There used to be the notion in this country that after a person was released from prison they had "paid there debt to society" and should therefore be able to go on with there life. How did we get to a place where no one seems to believe this anymore ?
I would think that a punishment for a crime that includes forced destitution for life independently of the nature of the crime would be considered cruel and unusual. But the Bill of Rights doesn't seem to be taken seriously anymore either.
> How did we get to a place where no one seems to believe this anymore?
It's technology's fault. Before the advent of widespread computers capable of indexing large amounts of data, in order for someone to know a person had a felony, they would have had to know where you were convicted, travel to the courthouse in that county, and go through stacks of dusty paper files.
This struck a good balance between making court records public (anyone can look at them), and the privacy of individual defendants (few people bothered because it's time-consuming and inconvenient, therefore expensive).
Of course software's eaten this market, there are companies that have digitized and indexed all those public records, and now you can run background checks on people with a few mouse clicks and a few bucks on your credit card.
Anything that can be done, will be done, to whatever degree people can profit from it, as long as it isn't regulated. If a majority of people are against these privacy violation, then it's simply a failure of the political system to come up with a solution.
Traditional tort law also put some barriers in the way of doing various negative things you could imagine doing with the public information. For example photocopying a bunch of public records about someone you don't like, and then mailing them to the person's employer, flyering the neighborhood with copies of them, etc., or following the person as they go apply for employment and handing a copy to the prospective employer, would all fall afoul (in some jurisdictions) of economic torts and anti-harassment law. But running an "information service" that does this systematically for everyone doesn't have the same element of targeted harassment, so avoids these torts, while still harming the person in question.
It's clearly technology's fault. Just like police never assaulted black/brown people before everyone had video cameras on their persons 24/7. And ufos stopped visiting.
On a serious note, you're running perilously close to google and the right to forget. I strongly agree with you, but it's the google party line that there's no difference at all between (1) the ability to conduct a background check on someone as long as you're willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars, and (2) the ability for anyone to conduct and publicize a background check for free. You'll note also that asshole Eric Schmidt simultaneously suggested people should change their names if they want youthful indiscretions not to follow them for the rest of their life while using his billions and lawyers to erase his mistresses' stories from the internet.
If my local politicians are any indication, the ones who were in office during the 'tough-on-crime' era, particularly of the 80's and 90's, tend to speak as if the convicted are reprobate, can never fully 'repay' their victims, and are destined for a life of crime. I suspect some of this rhetoric bled into their perceptions of the point of criminal penalties, leading to much more retributive and much less restorative/redemptive sentencing practices and laws.
But it's hard for me to separate that all from the general Calvinist/religious culture of the area where I live.
> How did we get to a place where no one seems to believe this anymore ?
I think for some groups in this country, we're not just getting to this place, this is where we've been for a long time. It's just that the masses are better able to access information about it now.
Blacks being killed by police with indiscretion did not start in 2013.
I'd guess in fact that that the past 5 years were way better for black live than the 5 years before them. People just happen to be paying attention now.
The Black lives matter movement was catalyzed as a marketing campaign by companies that sell police cameras that went viral. http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I am in no way suggesting the original conversation was markiting. But, if you look at the timeline there was a marketing push right before that phrase took off.
I am not suggesting there is a direct connection. It's an amplification effect, Rodney King's beating was arguably a much more agregious spark, and there are plenty of for worse trigger events to spark things. Looking at the actual triggers you could argue it's a straw that brakes Yada yada, but that not not seem to fit how sticky the story was.
IMO, it's trigger, news story, more news stories, response to all the news, news stories about the movement, self sustaining movement. with more news being the fake bit.
Without people actively trying to sell things there are far more important issues, but a little media judo can shift perception and policy.
A marketing guy working for one of those companies mentioned pushing the story in an NPR interview. It was not 100% clear if they where waiting for an event to capitalize on, or noticed the story get traction and then started pushing it.
That's interesting but it's such a startling claim I think you need to back it up with something better than 'i heard it on the radio,' otherwise you're just going make a lot of people feel offended and write you off as a conspiracy theorist. Like at least hit NPR.org for an hour or two and track down a URL.
