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Disclosure: I am a former felon, convicted and sentenced for assaulting a carjacker. pro-tip: never take the public defender. My question about this whole dis

Disclosure: I am a former felon, convicted and sentenced for assaulting a carjacker. pro-tip: never take the public defender. My question about this whole discussion is this: Whats the point. If prisons are designed as "correctional" facilities, which many good ones are, then you'll obviously move past being a felon and improve your life. If you keep a secret list of people you know have been convicted of a felony, you're tacitly admitting you either dont believe in prisons as an effective tool for correction, or you're looking for something more sinister...biblical retribution And lets be honest, being a former felon IS a scarlet letter in the US. employers can discriminate against you, housing can discriminate against you in renting and in homeowners covenants, and you can be denied public services like disability and food stamps in some states. Former felons cant vote without a lengthy and expensive process of reinstatement. Yes, i get that teachers, doctors, and police are certainly important positions, but again, the list. If you're just keeping it as part of their personnel and noting certain positions they shouldnt hold out of an abundance of caution in the face of an indeterminate outcome from mental rehabilitation or incarceration, then perhaps keep it secret. Use it as a blacklist if thats whats required for certain positions. however If you're just looking to shield felons from the inconvenience of incarceration or criminal charges, then reconsider it.

Tsubasachan 8y ago
"You have paid of your debt to society" is a meme like "Lady Justice is blind". Hell you can be acquitted and still have society set against you, see the Central Park five.
IshKebab 8y ago
I think it's pretty clear to most people that the US prison system is a deterrent and provides retribution. It's not about rehabilitation.
- elliekelly 8y ago
  I agree that it isn't about rehabilitation. And to a certain degree it definitely seems our system is geared towards retribution. But study after study[1] has shown that an individual's perception of the likely punishment (e.g., prison time) doesn't deter crime. Rather, an individual's perception of the likelihood they'll get _caught_ seems to be the main deterrent. This is a really interesting & related read.[2] [1]https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398 [2]https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduce-crime/ https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduc...
- badfrog 8y ago
  Indeed a lot of the changes in the past few decades seem to be based entirely on appeasing the public's fear. One-strike eviction from public housing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_strike,_you%27re_out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_strike,_you%27re_out Expanded federal death penalty, removal of Pell Grant eligibility for convicts, mandatory drug testing for parolees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_... My understanding was that Bill Clinton and congressional democrats in the 90s felt they had to look tough on crime to appease the public and avoid losing elections to Republicans who favored similar policies.
magduf 8y ago
Wait, you were prosecuted for defending yourself from a violent attacker?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- r_smart 8y ago
  You can end up being the one punished in all kinds of scenarios where you're the wronged party initially. If you are too vigorous in defending your property, you can be charged with assault, which I'm guessing is what happened.
  - magduf 8y ago
    Perhaps, but the very nature of carjacking is that it's a violent crime against you, not just your car. Yes, the end object for the criminal is stealing your car, but many carjackings have resulted in severe injuries or death for the victims, which is why it's actually legal in South Africa to have flamethrowers mounted on your car to protect yourself from them (!). These crimes should be treated as attempted murders, and I have a hard time imagining how someone can be "too vigorous" in defending their very life from someone who is actively trying to murder them.
    - jlarocco 8y ago
      I think in general, once you're no longer in danger anything you do to the attacker becomes assault instead of self-defense.
      - Animats 8y ago
        Depends strongly on the jurisdiction. Some states are "duty to retreat" states. Some are "stand your ground" states.[1] Big ongoing controversy over this, because it affects when it's legal to shoot somebody. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law
jjoonathan 8y ago
Unfortunately, based on the vocal political opinions of my relatives, I suspect that many, perhaps even most, voters do see the "correctional" system as primarily about retribution. Local and regional politicians continue to run and win on the "tough on crime" platform even in places where it makes very little sense. Before there can be reform, people have to want there to be reform. People want to believe that crime has an easy answer -- namely, being "tough on crime" -- and until they realize that their efforts to impede reintegration increase recidivism far more than they discourage crime, the criminal justice system will be about "corrections" in name only.
