58 ms·

>As a society, we approve of jail being the mechanism to "forgive" a person's crime. That's not really true. Serving prison time is neither a way to "forgive"

by jasode 9y ago

>As a society, we approve of jail being the mechanism to "forgive" a person's crime. That's not really true. Serving prison time is neither a way to "forgive" nor a way to "pay debt back to society". Those are just common phrases some people use. If felons were truly forgiven, they would have their right to vote restored. They wouldn't be denied a passport to travel abroad or denied a firearms license. Convicted felons of financial crime will be denied officer positions such as CFO in public companies. A sex felony will be a lifetime of reporting on the sex offenders registries. Society has never perceived jail time as truly resetting the scarlet letter back to zero. Therefore, the debate is whether "Google results" is in the same bucket as "sex offender list". For many in society, they think it's wrong to remove those results from Google.

izacus 9y ago
This is not how a lot of EU countries function - which is why there's friction there. The American "You are a criminal for life and will eternally be punished!" attitude is clashing with an EU mindset of being able to start a new life. Permanent records are hugely damaging for persons livelihood in these cases.
- 282883392 9y ago
  Can you not change your name in the EU? Seems like someone changing their name would be able to solve some of these issues.
  - izacus 9y ago
    Why should you be forced to do that? I mean, you're assuming two things: - That people who want their data removed are criminals. That's hugely not the case. Does a teenager who was plastered all over social media / newspapers have to change his/her name because someone targeted abuse at him/her? - Even if they were jailed for a transgression, they paid their part to the socienty. For serious transgressions, the authorities keeps tabs on them. For non-serious things, why does it matter? They paid their part.
    - halflings 9y ago
      GP is not assuming anything. Literally the first paragraph in the post: > The man, who has not been named due to reporting restrictions surrounding the case, wanted search results about a past crime he had committed removed from the search engine. Any example of somebody being abused/targeted and Google refusing to remove them from search results? The only cases where they fought back were people trying to hide their criminal record (most often politicians, white collar crime).
  - dx034 9y ago
    In some countries that's very hard to do. But why should you? If you committed a crime and spent your time in jail, why shouldn't you get a second chance? There are certain jobs that you cannot take depending on the crime you committed (esp working with children) but for most jobs it should be absolutely irrelevant if you committed a crime in the past.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    This depends on the country. UK? No problem. France? Extremely difficult: https://www.wikiprocedure.com/index.php/France_-_Change_Your_Name_(Deed_Poll) https://www.wikiprocedure.com/index.php/France_-_Change_Your... You need to convince a judge that you have a "good reason". France has only recently loosened its restrictions on what names people are allowed to have.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    Varies by country. Germany normally forbids changes except by marriage/divorce (I think), while the UK doesn’t really have legal names, just lots of databases run by people who want an official-looking document before they update anything (and even then my university will just refuse to reprint degree certificates with a new name).
- TomMarius 9y ago
  I (an EU citizen) want to keep my right to think whatever I want about a criminal - and that includes looking at or keeping records. I feel like this 'right to be forgotten' hurts my safety - I don't want to forget that someone murdered someone or raped someone, these things are unforgettable and definitely unforgivable - and I want to know about them, and I want employers to be able to look them up.
  - sorokod 9y ago
    "I feel like this 'right to be forgotten' hurts my safety" A few years ago you had no such facility at all - how did you manage?
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      I was feeling less safe, that has improved. Why go back in time?
      - izacus 9y ago
        Because it hurts innocent people.
      - sorokod 9y ago
        Is it possible that your feeling is entirely subjective and not backed by any statistics ?
      - EpicEng 9y ago
        Good thing we don't write law based on feelings. Were you _actually_ less safe? I highly doubt it.
      - rootlocus 9y ago
        If anything, you were probably feeling safer without being connected 24/7 to all the problems in the world. I'm really skeptical you were more afraid of strangers because you couldn't access public records about them.
- downandout 9y ago
  Yeah, I think that the EU is right in this regard, and I wish a similar principle existed in the US. But I was surprised that the EU court in this case ruled against one person simply because he served a 4 year sentence. His case was more than a decade old, and it was non-violent and non-sexual. It seems like an inconsistent application of this principle. Sentences are often based on the amount of money involved. So while embezzlement by a CEO at a small company may well result in smaller losses and shorter prison sentences, the intent and conduct is exactly the same as a similar case at a larger company. If the smaller company CEO has a right to be forgotten, so does the larger one.
  - moomin 9y ago
    If you read the article it was a bit more nuanced than that. The one who had the right to be forgotten denied had a track record of misleading people about his conviction. The court (rightly, in my view) took this behaviour as evidence that his conviction remained relevant in a way that it was not for the other person (described as showing remorse). They didn’t just measure the length of the sentence. IMHO, this is an encouraging, nuanced development. There has to be a balance between protecting people against serial offenders and rehabilitation.