I'm not sure that a camera company encouraging a movement (clearly they did not actually start it) is particularly relevant. Is it a good movement? Yes? Then let every company push it, whether they profit thereby or not.
And what's really crazy we force sex offenders (which includes the people who got caught peeing in a public place) to announce themselves, not allow them to live within X feet of schools, and there's a public database of them.
But we don't do the same with kidnappers or murderers.
Not that it matters, but most "kidnappers" are actually parents (or other close family members) and most kidnapping victims are actually children involved in child custody disputes.
This doesn't change your point at all, just wanted to point out that putting "kidnappers" on the list might not be very effective.
The 17 year old having (nominally) consensual sex with a 15 year old. The drunken liaison where one party was not able to consent (doesn't remember consenting, didn't, or otherwise). The breaking and entering to rape at knife point.
I do not consider these equal crimes, and whilst I've no objection to legal intervention in each I think the key on is to appropriately manage the risk of re offending. Making someone's life nigh on impossible after serving time only makes them resent the system and interferes with proper re-integration into society. That's the only meaningful goal. Or it should be in my opinion.
I suppose society gets restless if it doesn't have some class of people it can very publicly brand, so if needed it makes one up semi-arbitrarily. Modern day scarlet letter.
Quite - look at the increasingly ludicrous proposals for building walls thousands of miles long, rounding up millions of people and deporting them and so on. There are some unrealistic proposals from the left too, but they tend be more boring ones like jacking up taxes on incomes and swingeing tariffs on imports - economically foolish but logistically quite easy.
It reflects an idea of risks of re-offending and perceived danger.
It may not be perfect, and there are very real issues with making it harder for people to resume a normal life after getting out, but this is actually one of those areas where actions are more in line with actual risks than a lot of policies relating to how past offenders are treated.
Murderers are highly unlikely to carry out another murder - most murders are "one of a kind" heat of passion, not sociopaths killing for the entertainment value or similar. The nature of the victims of murders and the low risk of re-offending makes it relatively low risk to live near someone who has carried out a murder in the past.
Sex-offenders are much more likely to be an ongoing risk to society after being released, and sex-offenders who have previously targeted children are extremely likely to target based on level of access (e.g. parents and close relatives top the list, but other people with close access to a child rank high, such as e.g. a neighbour that manages to become friends with the parents of a child), which is a particular impetus for people to worry about where they live.
Public urination is unlikely to involve sex offender registration. Only three US states have the law needed (arizona, california, and georgia) and two of those (arizona and georgia) also require either repeat offences or the presence of children.
There is a total of about 5,00 people in the US on the register for exposure - and obviously not all of those are there for public urination.
As an individual, I would be cautious about hiring a former convict, but it's not out of the question.
Intuitively (I'm not an actuary), it seems that insurance companies get away with charging you more if you've had a prior accident. It seems a person who has broken the law may be more likely to break it than the average person.
I think it stinks that this local govt can tell a business to fire a felon though, that just compounds the problem of re-entry. I smell a Supreme Court case in the future.
Just be charitable in your interpretation. Knodi123 probably wants ex-cons treated well, but doesn't believe that they are not part of society, even without voting rights.
Kids have no voting rights either. Or legal aliens. Or visiting diplomats. Etc.
Sure, I could have asked more nicely, but when someone is seemingly ok with oppressing one part of society I would appreciate an explanation. It's surprising that (some/most?) Americans are ok with this situation, and yet understand that not giving women or minorities the vote was a huge deal.
Asking nicely makes it more likely that you will get one.
People are much more likely to answer a question when it seems like you're interested in a genuine answer, than when it seems like you've already passed judgment and the question is a mere formality.
They were not asking in a pleasant manner, but they were also not being outright rude. Not every interaction has to be sunshine and lollipops.
Passive-agressive outrage at the apparent lack of concern for the disenfranchisement of a fairly large population group seems... ok in the grand scheme. No name calling, no yelling, and no 'please sir, will you answer me this' is required.
I'm merely noting something learned from a lot of arguing on the internet -- if you "ask" in an accusatory way, or a passive-aggressive way, or a way that makes it seem as though you've intentionally hidden something in your question, people are less likely to give you a genuine response. People are naturally conflict-avoidant, and the way the above question was asked makes it sound like someone is itching for conflict. Even if the OP had a good answer, it can be exhausting to phrase such an answer in a way that defuses points of conflict for an already-hostile conversation partner.