- zamalek 8y ago
  > see the "correctional" system as primarily about retribution I generally refer to American prisons as "penitentiary" for this reason. Of course there are scenarios that require 3 life sentences (e.g. serial/psychopathic killers), but they really are rare. I agree with you regarding the zeitgeist, but I strongly disagree with the content of it. IMO a person understanding their actions (thanks to reform) and regretting them, for life, seems like a more vicious form of revenge or retribution. I'm not sure how I'd feel if I were a victim, but I'd like to think I could maintain that thought process.
  - mtgx 8y ago
    > Of course there are scenarios that require 3 life sentences (e.g. serial/psychopathic killers), but they really are rare This is mostly a problem with "sentence stacking" in U.S., which I absolutely think is not the "right balance" for punishing someone in a society. Not to mention how much it's been abused by prosecutors who "throw the book" at the people they want to make an example and essentially force them into plea deals, just so the prosecutors can score another "win."
  - labster 8y ago
    The mindfulness exercise for me is to think about people who have wronged me -- real or imagined -- and to forgive them. Just take all of the negative emotion about someone, realize that the emotions aren't helping anything, and just let it all go. There's a difference between wanting prisons for rational reasons: deterrence and reform are useful. But if you're just wanting bad things to happen to bad people, how much can you really trust your own interpretation of "bad"?
Chardok 8y ago
> If you keep a secret list of people you know have been convicted of a felony, you're tacitly admitting you either dont believe in prisons as an effective tool for correction This is 100% the case. Our for-profit prisons provide a huge incentive to completely ignore things helpful for rehabilitation including education, job training, anti discrimination, and treating prisoners like humans. They are absolutely aware of how damaging that list would be to those persons.
- wmeredith 8y ago
  For-profit prisons are indeed problematic for a variety of reasons, but they only comprise about 8% of the US prison system[1]. I’m just throwing this out there because the for profit prison bogeyman, while real, often takes an outsize share of the attention when discussing problems with the US justice system. There are problems that extend far beyond that small segment of the larger apparatus. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison
  - Chardok 8y ago
    True; my primary exposure to the US prison system has been in Texas which certainly sees its share there. I suppose it would be more apt to say that the fact that the justice system allows a private interest to be involved shows how corrupt it can be.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago
Someone in the article makes the same argument as you are making here: ‘To the extent the public wants that to be public record, I can understand that,” said Rains, who is leading a legal fight to block the release of officer disciplinary records under the new law. “Why don’t we make that known for everybody?” Rains said of convictions, pointing out there’s no broad disclosure for lawyers, doctors, teachers and other trusted professionals.’ The key difference is that none of the other ‘trusted professionals’ have arbitrary leeway to detain you under suspicion on the street. The dynamic between police and the populace is not even remotely equivalent to any of these other types of professions and to equate them is an outright false equivalency.
- mirimir 8y ago
  Well, I believe that all criminal arrests, trials,convictions and sentences are public records in the US. So in theory, given lists of police officers -- and lawyers, judges, doctors, teachers, or whatever -- you could create such databases. In practice, it'd be a pain. Because you'd probably need to request records from, and perhaps visit, individual courts. What's different here is that these are personnel files. Do we want all personnel files to be public records? For lawyers, doctors, teachers, or whatever? For lawyers and judges, that'll never happen. Would you want your personnel files, from everywhere you ever worked, to be public?
  - kelnos 8y ago
    The difference, again, is that police are not only public servants, but also have been entrusted with a position of extreme authority (and in-the-moment life-and-death decision-making) over everyone else, which is fairly unique to their profession. We have hired them to uphold and enforce the law. If they break the law themselves, especially if they do so while abusing their trusted position as police officers, they cannot be trusted with that job. From there the question becomes: do we trust the hiring process for police to blacklist former cops who have abused their position? Based on the article, we should not, because it mentions several officers who still have jobs despite their misdeeds. Given that, the public not only has the right to see this data, but should absolutely demand continuous public access to this data, as the existing system is clearly not trustworthy, and requires public oversight. And yes, feel free to consider the same policy for lawyers, doctors, teachers, or whatever. Maybe we should require personnel records for some other professions to be public, maybe not. But it seems clear to me that for police officers, this data needs to be public.