    - briandear 9y ago
      Why not attack the publication rather than the card catalog?
      - kafquaesque 9y ago
        Requiring the publication to make the change is more feasible. In a hypothetical defamation situation the courts in the US have made this costly to do. In a conviction scenario Google search results can prevent people from being employed. I had a relative of a friend which had a published DUI which made it difficult for him to seek employment years after the issue. Employers have the ability to find criminal convictions and decide whether or not to hire an individual. Almost everyone googles people prior to contact.
    - 9y ago
- jasode 9y ago
  >Permanent records are hugely damaging for persons livelihood in these cases. I agree and I'm not debating the harm that can be done. (My comment got many downvotes so I assume they think I believe felons should never be given a 2nd chance.) No, my comment is specifically about the framework for arguing. I'm saying that phrases such as "forgive" and "pay debt to society" are unconvincing since society has never universally believed that. Consider even the EU country like UK where Google lost this case. If UK truly "forgives" crimes after a felony sentence is served, why do they have a sex offender registry? The parent I responded to is apparently based in Canada. Canadian border officers have denied Americans with prior DUI felony convictions from entering the country. That's another example of not being "forgiven". Also, Canada is another country with a sex offender list. If we want to debate the "harm" to felons, then let's debate that. Do not use "forgive" in the text of the argument because it just leads to an inconsistency. Jail time is about punishment, not forgiveness.
  - hahainternet 9y ago
    > why do they have a sex offender registry? We have a Violent and Sex Offender Register: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_and_Sex_Offender_Register https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_and_Sex_Offender_Regis... It is not public, it exists to facilitate Police intelligence.
    - jasode 9y ago
      >It is not public, it exists to facilitate Police intelligence. The "police intelligence" gives a misleading impression. Non-police residents can inquire about felons on the list because of Sarah's Law.[1] In other words... "If I molested a child and served my 10 year prison sentence, I'm not truly _forgiven_ if people can check if I'm on a sex offender registry." Therefore, don't use "forgive" as the framework. It should be clear that society really doesn't forgive and allow people a clean slate. If serving jail truly meant the "debt was paid to society", felons wouldn't be put on that list after jail was completed. Many defendents refuse a plea bargain of "guilty" because they don't want to be put on that list. To them, the lifetime sex offender list is worse than the jail sentence. It's an ongoing debt that's never repaid. [1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/find-out-if-a-person-has-a-record-for-child-sexual-offences https://www.gov.uk/guidance/find-out-if-a-person-has-a-recor...
Beltiras 9y ago
That's a very US-based list. Many countries around the world do not remove citizen rights to the same degree the US does. Not all countries have a sex offender registry. There is a culture in the States of looking on incarceration as a penalty for crimes. Some countries look on it as a rehabilitation tool and manage lower recidivism rates.
- briandear 9y ago
  My right to be safe from a rapist is greater than their right to not be on a registry. If they want to avoid being on a registry, then avoid raping people!
  - bsder 9y ago
    > My right to be safe from a rapist is greater than their right to not be on a registry. If they want to avoid being on a registry, then avoid raping people! This is a problem that should be fixed with laws, not with Google. In many places, an 18 year old who sleeps with a 17 year old is a "rapist". Someone who breaks into a house and forces them at knifepoint to have sex is also a "rapist". One of these is a much greater danger to society and that should be reflected in our laws. And, to a certain extent, it is. Many places have judicial procedures where the first kind of "rapist" can have that offense reduced to a lesser class of crime after some level of incarceration and probation. Google should not be allowed to unilaterally undo that. We need to quit treating people who go to prison as if they have a scarlet letter even after they have served their time. If they are that dangerous, they shouldn't be let out. The problem is that, in the US, we want to incarcerate people but not pay money for doing so.
  - azernik 9y ago
    So generally, European "registries" are lists kept by police of people to keep an eye on.
adam-a 9y ago
Note that in many countries, the UK for example, you can vote and get a passport if you have a criminal record. I think it makes sense that this verdict was delivered in Europe where it seems the view on ex-convicts is a bit more generous than in America.
- briandear 9y ago
  Felons CAN get passports in the US — just not while on parole.
deleted 9y ago
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namlem 9y ago
You know not everywhere is the US right?
bduerst 9y ago
Incarceration serves three purposes: 1. Removal of social offender from society 2. Rehabilitation of non-conforming individuals 3. Punishment enough to deter future offenders There's a tangental argument about whether or not incarceration achieves these goals, but the social stigma from being incarcerated isn't the point of any of these goals, and is instead just a cultural byproduct.
- deleted 9y ago
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- Houshalter 9y ago