This advice parallels one of the Hacker News guidelines: "avoid gratuitous negativity". Asking questions in a gratuitously negative way doesn't usually make for good conversation.
I stated no position on the issue, so your hostile tone is unnecessary. In fact, I'm okay with suffrage for every adult of established citizenship. What I'm against is breathlessly hyperbolic exaggerations
My theory is that people are dissatisfied with what the "debt to society" is. How can you blame them. If you have loved ones who were attacked, how would you feel if the criminal only got 180 hours of community service for sexual assault?
Well in the US, "sex offenders" (including public urination and some people not actually convicted of doing what is alleged) are marked for life and need to inform their neighbors of their shunned status whenever they move. (On the down side, some people like me don't take "sexual offender" status seriously because it's so often mis-applied.)
Murderers get better treatment after release than low level sex offenders who committed victimless crimes. A sad reflection on a society that consumes violence for entertainment but is deathly afraid of all sexual matters.
Go to some place like Germany and notice they are very anti-violence and more sexually open. You see nudity on German broadcast television but not graphic violence. I'd say their priorities are much better in that regard.
Not to mention that many (maybe even most) felony convictions are for victimless "crimes" like drug possession or for property offenses where no one has suffered any kind of irreperable harm.
I was wrong about that. I thought there were cases where accusation + not (yet) being proved innocent was enough to get on the list. But a look at wikipedia shows that some kind of conviction or guilty plea is always involved.
This makes me sick. I work in the corrections industry and regularly encounter people that use the "they are criminals" justification for any/everything they want to do. People don't seem to understand the whole "paid debt to society" notion and it worries me because I was more or less brought up believing this and I worry for the future as more and more people seem to think this way...
I work in part in reentry, these people are trying to get their lives back together yet people want to treat them like bad behaving children instead of the adults that they are. I'm not saying they are fully functioning adults, most of them are just dumped out of the prison system and need a great deal of help to get back on their feet (find somewhere to live, a job, etc) but treating them as less-than... I can't think of a worse way to approach this problem. Thankfully the company I work for is largely part of the solution and not the problem or I couldn't bear to work in this industry.
Since society is not actually an entity that can be paid anything, it's not surprising that individuals want to treat ex-cons unfairly.
I think we should scrap the notion of "paying your debt to society" altogether and instead focus on making victims whole. As it stands, victims of crime get minimal remuneration[1], and it varies by state. It's not the criminal who pays the victim, it's the taxpayer. And then the taxpayer gets to pay for the prison term as well.
That is not justice, that is revenge. A base desire that civilized persons should attempt to overcome.
A person should be in jail if they are proven to be a continuing danger to others. A person should not be put in a cage simply to give the victim an emotional release under the "Eye for an Eye" doctrine.
Monetary compensation to victims is an attempt to make a person whole. Victims of all types of crime suffer actual damages such as medical bills, lost wages, damage to property. There is there are indirect damages for things like victim counseling.
Often times it is simply not possible to fully make a person "whole" again after a crime, however monetary compensation is the best option we have today to ensure the victim can get the needed treatment, or aid they need to at-least move forward with their lives
Locking persons in a cage does not help the victim, or the criminal. Prison should be used to separate persons from society to dangerous to be allowed to walk free... Nothing else.
>A person should be in jail if they are proven to be a continuing danger to others
no. i'm sorry but just no. People are in prison because their actions have proven they are a danger to others and should only be released then they have PROVEN THEY ARE NOT a danger to others.
Imagine yourself being arrested and convicted by mistake (eg due to mistaken identity or prosecutorial shenanigans) and now figure out how you would go about proving your non-dangerous status.
We have to assume the conviction is correct. Otherwise that leads to basically letting everyone go free just in case they're actually innocent. So once we're sure somebody did a crime, I would say we don't give the criminal the benefit of the doubt that they're probably safe. Rather we somehow find out that they're safe enough before releasing them. Erring on the side of "not safe".