ip26 8y ago
... you're tacitly admitting you either dont believe in prisons as an effective tool for correction ... Can one not believe they are effective while also hedging that, for example, perhaps the rate of recidivism remains slightly higher than the crime rate of everyone else? It doesn't seem like it has to be a binary, correction can be effective without being perfect. Going from there, it's not hard to imagine a world in which ex-felons (is that the right term?) are considered perfectly hirable, but worth just a little extra oversight in exceptional circumstances.
danso 8y ago
If I'm reading this article correctly, this isn't just about past convictions, but cops who were convicted of crimes on the job, as well as former cops and those "who at one time had tried to become a cop". Furthermore, the Attorney General is trying to argue that simply being in possession of this list is a crime. But given that the article says some of the convicts are still working as cops, I think that it is important to the public interest that this list be seen and reported on. Not necessarily to be printed out in its entirety just to shame every name on the list, but to find out which departments have failed to vet their police officers. Just because the government keeps a list doesn't mean that they do a good job of checking against it, especially when it might be up to each individual agency to do the checks themselves.
jakelazaroff 8y ago
If this list were only comprised of felons who later became cops, that would be one thing. But it seems like a lot of it is crimes committed while being police, some even in the course of their duties as officers: > The list includes cops who trafficked drugs, cops who stole money from their departments and even one who robbed a bank wearing a fake beard. Some sexually assaulted suspects. Others took bribes, filed false reports and committed perjury. You can say that should be a separate list, and sure — I can get behind that. I certainly don't like the idea of the justice system being retributive! But it seems clear that there is data on this list that should be released in the interest of public safety.
presscast 8y ago
>you're tacitly admitting you either dont believe in prisons as an effective tool for correction There's a third option, namely: correctional facilities work better than nothing, but aren't 100% effective.
- goatlover 8y ago
  Indeed, not everyone wants to be rehabilitated or can be, and correctional facilities are not always that great at rehabilitation.
mindslight 8y ago
You're really describing the other half of the same issue. The larger picture is that while the private sector is treating any conviction as a permanent black mark, the good old boys club is doing the exact opposite. I do agree that a serving your sentence should mean that your sentence has been served, as opposed to continuing lists and restrictions after you're supposedly "free". But if we're going to allow that mark to continue in some form indefinitely, then it should have more effects on people in true positions of trust (eg police) rather than fewer! This pattern of double standard rights erosion is happening across the board. Police enjoy "Garrity rights" whereby they can actually exercise their 5th amendment rights, whereas a private employee can be compelled to testify against themselves under threat of being fired. Someone who works for the government retains their freedom of speech protections, whereas a job in the private sector can be easily lost due to doxxing by an online lynch mob. Ultimately, this two class system came about because rights were codified only as protections from the government, as there is no simple way to draw a line between freedom of association and negative consequences. But given that we've gotten to the point where the vast majority of the population must hold down a job, this needs to change with respect to the general labor market.
- biztos 8y ago
  > Someone who works for the government retains their freedom of speech protections, whereas a job in the private sector can be easily lost due to doxxing by an online lynch mob. Doesn't this have more to do with the prevalence of unions in the public sector?
  - mindslight 8y ago
    It seems hard to tell, given that private sector unions tend towards being at large quasi-governmental corporations. Unions do add difficulty to the firing process, which seems like it should be enough to fend off the employer firing you simply based on not wanting all of the harassing phone calls. But if management and union management still want to go through the process of firing you for what you said, then a government employee would still have the defense that doing so would violate their rights. The prevalence of public sector unions itself is actually a good example of the trend I'm talking about though!
bogomipz 8y ago