  Those are just bad ad hoc consequentialist justifications for incarceration. If you really believe that, you can justify life sentences for every minor crime. Since it keeps criminals off the streets and increases utility. Or you can justify having incredibly short sentences. Since the correlation with longer sentences and greater deterrents is pretty small. Criminals tend to think they won't get caught and have high time preference. And I doubt it's terribly effective at rehabilitation. You can certainly justify discriminating against people with criminal records that way. It's by far the best predictor of job performance. High social trust is probably the most important aspect of a society. Letting known criminals get into positions of power is not an ideal way to achieve that. The main reason we have prisons is justice. The basic human desire for fairness and consequences for wrongdoing. No one wants to see a murderer get away with it. Even if there is some compelling argument why punishment won't increase utility. For instance, people tend to strongly oppose having sentences done by statistical algorithms. That are vastly better at predicting recidivism than human judges. Because they feel unfair. And that same desire for fairness is also why people prefer criminals get a second chance.
- __33__ 9y ago
  4. retribution One could see it as the motivation for a right to be forgotten: You have already been punished by law.
dec0dedab0de 9y ago
If felons were truly forgiven, they would have their right to vote restored. I have always thought that was outrageous. I think people should be aloud to vote even while they're in jail. The current system could allow a group to wipe out their political opponents by simply passing a law outlawing a common activity, then selectively enforcing it. I mean that's basically what the war on drugs was about.
- alistairSH 9y ago
  that's basically what the war on drugs was about. Nothing basic about it. The "War on Drugs", as we know it today, was literally started by the Nixon administration as a means to control liberals and minorities.[0] 0 - https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ (the money quote, by Ehrlichman, is in the second paragraph)
- M2Ys4U 9y ago
  Indeed. Under the European Convention on Human Rights it's forbidden to impose a blanket ban on all prisoners voting. Unfortunately, some states (including the United Kindom) wilfully defy the ECtHR on this issue.
  - rleigh 9y ago
    There's a big difference between allowing people in prison to vote, and in never allowing them to vote again after they are released. People in prison by intention don't have the same civil rights as normal citizens, and so withholding the right to vote doesn't seem unreasonable. Withholding it in perpetuity seems outrageous.
    - M2Ys4U 9y ago
      I don't think it's unreasonable to suspend the right to vote to some (or indeed to most) prisoners. But I also don't think it's unreasonable to allow some prisoners to vote, especially where they are imprisoned for short sentences and where it is in the interests of rehabilitating them to do so.
Sharlin 9y ago
I was completely and utterly horrified when I learned that the US strips such fundamental citizenship rights—which ought to be inalienable—from felons. It’s really preposterous and gives lie to the whole idea of ”the land of the free”. And don’t get me started on those ridiculous sex offender lists...
deleted 9y ago
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Barrin92 9y ago
American society != every society This doesn't happen in Europe. Part of the social contract over here is that criminals who have served their sentence have the right to have their fundamental rights restored. That in fact is the justification for punishment in the first place. A society that takes on the authority to punish individuals must integrate these individuals after they have payed their debt to society. If they wouldn't the punishment would be arbitrary, cruel and serve no purpose.
mulmen 9y ago
Mostly agree with you here but small nit to pick. There's no such thing as a firearms license in the United States. Felons lose their right to own (or even possess?) guns.
- barsonme 9y ago
  Depends on the state. For example, Illinois has Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) cards which are required for possessing firearms and ammunition. One criteria for obtaining a FOID card is not having committed a felony.
microcolonel 9y ago
> Society has never perceived jail time as truly resetting the scarlet letter back to zero. Therefore, the debate is whether "Google results" is in the same bucket as "sex offender list". For many in society, they think it's wrong to remove those results from Google. I mean, on the most basic level, a prior offense is an excellent predictor of a future offense. If I want to hire somebody to supervise women or children, I'd like not to hire somebody who (at any point in their life) victimized women or children, because it's not too much to ask! I, for one, don't think a murderer should be forgiven. A murderer gets to live, and the victim is no longer alive, there is fundamentally nothing you can do to be forgiven for murder. To me, that is as it should be. At very least, the perpetrator of a crime should not be left to decide whether or not I forgive him, and to enforce that through the courts.
- DanBC 9y ago
