property offenders arrested for a new crime compared with 76.9 percent of drug offenders, 73.6 percent of public order offenders and 71.3 percent of violent offenders. The system is really terrible and not particularly effective as evidenced by those statistics. I'm sure as hell glad I don't have a felony. But I'd also like to know if I were electing to employ someone that might significantly negatively impact my business. I won't write someone off because they have an asterisk, but the circumstances of a conviction would absolutely matter to me. [0]https://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx https://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welc...
mancerayder 9y ago
Absolutely correct, and one of the reasons why I'm suspicious of attempts to grant private companies too much leeway with regards to people's livelihoods. Barring someone from working for life in professional roles - what difference is there practically, not philosophically between that and the old Soviet practice of ruining people's careers if they weren't in good standing in the Party? The average Joe won't experience any difference. The armchair political scientist will argue it endlessly (I put myself in that category, by the way).
TallGuyShort 9y ago
It's certainly government-enabled as others have said. We have this principle of "innocent-until-proven-guilty" (although certainly in the media and in some more practical aspects of our judicial system that seems to get forgotten), but I think we need to consider more this idea of how someone gets innocent again. Do all felonies justify having someone labelled as a felon for life, knowing that it hinders their ability to productively participate in society again? Absolutely not. Especially if we really believe our "correctional" facilities correct people instead of just inflicting suffering, we ought to be trying harder to let go of people's pasts once it's behind him. Would I hire a white-collar criminal to handle sensitive business records? Probably not. But would I hire a guy who beat up an attacker and took it too far to fix my car? No reason no to. Yet we don't have enough nuance in our system to handle stuff like that, and no reason for businesses to do anything but discriminate indiscriminately. If one doesn't hire felons, one doesn't hire felons. And unless you can get things expunged, you're kinda screwed with a sort of life sentence.

> Felons often face considerable difficulties in finding employment and housing. This is the marketplace at work. It's not a government-imposed ban on access to public services.

nkrisc 9y ago

What's the difference if the effect is the same?

alexbeloi 9y ago
It's the same as the difference between societal discrimination and government legislated discrimination. Both terrible, the latter seems more so.
ams6110 9y ago
There are landlords who will rent to felons and employers who will hire them. It's not a blanket ban.
- johan_larson 9y ago
  People with felony convictions are barred by law from many professions in many states, including surprisingly innocuous ones like dentistry and massage therapy.

sgift 9y ago

The only way the marketplace can do this is with the support of the government. The government provides felony records after all.

SamReidHughes 9y ago
So you think what, the courts should be secret?
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  There's a huge difference between secrecy and privacy. A court that doesn't publish felony records is not a secret court. In fact, non-secret courts have been around for centuries even though easily accessible felony records are an extremely recent phenomenon (post-internet).
- mancerayder 9y ago
  Criminal background checks should be limited with regards to this criteria considered for employment.
  - eggpy 9y ago
    I feel like "violent murderer and/or rapist" is something Id like to know about when considering hiring someone.
    - sgift 9y ago
      I want to know many things, but I believe that if the punishment a court ordered is over you have paid your dues to society and that should be the end of it.
    - mancerayder 9y ago
      Except criminal background checks don't just aim at murderers and rapists. Felonies are often a drug-related, and often in states with stricter laws. And no, it's not your business if a job candidate got caught with a joint or even something worse years ago, on his own leisure time, or got a DUI in college a decade ago. Why should that continue to be allowed to be your business, if you hire (for instance) a programmer? Finally, what about time served? A person should be punished forever?
      - eggpy 9y ago
        No, I don't think someone should be punished forever. I think most people agree that our criminal justice system needs a major overhaul. Unfortunately "justice" seems to focus more on punishment rather than rehabilitation. As a cause of this, recidivism is rather high. I don't care about personal narcotics use, but a felony regarding minor possession is very different then a violent felony. Also I know a people can change and one mistake doesn't define a person. Reading back I suppose my previous statement came off as callous. That wasn't my intention. But let's take a quick peek at felony recidivism rates [0] Spoiler alert: it's quite high and depends on what they were convicted for. > Property offenders were the most likely to be rearrested, with 82.1 percent of released property offenders arrested for a new crime compared with 76.9 percent of drug offenders, 73.6 percent of public order offenders and 71.3 percent of violent offenders. The system is really terrible and not particularly effective as evidenced by those statistics. I'm sure as hell glad I don't have a felony. But I'd also like to know if I were electing to employ someone that might significantly negatively impact my business. I won't write someone off because they have an asterisk, but the circumstances of a conviction would absolutely matter to me. [0]https://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx https://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welc...

mancerayder 9y ago

Absolutely correct, and one of the reasons why I'm suspicious of attempts to grant private companies too much leeway with regards to people's livelihoods. Barring someone from working for life in professional roles - what difference is there practically, not philosophically between that and the old Soviet practice of ruining people's careers if they weren't in good standing in the Party? The average Joe won't experience any difference. The armchair political scientist will argue it endlessly (I put myself in that category, by the way).

TallGuyShort 9y ago

It's certainly government-enabled as others have said. We have this principle of "innocent-until-proven-guilty" (although certainly in the media and in some more practical aspects of our judicial system that seems to get forgotten), but I think we need to consider more this idea of how someone gets innocent again. Do all felonies justify having someone labelled as a felon for life, knowing that it hinders their ability to productively participate in society again? Absolutely not. Especially if we really believe our "correctional" facilities correct people instead of just inflicting suffering, we ought to be trying harder to let go of people's pasts once it's behind him. Would I hire a white-collar criminal to handle sensitive business records? Probably not. But would I hire a guy who beat up an attacker and took it too far to fix my car? No reason no to. Yet we don't have enough nuance in our system to handle stuff like that, and no reason for businesses to do anything but discriminate indiscriminately. If one doesn't hire felons, one doesn't hire felons. And unless you can get things expunged, you're kinda screwed with a sort of life sentence.