>"Disclosure: I am a former felon, convicted and sentenced for assaulting a carjacker." I don't mean to pry but I'm genuinely curious how you received a felony for assaulting someone that was threatening you. How would that not have been considered self-defense?
peopleeater 8y ago
I'm confused when you say 'former' felon. I thought a felon is someone who committed a felony. Unless your conviction was overturned, aren't you forevermore a felon, even after you serve your sentence?
perl4ever 8y ago
"If you keep a secret list of people you know have been convicted of a felony, you're tacitly admitting you either dont believe in prisons as an effective tool for correction, or you're looking for something more sinister...biblical retribution" Well, this would make perfect sense if we didn't have sex offender lists. Or if we didn't do things like taking the ability to own guns away from the mentally ill, even those who have committed no crime whatsoever. Or if we didn't in many places remove the right to vote or serve on a jury from felons. I don't mean to say that all of these things are unquestionable and perfect, but it seems like there are many ways in which people generally agree that some rights can be lost and should be lost even after incarceration is over. And it's not necessarily about retribution. I think everybody knows prisons are not effective at rehabilitation.
- garmaine 8y ago
  Those aren't the same thing. Someone isn't accidentally a pedophile, or becomes a pedophile because of some mistake they made once, etc. There really isn't a way for a prison to change what their sexual preferences are, so the list makes sense. But felony convictions for crimes of necessity, passion, or lack of opportunity? Those are categorically different things. (Of course, before someone jumps in, there are a bunch of people who end up on the list that don't deserve to be there because of backwards laws on the books or excessively aggressive prosecutors. But I'm speaking to the idea behind the law here.)
  - TomVDB 8y ago
    Before I accept that as truth, I want to see how things work in countries without sex offender list in term of recidivism. The kind of sexual of behaviors that should end up on the list (because there is no possible way that it could be fixed) is probably quite limited.
dynjo 8y ago
"I am a former felon, convicted and sentenced for assaulting a carjacker." And right there is everything wrong with the law. Hopefully at the very least you got a nice sense of satisfaction!
rebuilder 8y ago
I'd guess law enforcement in California would prefer there to be no list, but since there is one, want to keep it secret.
duado 8y ago
Damn, I hope you at least killed the carjacker.
microcolonel 8y ago
> an abundance of caution in the face of an indeterminate outcome from mental rehabilitation or incarceration It's not about abundant caution, or the uncertain effectiveness of correctional facilities. Regardless of what programs you avail some people of, the numbers show that (knowing nothing else) choosing to trust any random convicted felon is a worse idea than choosing to trust any random person who is not a convicted felon. I don't really know what this article is trying to imply, somehow that the list should be public (or I guess, in a more limited sense, that the AG should not be threatening the public to prevent them from having it); as far as I can tell, the records it would contain are public to begin with.
tomcam 8y ago
Wonderful comment. Would love if you could contact me (see profile). I have an interest in some of these issues.
confiscate 8y ago
what was your experience with public defenders? Just curious because you said it was a pro-tip to never take one
Fnoord 8y ago
The point is pretty simple: damage control, and a refusal for change. Society wants to discredit everyone who is a former felon (which itself is a sentence for life), and it wants to keep people who are cops from becoming a felon (those 'criminal cops' surely did worse things than 'convicted and sentenced for assaulting a carjacker'?). Supposedly because being a cop earned them credits or bonus points of some kind (I'd put my bet on that it costs society a lot of money to train cops and keep them from being dirty). In that way, the list (of former felons) retains its value. If the State would prosecute and convict dirty cops, society may get the idea that cops (who are supposed to be a reflection of society) are less sincere than they may seem to be. The problem can be solved pretty easily: 1) Prosecute dirty cops. 2) Stop with this 'former felon' sentence for life. Be pragmatic about people instead. 3) You'll find 'former felons' everywhere in society, including in government positions. However, felons stay in prison to serve their fair share. 4) The chance of becoming a felon will eventually decrease (it is ridiculous right now, with e.g. crimes involving something innocent as a little bit of cannabis). Problem is, there's a lack of willpower society has to go for these steps. How can we stimulate society in the right way? I suppose one thing would be that those who are former felons like yourself open up about themselves. Put it out of the pandora's box where the light doesn't shine.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