  > If I want to hire somebody to supervise women or children, I'd like not to hire somebody who (at any point in their life) victimized women or children, because it's not too much to ask! Sure. But let's make that list formal, with recognised judicial ways of getting on it, and recognised judicial ways of getting off it, rather than just "this newspaper said it", which leaves people without recourse unless they can afford lawyers.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    > and recognised judicial ways of getting off it That would make sense if you were never guilty of it, but I disagree completely with the idea that somebody who has been ruled guilty (without a successful appeal) has a right to be forgotten only for having served their time.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      It depends on the crime. Some crimes are serious and you'll never escape those. But most really don't need to be recorded for life. Rehabilitation is an important concept for a just system, because without it there's less incentive for criminals to remain free of crime. > For adults, the rehabilitation period is one year for community orders, two years for custodial sentences of six months or less, four years for custodial sentences of over six months and up to and including 30 months, and seven years for custodial sentences of over 30 months and up to and including 48 months. Custodial sentences of over four years will never become spent and must continue to be disclosed when necessary. This has been part of UK law since at least 1974. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/53 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/53 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_Offenders_Act_1974 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_Offenders_Ac...
dleslie 9y ago
In Canada those citizens who are incarcerated retain the right to vote. The democratic right to vote is inalienable in Canada.
gaius 9y ago
There are 3 reasons to send people to prison: retribution (punishment), rehabilitation and removal (from society so they can’t commit any more crimes). Now, should retribution be infinite? Is rehabilitation impossible? Should a criminal be permanently removed from society? We generally answer no to these questions except in rare situations that are front-page news and enter popular vocabulary. That’s why Google is in the wrong here. And they know it too - the only reason they want to do it is a few more ad clicks.
marcosdumay 9y ago
The only country that I have ever heard about that does not forgive people's crimes after they serve jail time is the US.
hesk 9y ago
> If felons were truly forgiven, they would have their right to vote restored. This is a very US-centric attitude and very undemocratic in my view. In Germany, for example, people in jail are generally allowed to vote. They could even set up a voting booth inside the jail if there were demand. However, there usually isn't and inmates vote by mail. In the last 25 years, only 80 people, who were found guilty of treason, have lost the right to vote. However, people whose sentence is at least a year in jail are excluded from running for office for 5 years. > Society has never perceived jail time as truly resetting the scarlet letter back to zero. Some jobs here require a so-called "certificate of conduct" which you can get from the police and which lists criminal convictions. The entries in this certificate expire after a certain number of years, depending on the the crime. The maximum time a conviction can be in the record is 10 years after it has been served. Afterwards, it's deleted. (It is not deleted from police records but from what a company could find out in a background check by going through official channels.)
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  80 people have been convicted of treason in Germany since 1993? More than 3 a year? That seems... shockingly high. What were they doing? How many independent acts of treason was this?
  - hesk 9y ago
    I quoted the original number from a newspaper article which didn't go into details. But I was curious myself, so I contacted the author of the article and did some of my own research. The German federal statistics office publishes a report every year which lists how many people have lost their right to vote or to hold public office according to §45 (2) and (5) StGB (German criminal law) [1]. Unfortunately, the reports do not distinguish between these two cases. In any case, the numbers are vanishingly small in recent years. I looked at the last 12 years for which there is a report (2005 - 2016) and it's only 15 cases, so a little more than 1 per year. Again, it doesn't distinguish between losing the right to vote and losing the right to hold office. The people who lost their rights according to this law were mostly convicted for crimes against the state, the public order, or misconduct in office. To make it more precise, the report lists crimes such as joining a terrorist organisation, obstruction of punishment, forcing a subordinate to commit a crime, criminal assault while in office, corruption, etc. The original newspaper article summarized them as crimes against the state which I translated as treason. However, it seems that the law was applied more often in the past. I found a secondary source [2] which lists 178 cases between 1978 and 2008. The primary source [3] is a dissertation which costs 80 €. [1] https://www.destatis.de/GPStatistik/receive/DESerie_serie_00000107 https://www.destatis.de/GPStatistik/receive/DESerie_serie_00..., § 5.1 [2] Sonja Bühler, Die Aberkennung des aktiven Wahlrechts von Strafgefangenen nach § 45 Abs. 5 StGB, Freilaw 1/2017, http://www.freilaw.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/02Strafgefanenewahlrecht.pdf http://www.freilaw.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0... [3] Jan Oelbermann, Wahlrecht und Strafe, Universität Bremen, 2011, http://www.nomos-shop.de/Oelbermann-Wahlrecht-Strafe/productview.aspx?product=13981 http://www.nomos-shop.de/Oelbermann-Wahlrecht-Strafe/product...
lagadu 9y ago
> If felons were truly forgiven, they would have their right to vote restored. They wouldn't be denied a passport to travel abroad or denied a firearms license. Convicted felons of financial crime will be denied officer positions such as CFO in public companies. A sex felony will be a lifetime of reporting on the sex offenders registries. You should be made aware that none of those happen in most EU countries. Most people here feel that things done in the US like public sex offender registeries are abhorrent.

