11 ms·

People are losing their jobs because of offhand tweets completely unrelated to their occupation; how can we expect that a blemish as big as a criminal record wi

• clevergadget 6y ago
  pretty sure the people with criminal records have already been punished?
  • UnpossibleJim 6y ago
    I believe what the person above was referring to is the dichotomy of the people cheering for prisoners getting jobs while cancelling people for a fairly innocuous tweet, however tasteless. While the prisoners may have paid for their crime, there isn't always as clear a path out of the purgatory that is becoming the social pariah of upsetting "the mob" in the Twitterverse (though, past a few professions, I'm unsure how much sway they hold).
    • cycloptic 6y ago
      I wouldn't say that's a dichotomy. Internet popularity was fleeting before twitter and it probably still will be long afterwards. In general, the path out of unpopularity is to do research before you post something. If you don't want to do it yourself, you can hire a PR firm.
• staticassertion 6y ago
  I'd rather hire a criminal (depending on the crime, obviously) than, say, a racist, especially given how many laws I disagree with.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • secondcoming 6y ago
    > depending on the crime, obviously Well, this is the big part that's missing from the story. 13 years seems like it was a big deal. Is it even legal to ask someone who was in prison what their crime was during an interview?
    • richardwhiuk 6y ago
      Definitely in the UK. You can ask for full criminal records.
      • VBprogrammer 6y ago
        Criminal convictions in the UK at least can be considered spent, after that point it doesn't need to be declared.
      • michaelt 6y ago
        You can ask. But UK convictions become 'spent' after a certain amount of time (Depending on the length of the prison sentence served, with 4+ year sentences never becoming spent) after which they leave the person's basic criminal record, and there's no obligation to tell a prospective employer about them. Only a few jobs (such as teaching) are allowed info on spent convictions.
        • richardwhiuk 6y ago
          The original article was a 13 year conviction, so would have shown up.
    • chrisco255 6y ago
      The laws on this vary dramatically by state and sometimes even by city. For some they can't ask or run a background check until after an offer is made. For some jurisdictions they can't discriminate on that basis unless it's highly relevant to the job (i.e. convicted sex offender can't work with children). For some jurisdictions it's totally legal to run the background check upfront and to discriminate at will.
    • 6y ago
  • nendroid 6y ago
    You say this, but most prison time is done for extreme crime that everyone agrees with. In addition this, prison time is usually reserved for not just crimes we agree with but crimes we all agree are extreme. Case in point for this specific case it was violent crime, which I'm sure we can all agree is way worse than a racist tweet.
    • VBprogrammer 6y ago
      Isn't a huge amount of prison time in the US handed out for selling banned substances to other consenting adults?
      • nickff 6y ago
        Drug convictions make up a large portion of federal inmates, but federal inmates are a minority of the prison population.
      • minikites 6y ago
        Yep. Drug laws (and the police/legal system in general) also disproportionately targets people of color.
      • iguy 6y ago
        About 10-20% of prisoners are in for nothing more serious than drugs, and if you try to exclude trafficking, then it's closer to the 10% end. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
      • CobrastanJorji 6y ago
        In total, about a half million people are in jail or prison for having, using, or selling drugs. Drug crimes account for about half of Federal prisoners. But percentage-wise, when you add up federal, state, and local prisons and jails, drugs are not as large a percentage as you'd think. Another half million people in prisons or jails haven't been convicted of any crime at all, either because they can't afford bail or because they're just being processed today. If you had to guess what someone went to jail for, and you only knew they were in a State penitentiary, violent crime would be your best guess. Here's a bit pie chart: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html
  • eplanit 6y ago
    So, Thought Crime weighs heavier than statutory crimes? Who decides the guilt or innocence of the thoughts?
    • staticassertion 6y ago
      The one hiring gets to decide who works there.
    • sixo 6y ago
      you're trying to be clever, but statutory crimes are often either ridiculous (drug offenses) or can be put behind you and forgiven (if they were a product of circumstances or culture at the time.) whereas what you're calling "thought crime" is more analogous to saying "i intend to commit statutory crimes in the future".
      • AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
        A thought crime is analogous to saying "I think that imprisoning people for drugs is unfair".
  • Nuzzerino 6y ago
    What percentage of the population do you estimate is made up of these racists?
    • staticassertion 6y ago
      I don't know? I don't understand what you're getting at.
      • Nuzzerino 6y ago
        Many these days have got on a bandwagon of calling people out as racists if they don't fall in line with the Democrat party platform or support the censorship agenda of big tech. As that diminishes the real problem of racism would you be willing to commit to not hiring anyone contributing to that problem as well? (Obviously this is rhetorical)
        • staticassertion 6y ago
          If it's rhetorical why are you asking me? What do you want from this exchange? I have no interest in discussing who is or isn't racist, I'm saying that an already defined as racist tweet would be something worth considering in a hiring process.
  • AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    There's a problem though: - The standard of proof in criminal law is very high. There are very specific definitions of most criminal acts and these must be proven "beyond reasonable doubt" - The definition of "racist tweet" on the other hand is as fuzzy as it can be. Usually it drills down to "someone whom I don't like said something that I have interpreted in the way I don't like" If we think that racist tweets should bear harsh consequences, we need a bit better criteria of what "racist" actually means.
    • staticassertion 6y ago
      As with all things there is a judgment to be made, and as the one doing the hiring it is yours to make responsibly.
    • minitoar 6y ago
      What do you think a good definition of “racist tweet” would be?
      • deelowe 6y ago
        I doubt there is one.