"You have paid of your debt to society" is a meme like "Lady Justice is blind". Hell you can be acquitted and still have society set against you, see the Central Park five.

IshKebab 8y ago

I think it's pretty clear to most people that the US prison system is a deterrent and provides retribution. It's not about rehabilitation.

elliekelly 8y ago
I agree that it isn't about rehabilitation. And to a certain degree it definitely seems our system is geared towards retribution. But study after study[1] has shown that an individual's perception of the likely punishment (e.g., prison time) doesn't deter crime. Rather, an individual's perception of the likelihood they'll get _caught_ seems to be the main deterrent. This is a really interesting & related read.[2] [1]https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398 [2]https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduce-crime/ https://undark.org/article/deterrence-punishments-dont-reduc...
badfrog 8y ago
Indeed a lot of the changes in the past few decades seem to be based entirely on appeasing the public's fear. One-strike eviction from public housing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_strike,_you%27re_out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_strike,_you%27re_out Expanded federal death penalty, removal of Pell Grant eligibility for convicts, mandatory drug testing for parolees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_... My understanding was that Bill Clinton and congressional democrats in the 90s felt they had to look tough on crime to appease the public and avoid losing elections to Republicans who favored similar policies.

magduf 8y ago

Wait, you were prosecuted for defending yourself from a violent attacker?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
r_smart 8y ago
You can end up being the one punished in all kinds of scenarios where you're the wronged party initially. If you are too vigorous in defending your property, you can be charged with assault, which I'm guessing is what happened.
- magduf 8y ago
  Perhaps, but the very nature of carjacking is that it's a violent crime against you, not just your car. Yes, the end object for the criminal is stealing your car, but many carjackings have resulted in severe injuries or death for the victims, which is why it's actually legal in South Africa to have flamethrowers mounted on your car to protect yourself from them (!). These crimes should be treated as attempted murders, and I have a hard time imagining how someone can be "too vigorous" in defending their very life from someone who is actively trying to murder them.
  - jlarocco 8y ago
    I think in general, once you're no longer in danger anything you do to the attacker becomes assault instead of self-defense.
    - Animats 8y ago
      Depends strongly on the jurisdiction. Some states are "duty to retreat" states. Some are "stand your ground" states.[1] Big ongoing controversy over this, because it affects when it's legal to shoot somebody. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law

jjoonathan 8y ago

Unfortunately, based on the vocal political opinions of my relatives, I suspect that many, perhaps even most, voters do see the "correctional" system as primarily about retribution. Local and regional politicians continue to run and win on the "tough on crime" platform even in places where it makes very little sense. Before there can be reform, people have to want there to be reform. People want to believe that crime has an easy answer -- namely, being "tough on crime" -- and until they realize that their efforts to impede reintegration increase recidivism far more than they discourage crime, the criminal justice system will be about "corrections" in name only.