by jasode 9y ago

izacus 9y ago

This is not how a lot of EU countries function - which is why there's friction there. The American "You are a criminal for life and will eternally be punished!" attitude is clashing with an EU mindset of being able to start a new life. Permanent records are hugely damaging for persons livelihood in these cases.

282883392 9y ago
Can you not change your name in the EU? Seems like someone changing their name would be able to solve some of these issues.
- izacus 9y ago
  Why should you be forced to do that? I mean, you're assuming two things: - That people who want their data removed are criminals. That's hugely not the case. Does a teenager who was plastered all over social media / newspapers have to change his/her name because someone targeted abuse at him/her? - Even if they were jailed for a transgression, they paid their part to the socienty. For serious transgressions, the authorities keeps tabs on them. For non-serious things, why does it matter? They paid their part.
  - halflings 9y ago
    GP is not assuming anything. Literally the first paragraph in the post: > The man, who has not been named due to reporting restrictions surrounding the case, wanted search results about a past crime he had committed removed from the search engine. Any example of somebody being abused/targeted and Google refusing to remove them from search results? The only cases where they fought back were people trying to hide their criminal record (most often politicians, white collar crime).
- dx034 9y ago
  In some countries that's very hard to do. But why should you? If you committed a crime and spent your time in jail, why shouldn't you get a second chance? There are certain jobs that you cannot take depending on the crime you committed (esp working with children) but for most jobs it should be absolutely irrelevant if you committed a crime in the past.
- pjc50 9y ago
  This depends on the country. UK? No problem. France? Extremely difficult: https://www.wikiprocedure.com/index.php/France_-_Change_Your_Name_(Deed_Poll) https://www.wikiprocedure.com/index.php/France_-_Change_Your... You need to convince a judge that you have a "good reason". France has only recently loosened its restrictions on what names people are allowed to have.
- ben_w 9y ago
  Varies by country. Germany normally forbids changes except by marriage/divorce (I think), while the UK doesn’t really have legal names, just lots of databases run by people who want an official-looking document before they update anything (and even then my university will just refuse to reprint degree certificates with a new name).
TomMarius 9y ago
I (an EU citizen) want to keep my right to think whatever I want about a criminal - and that includes looking at or keeping records. I feel like this 'right to be forgotten' hurts my safety - I don't want to forget that someone murdered someone or raped someone, these things are unforgettable and definitely unforgivable - and I want to know about them, and I want employers to be able to look them up.
- sorokod 9y ago
  "I feel like this 'right to be forgotten' hurts my safety" A few years ago you had no such facility at all - how did you manage?
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    I was feeling less safe, that has improved. Why go back in time?
    - izacus 9y ago
      Because it hurts innocent people.
    - sorokod 9y ago
      Is it possible that your feeling is entirely subjective and not backed by any statistics ?
    - EpicEng 9y ago
      Good thing we don't write law based on feelings. Were you _actually_ less safe? I highly doubt it.
    - rootlocus 9y ago
      If anything, you were probably feeling safer without being connected 24/7 to all the problems in the world. I'm really skeptical you were more afraid of strangers because you couldn't access public records about them.
downandout 9y ago
Yeah, I think that the EU is right in this regard, and I wish a similar principle existed in the US. But I was surprised that the EU court in this case ruled against one person simply because he served a 4 year sentence. His case was more than a decade old, and it was non-violent and non-sexual. It seems like an inconsistent application of this principle. Sentences are often based on the amount of money involved. So while embezzlement by a CEO at a small company may well result in smaller losses and shorter prison sentences, the intent and conduct is exactly the same as a similar case at a larger company. If the smaller company CEO has a right to be forgotten, so does the larger one.
- moomin 9y ago
  If you read the article it was a bit more nuanced than that. The one who had the right to be forgotten denied had a track record of misleading people about his conviction. The court (rightly, in my view) took this behaviour as evidence that his conviction remained relevant in a way that it was not for the other person (described as showing remorse). They didn’t just measure the length of the sentence. IMHO, this is an encouraging, nuanced development. There has to be a balance between protecting people against serial offenders and rehabilitation.
  - briandear 9y ago
    Why not attack the publication rather than the card catalog?
    - kafquaesque 9y ago
      Requiring the publication to make the change is more feasible. In a hypothetical defamation situation the courts in the US have made this costly to do. In a conviction scenario Google search results can prevent people from being employed. I had a relative of a friend which had a published DUI which made it difficult for him to seek employment years after the issue. Employers have the ability to find criminal convictions and decide whether or not to hire an individual. Almost everyone googles people prior to contact.
  - 9y ago
jasode 9y ago
>Permanent records are hugely damaging for persons livelihood in these cases. I agree and I'm not debating the harm that can be done. (My comment got many downvotes so I assume they think I believe felons should never be given a 2nd chance.) No, my comment is specifically about the framework for arguing. I'm saying that phrases such as "forgive" and "pay debt to society" are unconvincing since society has never universally believed that. Consider even the EU country like UK where Google lost this case. If UK truly "forgives" crimes after a felony sentence is served, why do they have a sex offender registry? The parent I responded to is apparently based in Canada. Canadian border officers have denied Americans with prior DUI felony convictions from entering the country. That's another example of not being "forgiven". Also, Canada is another country with a sex offender list. If we want to debate the "harm" to felons, then let's debate that. Do not use "forgive" in the text of the argument because it just leads to an inconsistency. Jail time is about punishment, not forgiveness.
- hahainternet 9y ago
  > why do they have a sex offender registry? We have a Violent and Sex Offender Register: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_and_Sex_Offender_Register https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_and_Sex_Offender_Regis... It is not public, it exists to facilitate Police intelligence.
  - jasode 9y ago
    >It is not public, it exists to facilitate Police intelligence. The "police intelligence" gives a misleading impression. Non-police residents can inquire about felons on the list because of Sarah's Law.[1] In other words... "If I molested a child and served my 10 year prison sentence, I'm not truly _forgiven_ if people can check if I'm on a sex offender registry." Therefore, don't use "forgive" as the framework. It should be clear that society really doesn't forgive and allow people a clean slate. If serving jail truly meant the "debt was paid to society", felons wouldn't be put on that list after jail was completed. Many defendents refuse a plea bargain of "guilty" because they don't want to be put on that list. To them, the lifetime sex offender list is worse than the jail sentence. It's an ongoing debt that's never repaid. [1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/find-out-if-a-person-has-a-record-for-child-sexual-offences https://www.gov.uk/guidance/find-out-if-a-person-has-a-recor...