        • minitoar 6y ago
          Does that mean the concept has no value, or that racist tweets do not exist (since they cannot be easily defined)?
          • x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
            He means that there is no racist comment that can be posted on Twitter that he feels should result in affecting one's employment.
            • deelowe 6y ago
              No. I mean, I doubt we as a society could come up with a definition that's sufficiently specific and durable enough to apply this level of scrutiny. We can't even agree on the proper term for certain races.
  • pkaye 6y ago
    So you are saying it should be the employers choice whether to hire the racist or criminal?
  • hnracer 6y ago
    OP would've been talking about falsely maligned people who were raked over the coals by a woke mob for a relatively innocuous and most likely factually accurate statement. Not actual racists. For example: the letter against Steven Pinker for using vernacular such as "urban crime" (he's then called racist), or the attacks against JK Rowling for taking a politically incorrect stance on trans women in female sports (she's then called transphobic). The list goes on.
• JauntyHatAngle 6y ago
  Because two wrongs dont make a right, and expectations are a poor way to calibrate justice.
• AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  You don't understand. One is an accidental mishap due to the extreme cruelty and unfairness of our modern society. The other one is a sincerely held unacceptable belief which endangers the progress of humanity. /s
  • taneq 6y ago
    I guess merely being convicted of a crime isn't that bad compared with being sentenced without trial in the court of public opinion.
  • Joker_vD 6y ago
    Cf. "revolutionary conscience": [0] [0] https://www.history-of-emotions.mpg.de/texts/revolutionary-conscience https://www.history-of-emotions.mpg.de/texts/revolutionary-c...
• geofft 6y ago
  I don't think anyone expects them to be overlooked. You look at the person and you see if they've changed for the better. I would much rather hire someone who grew up poor and fell in with gangs and felt pressured to join in an armed robbery 10 years ago and understands that it's wrong than someone who had a demonstrated bias against some minority 10 years ago and still does today. This isn't about whether they're a "good person" or anything, this is a mercenary calculation based on business value. I don't expect the former gang member is going to engage in similar violent crimes if I employ them. I do expect the biased person is going to have trouble working productively with people in my company who are part of that minority or is going to negatively impact those folks' productivity. I'm not in the business of determining the magnitude of your moral transgressions. That stays in the confessional. I'm in the business of hiring folks who will deliver business value.
  • bzbarsky 6y ago
    I think there's a wide gulf between "said something that someone on the internet construed as racist" and "demonstrated bias against some minority"... But past that, the general principle you advocate seems to be "try not to hire people who will not be able to work with others", right? It doesn't matter whether they're biased against minorities or non-minorities, as long as they're biased and will be acting irrationally in ways that piss off those around them.
• nendroid 6y ago
  You can tweet racist stuff and still be president of the United States. The law protects him from the emotions of the masses. This law does not extend over to your employment at a commercial company. The reason why people lose their jobs for racist tweets is because companies are reacting to the emotional sentiment of the masses and pulling a PR maneuver. In short, for commercial jobs, it doesn't matter your crime, or the degree of your crime or whether you committed a crime at all, it's about business and a negative public emotional mood against you at this current point in time is usually bad for business (or stock prices). Case in point, Let's say hypothetically that the OP could have mentioned that this woman's violent crime was repeatedly beating a 8 year old child for no reason and the public's emotional reaction would be drastically different. I'm not sure what her crime really was, but there is definitely a reason why it was omitted: The OP likely made a rational judgement about the crime and is likely very aware that the emotional reaction to the crime by the masses would be drastically different than her own rational judgement... thus from this line of reasoning she has chosen not to mention what the crime was. It's a fine line here. I think if I really got to know a person and I can really understand a person, I feel even a child beater or can be redeemed in my eyes but I can see how in the eyes of the public this can never happen. (Also let's be clear here, I'm not saying the womans crime was beating a child, just using that as an example). People are rarely rational and when you measure the reactions of people in response to stimuli in aggregate you will find that the bigger the aggregate the more emotional the reaction is. This is how a criminal who committed a violent crime can get public support for finding a job, and an innocent man who made a mistake and wrote a stupid tweet can lose any prospect at finding a future career.
  • stupidgarbage 6y ago
    You racist
• saithound 6y ago
  Unfortunately, I don't think that's it. The same subset of my coworkers who requested that we don't invite Scott Aaronson to our colloquium because he said something vaguely anti-feminist years ago are perfectly happy to praise (literal murderer and talented number theorist) Christopher Havens, and I'm sure would be happy to have him employed by our department. edit: Of course, universities still don't hire violent offenders, but I don't think the reasons for not employing a Twitter-pariah and not employing a murderer are closely related at all.
• kazinator 6y ago
  > People are losing their jobs because of offhand tweets ... Well, not sitting-in-the-oval-office people, but anyway.
• anemoiac 6y ago
  Smoke weed in Kansas - boom, criminal record. Walk across the Colorado border and smoke weed - no problem, it's completely legal. It's also completely legal to spend your free time carting your AR-15 and Nazi flag down to the village square and recruiting supporters for your "Turn America into a white ethnostate" movement. The point I'm making is that not all criminal behavior is even widely considered objectionable and plenty of legal behavior is. Thus, why would you consider having a criminal record to be "a [big] blemish" that justifies employment discrimination, yet no personal views extreme enough to allow an employer to disassociate from their employee? When you consider that the ratio of those affected by criminal record-based employment discrimination to those impacted by twitter-based discrimination is on the order of millions to one, it seems strange to be more concerned about the latter than the former.