zamalek 8y ago
> see the "correctional" system as primarily about retribution I generally refer to American prisons as "penitentiary" for this reason. Of course there are scenarios that require 3 life sentences (e.g. serial/psychopathic killers), but they really are rare. I agree with you regarding the zeitgeist, but I strongly disagree with the content of it. IMO a person understanding their actions (thanks to reform) and regretting them, for life, seems like a more vicious form of revenge or retribution. I'm not sure how I'd feel if I were a victim, but I'd like to think I could maintain that thought process.
- mtgx 8y ago
  > Of course there are scenarios that require 3 life sentences (e.g. serial/psychopathic killers), but they really are rare This is mostly a problem with "sentence stacking" in U.S., which I absolutely think is not the "right balance" for punishing someone in a society. Not to mention how much it's been abused by prosecutors who "throw the book" at the people they want to make an example and essentially force them into plea deals, just so the prosecutors can score another "win."
- labster 8y ago
  The mindfulness exercise for me is to think about people who have wronged me -- real or imagined -- and to forgive them. Just take all of the negative emotion about someone, realize that the emotions aren't helping anything, and just let it all go. There's a difference between wanting prisons for rational reasons: deterrence and reform are useful. But if you're just wanting bad things to happen to bad people, how much can you really trust your own interpretation of "bad"?

Chardok 8y ago

> If you keep a secret list of people you know have been convicted of a felony, you're tacitly admitting you either dont believe in prisons as an effective tool for correction This is 100% the case. Our for-profit prisons provide a huge incentive to completely ignore things helpful for rehabilitation including education, job training, anti discrimination, and treating prisoners like humans. They are absolutely aware of how damaging that list would be to those persons.

wmeredith 8y ago
For-profit prisons are indeed problematic for a variety of reasons, but they only comprise about 8% of the US prison system[1]. I’m just throwing this out there because the for profit prison bogeyman, while real, often takes an outsize share of the attention when discussing problems with the US justice system. There are problems that extend far beyond that small segment of the larger apparatus. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison
- Chardok 8y ago
  True; my primary exposure to the US prison system has been in Texas which certainly sees its share there. I suppose it would be more apt to say that the fact that the justice system allows a private interest to be involved shows how corrupt it can be.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

SOLAR_FIELDS 8y ago

Someone in the article makes the same argument as you are making here: ‘To the extent the public wants that to be public record, I can understand that,” said Rains, who is leading a legal fight to block the release of officer disciplinary records under the new law. “Why don’t we make that known for everybody?” Rains said of convictions, pointing out there’s no broad disclosure for lawyers, doctors, teachers and other trusted professionals.’ The key difference is that none of the other ‘trusted professionals’ have arbitrary leeway to detain you under suspicion on the street. The dynamic between police and the populace is not even remotely equivalent to any of these other types of professions and to equate them is an outright false equivalency.

mirimir 8y ago
Well, I believe that all criminal arrests, trials,convictions and sentences are public records in the US. So in theory, given lists of police officers -- and lawyers, judges, doctors, teachers, or whatever -- you could create such databases. In practice, it'd be a pain. Because you'd probably need to request records from, and perhaps visit, individual courts. What's different here is that these are personnel files. Do we want all personnel files to be public records? For lawyers, doctors, teachers, or whatever? For lawyers and judges, that'll never happen. Would you want your personnel files, from everywhere you ever worked, to be public?
- kelnos 8y ago
  The difference, again, is that police are not only public servants, but also have been entrusted with a position of extreme authority (and in-the-moment life-and-death decision-making) over everyone else, which is fairly unique to their profession. We have hired them to uphold and enforce the law. If they break the law themselves, especially if they do so while abusing their trusted position as police officers, they cannot be trusted with that job. From there the question becomes: do we trust the hiring process for police to blacklist former cops who have abused their position? Based on the article, we should not, because it mentions several officers who still have jobs despite their misdeeds. Given that, the public not only has the right to see this data, but should absolutely demand continuous public access to this data, as the existing system is clearly not trustworthy, and requires public oversight. And yes, feel free to consider the same policy for lawyers, doctors, teachers, or whatever. Maybe we should require personnel records for some other professions to be public, maybe not. But it seems clear to me that for police officers, this data needs to be public.