Beltiras 9y ago

That's a very US-based list. Many countries around the world do not remove citizen rights to the same degree the US does. Not all countries have a sex offender registry. There is a culture in the States of looking on incarceration as a penalty for crimes. Some countries look on it as a rehabilitation tool and manage lower recidivism rates.

briandear 9y ago
My right to be safe from a rapist is greater than their right to not be on a registry. If they want to avoid being on a registry, then avoid raping people!
- bsder 9y ago
  > My right to be safe from a rapist is greater than their right to not be on a registry. If they want to avoid being on a registry, then avoid raping people! This is a problem that should be fixed with laws, not with Google. In many places, an 18 year old who sleeps with a 17 year old is a "rapist". Someone who breaks into a house and forces them at knifepoint to have sex is also a "rapist". One of these is a much greater danger to society and that should be reflected in our laws. And, to a certain extent, it is. Many places have judicial procedures where the first kind of "rapist" can have that offense reduced to a lesser class of crime after some level of incarceration and probation. Google should not be allowed to unilaterally undo that. We need to quit treating people who go to prison as if they have a scarlet letter even after they have served their time. If they are that dangerous, they shouldn't be let out. The problem is that, in the US, we want to incarcerate people but not pay money for doing so.
- azernik 9y ago
  So generally, European "registries" are lists kept by police of people to keep an eye on.

adam-a 9y ago

Note that in many countries, the UK for example, you can vote and get a passport if you have a criminal record. I think it makes sense that this verdict was delivered in Europe where it seems the view on ex-convicts is a bit more generous than in America.

briandear 9y ago
Felons CAN get passports in the US — just not while on parole.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

namlem 9y ago

You know not everywhere is the US right?

bduerst 9y ago

Incarceration serves three purposes: 1. Removal of social offender from society 2. Rehabilitation of non-conforming individuals 3. Punishment enough to deter future offenders There's a tangental argument about whether or not incarceration achieves these goals, but the social stigma from being incarcerated isn't the point of any of these goals, and is instead just a cultural byproduct.

