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What an interesting question. In each case, the thing that is being looked up is different and has a different context. You can not look up arrest history (or

What an interesting question. In each case, the thing that is being looked up is different and has a different context. You can not look up arrest history (or ask about it) because an arrest is not evidence of guilt. Despite not being evidence, arrests have been used as presumptive evidence of dishonesty by employers, lack of creditworthiness by banks, and for other off-label reasons by all manner of folks who would like to separate good people from bad. Since this (a) was more noise than signal, and (b) tended to revictimize marginalized people who had been past targets for police misconduct, it is being banned slowly. You now can look up records of police misconduct in NYC (not by law, but because the public defender has made their cache of public data available), where it had been secret information for a long time, and somewhat arcane where available. The secrecy of police disciplinary records allowed many police to commit serial violence against citizens with impunity in addition to other misconduct. Unlike general societal arrest records, there has not been a systematic abuse of recordmaking in order to discriminate against police--quite the opposite. It would be fair to conclude that both initiatives are intended to reduce collateral damage caused by the criminal law system.

Bostonian 4y ago
The Ban the Box law is not just about arrests but convictions. Quoting the site I linked to, "An employer cannot ask you about any prior convictions until the end of the hiring process."
- public_defender 4y ago
  That means for the subset of people who have convictions, the "not evidence" comment doesn't apply. My comments on misuse and irrelevance hold for convictions. See also the fact that a person theoretically endures punishment upon conviction commensurate with a crime. To make people vulnerable to further punishment by private/collateral actors undermines the theoretical basis for the state's sole authority to punish.

Bostonian 4y ago

The Ban the Box law is not just about arrests but convictions. Quoting the site I linked to, "An employer cannot ask you about any prior convictions until the end of the hiring process."

public_defender 4y ago
That means for the subset of people who have convictions, the "not evidence" comment doesn't apply. My comments on misuse and irrelevance hold for convictions. See also the fact that a person theoretically endures punishment upon conviction commensurate with a crime. To make people vulnerable to further punishment by private/collateral actors undermines the theoretical basis for the state's sole authority to punish.