ip26 8y ago

... you're tacitly admitting you either dont believe in prisons as an effective tool for correction ... Can one not believe they are effective while also hedging that, for example, perhaps the rate of recidivism remains slightly higher than the crime rate of everyone else? It doesn't seem like it has to be a binary, correction can be effective without being perfect. Going from there, it's not hard to imagine a world in which ex-felons (is that the right term?) are considered perfectly hirable, but worth just a little extra oversight in exceptional circumstances.

danso 8y ago

If I'm reading this article correctly, this isn't just about past convictions, but cops who were convicted of crimes on the job, as well as former cops and those "who at one time had tried to become a cop". Furthermore, the Attorney General is trying to argue that simply being in possession of this list is a crime. But given that the article says some of the convicts are still working as cops, I think that it is important to the public interest that this list be seen and reported on. Not necessarily to be printed out in its entirety just to shame every name on the list, but to find out which departments have failed to vet their police officers. Just because the government keeps a list doesn't mean that they do a good job of checking against it, especially when it might be up to each individual agency to do the checks themselves.

jakelazaroff 8y ago

If this list were only comprised of felons who later became cops, that would be one thing. But it seems like a lot of it is crimes committed while being police, some even in the course of their duties as officers: > The list includes cops who trafficked drugs, cops who stole money from their departments and even one who robbed a bank wearing a fake beard. Some sexually assaulted suspects. Others took bribes, filed false reports and committed perjury. You can say that should be a separate list, and sure — I can get behind that. I certainly don't like the idea of the justice system being retributive! But it seems clear that there is data on this list that should be released in the interest of public safety.

presscast 8y ago

>you're tacitly admitting you either dont believe in prisons as an effective tool for correction There's a third option, namely: correctional facilities work better than nothing, but aren't 100% effective.

goatlover 8y ago
Indeed, not everyone wants to be rehabilitated or can be, and correctional facilities are not always that great at rehabilitation.

mindslight 8y ago

You're really describing the other half of the same issue. The larger picture is that while the private sector is treating any conviction as a permanent black mark, the good old boys club is doing the exact opposite. I do agree that a serving your sentence should mean that your sentence has been served, as opposed to continuing lists and restrictions after you're supposedly "free". But if we're going to allow that mark to continue in some form indefinitely, then it should have more effects on people in true positions of trust (eg police) rather than fewer! This pattern of double standard rights erosion is happening across the board. Police enjoy "Garrity rights" whereby they can actually exercise their 5th amendment rights, whereas a private employee can be compelled to testify against themselves under threat of being fired. Someone who works for the government retains their freedom of speech protections, whereas a job in the private sector can be easily lost due to doxxing by an online lynch mob. Ultimately, this two class system came about because rights were codified only as protections from the government, as there is no simple way to draw a line between freedom of association and negative consequences. But given that we've gotten to the point where the vast majority of the population must hold down a job, this needs to change with respect to the general labor market.

biztos 8y ago
> Someone who works for the government retains their freedom of speech protections, whereas a job in the private sector can be easily lost due to doxxing by an online lynch mob. Doesn't this have more to do with the prevalence of unions in the public sector?
- mindslight 8y ago
  It seems hard to tell, given that private sector unions tend towards being at large quasi-governmental corporations. Unions do add difficulty to the firing process, which seems like it should be enough to fend off the employer firing you simply based on not wanting all of the harassing phone calls. But if management and union management still want to go through the process of firing you for what you said, then a government employee would still have the defense that doing so would violate their rights. The prevalence of public sector unions itself is actually a good example of the trend I'm talking about though!

bogomipz 8y ago

>"Disclosure: I am a former felon, convicted and sentenced for assaulting a carjacker." I don't mean to pry but I'm genuinely curious how you received a felony for assaulting someone that was threatening you. How would that not have been considered self-defense?

peopleeater 8y ago

I'm confused when you say 'former' felon. I thought a felon is someone who committed a felony. Unless your conviction was overturned, aren't you forevermore a felon, even after you serve your sentence?