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Houshalter 9y ago
Those are just bad ad hoc consequentialist justifications for incarceration. If you really believe that, you can justify life sentences for every minor crime. Since it keeps criminals off the streets and increases utility. Or you can justify having incredibly short sentences. Since the correlation with longer sentences and greater deterrents is pretty small. Criminals tend to think they won't get caught and have high time preference. And I doubt it's terribly effective at rehabilitation. You can certainly justify discriminating against people with criminal records that way. It's by far the best predictor of job performance. High social trust is probably the most important aspect of a society. Letting known criminals get into positions of power is not an ideal way to achieve that. The main reason we have prisons is justice. The basic human desire for fairness and consequences for wrongdoing. No one wants to see a murderer get away with it. Even if there is some compelling argument why punishment won't increase utility. For instance, people tend to strongly oppose having sentences done by statistical algorithms. That are vastly better at predicting recidivism than human judges. Because they feel unfair. And that same desire for fairness is also why people prefer criminals get a second chance.
__33__ 9y ago
4. retribution One could see it as the motivation for a right to be forgotten: You have already been punished by law.

dec0dedab0de 9y ago

If felons were truly forgiven, they would have their right to vote restored. I have always thought that was outrageous. I think people should be aloud to vote even while they're in jail. The current system could allow a group to wipe out their political opponents by simply passing a law outlawing a common activity, then selectively enforcing it. I mean that's basically what the war on drugs was about.

alistairSH 9y ago
that's basically what the war on drugs was about. Nothing basic about it. The "War on Drugs", as we know it today, was literally started by the Nixon administration as a means to control liberals and minorities.[0] 0 - https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ (the money quote, by Ehrlichman, is in the second paragraph)
M2Ys4U 9y ago
Indeed. Under the European Convention on Human Rights it's forbidden to impose a blanket ban on all prisoners voting. Unfortunately, some states (including the United Kindom) wilfully defy the ECtHR on this issue.
- rleigh 9y ago
  There's a big difference between allowing people in prison to vote, and in never allowing them to vote again after they are released. People in prison by intention don't have the same civil rights as normal citizens, and so withholding the right to vote doesn't seem unreasonable. Withholding it in perpetuity seems outrageous.
  - M2Ys4U 9y ago
    I don't think it's unreasonable to suspend the right to vote to some (or indeed to most) prisoners. But I also don't think it's unreasonable to allow some prisoners to vote, especially where they are imprisoned for short sentences and where it is in the interests of rehabilitating them to do so.

Sharlin 9y ago

I was completely and utterly horrified when I learned that the US strips such fundamental citizenship rights—which ought to be inalienable—from felons. It’s really preposterous and gives lie to the whole idea of ”the land of the free”. And don’t get me started on those ridiculous sex offender lists...

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Barrin92 9y ago

American society != every society This doesn't happen in Europe. Part of the social contract over here is that criminals who have served their sentence have the right to have their fundamental rights restored. That in fact is the justification for punishment in the first place. A society that takes on the authority to punish individuals must integrate these individuals after they have payed their debt to society. If they wouldn't the punishment would be arbitrary, cruel and serve no purpose.

mulmen 9y ago

Mostly agree with you here but small nit to pick. There's no such thing as a firearms license in the United States. Felons lose their right to own (or even possess?) guns.

barsonme 9y ago
Depends on the state. For example, Illinois has Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) cards which are required for possessing firearms and ammunition. One criteria for obtaining a FOID card is not having committed a felony.

microcolonel 9y ago

> Society has never perceived jail time as truly resetting the scarlet letter back to zero. Therefore, the debate is whether "Google results" is in the same bucket as "sex offender list". For many in society, they think it's wrong to remove those results from Google. I mean, on the most basic level, a prior offense is an excellent predictor of a future offense. If I want to hire somebody to supervise women or children, I'd like not to hire somebody who (at any point in their life) victimized women or children, because it's not too much to ask! I, for one, don't think a murderer should be forgiven. A murderer gets to live, and the victim is no longer alive, there is fundamentally nothing you can do to be forgiven for murder. To me, that is as it should be. At very least, the perpetrator of a crime should not be left to decide whether or not I forgive him, and to enforce that through the courts.