perl4ever 8y ago

"If you keep a secret list of people you know have been convicted of a felony, you're tacitly admitting you either dont believe in prisons as an effective tool for correction, or you're looking for something more sinister...biblical retribution" Well, this would make perfect sense if we didn't have sex offender lists. Or if we didn't do things like taking the ability to own guns away from the mentally ill, even those who have committed no crime whatsoever. Or if we didn't in many places remove the right to vote or serve on a jury from felons. I don't mean to say that all of these things are unquestionable and perfect, but it seems like there are many ways in which people generally agree that some rights can be lost and should be lost even after incarceration is over. And it's not necessarily about retribution. I think everybody knows prisons are not effective at rehabilitation.

garmaine 8y ago
Those aren't the same thing. Someone isn't accidentally a pedophile, or becomes a pedophile because of some mistake they made once, etc. There really isn't a way for a prison to change what their sexual preferences are, so the list makes sense. But felony convictions for crimes of necessity, passion, or lack of opportunity? Those are categorically different things. (Of course, before someone jumps in, there are a bunch of people who end up on the list that don't deserve to be there because of backwards laws on the books or excessively aggressive prosecutors. But I'm speaking to the idea behind the law here.)
- TomVDB 8y ago
  Before I accept that as truth, I want to see how things work in countries without sex offender list in term of recidivism. The kind of sexual of behaviors that should end up on the list (because there is no possible way that it could be fixed) is probably quite limited.

dynjo 8y ago

"I am a former felon, convicted and sentenced for assaulting a carjacker." And right there is everything wrong with the law. Hopefully at the very least you got a nice sense of satisfaction!

rebuilder 8y ago

I'd guess law enforcement in California would prefer there to be no list, but since there is one, want to keep it secret.

duado 8y ago

Damn, I hope you at least killed the carjacker.

microcolonel 8y ago

> an abundance of caution in the face of an indeterminate outcome from mental rehabilitation or incarceration It's not about abundant caution, or the uncertain effectiveness of correctional facilities. Regardless of what programs you avail some people of, the numbers show that (knowing nothing else) choosing to trust any random convicted felon is a worse idea than choosing to trust any random person who is not a convicted felon. I don't really know what this article is trying to imply, somehow that the list should be public (or I guess, in a more limited sense, that the AG should not be threatening the public to prevent them from having it); as far as I can tell, the records it would contain are public to begin with.

tomcam 8y ago

Wonderful comment. Would love if you could contact me (see profile). I have an interest in some of these issues.

confiscate 8y ago

what was your experience with public defenders? Just curious because you said it was a pro-tip to never take one

Fnoord 8y ago

The point is pretty simple: damage control, and a refusal for change. Society wants to discredit everyone who is a former felon (which itself is a sentence for life), and it wants to keep people who are cops from becoming a felon (those 'criminal cops' surely did worse things than 'convicted and sentenced for assaulting a carjacker'?). Supposedly because being a cop earned them credits or bonus points of some kind (I'd put my bet on that it costs society a lot of money to train cops and keep them from being dirty). In that way, the list (of former felons) retains its value. If the State would prosecute and convict dirty cops, society may get the idea that cops (who are supposed to be a reflection of society) are less sincere than they may seem to be. The problem can be solved pretty easily: 1) Prosecute dirty cops. 2) Stop with this 'former felon' sentence for life. Be pragmatic about people instead. 3) You'll find 'former felons' everywhere in society, including in government positions. However, felons stay in prison to serve their fair share. 4) The chance of becoming a felon will eventually decrease (it is ridiculous right now, with e.g. crimes involving something innocent as a little bit of cannabis). Problem is, there's a lack of willpower society has to go for these steps. How can we stimulate society in the right way? I suppose one thing would be that those who are former felons like yourself open up about themselves. Put it out of the pandora's box where the light doesn't shine.