DanBC 9y ago
> If I want to hire somebody to supervise women or children, I'd like not to hire somebody who (at any point in their life) victimized women or children, because it's not too much to ask! Sure. But let's make that list formal, with recognised judicial ways of getting on it, and recognised judicial ways of getting off it, rather than just "this newspaper said it", which leaves people without recourse unless they can afford lawyers.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > and recognised judicial ways of getting off it That would make sense if you were never guilty of it, but I disagree completely with the idea that somebody who has been ruled guilty (without a successful appeal) has a right to be forgotten only for having served their time.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    It depends on the crime. Some crimes are serious and you'll never escape those. But most really don't need to be recorded for life. Rehabilitation is an important concept for a just system, because without it there's less incentive for criminals to remain free of crime. > For adults, the rehabilitation period is one year for community orders, two years for custodial sentences of six months or less, four years for custodial sentences of over six months and up to and including 30 months, and seven years for custodial sentences of over 30 months and up to and including 48 months. Custodial sentences of over four years will never become spent and must continue to be disclosed when necessary. This has been part of UK law since at least 1974. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/53 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/53 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_Offenders_Act_1974 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_Offenders_Ac...

dleslie 9y ago

In Canada those citizens who are incarcerated retain the right to vote. The democratic right to vote is inalienable in Canada.

gaius 9y ago

There are 3 reasons to send people to prison: retribution (punishment), rehabilitation and removal (from society so they can’t commit any more crimes). Now, should retribution be infinite? Is rehabilitation impossible? Should a criminal be permanently removed from society? We generally answer no to these questions except in rare situations that are front-page news and enter popular vocabulary. That’s why Google is in the wrong here. And they know it too - the only reason they want to do it is a few more ad clicks.

marcosdumay 9y ago

The only country that I have ever heard about that does not forgive people's crimes after they serve jail time is the US.

hesk 9y ago

> If felons were truly forgiven, they would have their right to vote restored. This is a very US-centric attitude and very undemocratic in my view. In Germany, for example, people in jail are generally allowed to vote. They could even set up a voting booth inside the jail if there were demand. However, there usually isn't and inmates vote by mail. In the last 25 years, only 80 people, who were found guilty of treason, have lost the right to vote. However, people whose sentence is at least a year in jail are excluded from running for office for 5 years. > Society has never perceived jail time as truly resetting the scarlet letter back to zero. Some jobs here require a so-called "certificate of conduct" which you can get from the police and which lists criminal convictions. The entries in this certificate expire after a certain number of years, depending on the the crime. The maximum time a conviction can be in the record is 10 years after it has been served. Afterwards, it's deleted. (It is not deleted from police records but from what a company could find out in a background check by going through official channels.)

thaumasiotes 9y ago
80 people have been convicted of treason in Germany since 1993? More than 3 a year? That seems... shockingly high. What were they doing? How many independent acts of treason was this?
- hesk 9y ago
  I quoted the original number from a newspaper article which didn't go into details. But I was curious myself, so I contacted the author of the article and did some of my own research. The German federal statistics office publishes a report every year which lists how many people have lost their right to vote or to hold public office according to §45 (2) and (5) StGB (German criminal law) [1]. Unfortunately, the reports do not distinguish between these two cases. In any case, the numbers are vanishingly small in recent years. I looked at the last 12 years for which there is a report (2005 - 2016) and it's only 15 cases, so a little more than 1 per year. Again, it doesn't distinguish between losing the right to vote and losing the right to hold office. The people who lost their rights according to this law were mostly convicted for crimes against the state, the public order, or misconduct in office. To make it more precise, the report lists crimes such as joining a terrorist organisation, obstruction of punishment, forcing a subordinate to commit a crime, criminal assault while in office, corruption, etc. The original newspaper article summarized them as crimes against the state which I translated as treason. However, it seems that the law was applied more often in the past. I found a secondary source [2] which lists 178 cases between 1978 and 2008. The primary source [3] is a dissertation which costs 80 €. [1] https://www.destatis.de/GPStatistik/receive/DESerie_serie_00000107 https://www.destatis.de/GPStatistik/receive/DESerie_serie_00..., § 5.1 [2] Sonja Bühler, Die Aberkennung des aktiven Wahlrechts von Strafgefangenen nach § 45 Abs. 5 StGB, Freilaw 1/2017, http://www.freilaw.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/02Strafgefanenewahlrecht.pdf http://www.freilaw.de/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0... [3] Jan Oelbermann, Wahlrecht und Strafe, Universität Bremen, 2011, http://www.nomos-shop.de/Oelbermann-Wahlrecht-Strafe/productview.aspx?product=13981 http://www.nomos-shop.de/Oelbermann-Wahlrecht-Strafe/product...

lagadu 9y ago

> If felons were truly forgiven, they would have their right to vote restored. They wouldn't be denied a passport to travel abroad or denied a firearms license. Convicted felons of financial crime will be denied officer positions such as CFO in public companies. A sex felony will be a lifetime of reporting on the sex offenders registries. You should be made aware that none of those happen in most EU countries. Most people here feel that things done in the US like public sex offender registeries are abhorrent.