That's a pretty big assumption given that prosecutors face no professional or personal consequences for wrongful convictions, even if they are particularly egregious.
We have an appeals process precisely because such assumptions are unreliable. The GP is essentially proposing we hand everyone a life sentence by default, which is hardly an improvement on the status quo.
That takes quite a faith in process that has little remedial feedback.
Unlike say engineering or medicine where there can be a said to be an objectively observable system where all strive towards similar outcomes - and even those disciplines screw up constantly.
"Otherwise that leads to basically letting everyone go free just in case they're actually innocent"
There is a huge category of crime where long term incarceration absolutely does no help to anyone whatsoever.
Well, that's what people usually get out of civil trials, and there's plenty of literature on how to go about quantifying the cost of the injury (though often it just comes down to a jruy's intuition).
Penal theory is a complex topic. The intellectual heavyweight on this topic from a philosophical standpoint is the late Michel Foucault, who wrote a book called Discipline and Punish studying the origin of the prison. It's not an easy read (I strongly suspect Foucault just banged out his first draft on a typewriter and then browbeat his publisher into printing it without any revisions) but an extremely thought-provoking one.
Basically his thesis is that in earlier times, most work was agricultural and lawbreaking was treated as tantamount to attacking the king of a country, so terrible retributions and tortures would be visited on the body of offenders in a way that was meant to mirror the (metaphorical) injury to the body of the monarch (which was the embodiment of society, law and so on). although such punishments were gruesome (and often had the unintended effect of creating sympathy or notoriety for criminals) they were not actually administered that often and there was actually a lot of wiggle room between what the law said and how it was enforced, which had the purpose of acting as a political safety valve while still making it easy to crack down on real threats (truly awful crimes, or waves of crime by rebellious mobs etc.).
At the dawn of the industrial age, the factors of economic production shifted away from land and towards other forms of capital, and manufacturing shifted away from skilled craftsmen in self-policing guilds towards factories and so on. The division of labor and specialization made organization essential, and first the workplace, then also schools, hospitals, and eventually prisons were reconstituted in the image of military camps, since standardization and deindividuation had long proved their worth in military conflict.
Foucault argues that organizing, quantizing, and generally systematizing the punishment of crimes led to an increasingly impersonal approach based on surveillance and the manufacture of compliant behavior as a social product (note, for example, the oddly anthropomorphic architecture of Pentonville prison, which was heavily influenced by Benthamite concepts of continuous surveillance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice#/media/Fil...). Insofar as this disciplinary approach became the norm across society as the middle class displaced the peasantry as the primary political force, so too it made society more and more neurotic and whole industries sprang up to manage and indeed optimize these neuroses. Further, establishment of prisons as a mainstream social technology practically guaranteed the dissemination of criminal knowledge between inmates, providing society with a way to extract value from criminal enterprises at the same time that expanding the scope of criminalization proved an effective tool for restraining whole sections of the population by channeling criminal energies into fairly predictable and manageable channels.
tl;dr by default, we're actually cogs in a big economic machine that molds our entire perception of reality. Various science fiction films like The Matrix make a similar argument in allegorical terms.
Part of the problem is the "Debt to Society" crap. People who violate the law do not owe a debt to society, they owe a debt to their victim(s) and no one else.
This "debt to society" was invented in order to justify the creation of 1000's of victimless "crimes"
To be sure I understand you: you mean we can't prevent people from bringing an AK47 in school, as long as they don't shoot anyone?
And one can drive as fast a she wants as long as there is no accident?
One can sell outdated food as long as no client gets sick?
>>>you mean we can't prevent people from bringing an AK47 in school, as long as they don't shoot anyone?
As a matter of General Law, no.
However if the property owner, in this case the school board, chooses on their own to disallow guns on their property then a person violating that would be guilty of criminal trespass.
This is true for a Starbucks, Walmart, your personal home or any other property.
That being said the issue gets a little more tricky when it comes to government run property, with government run property I tend to come down on what I think is a reasonable position of if you are not required by law to be there then the individual government agencies can restrict gun possession provided there is not a superior law preventing that.. an example would be many State governments preempt local parks depts from passing rules prohibiting carry in a public park.
>>>And one can drive as fast a she wants as long as there is no accident?
Generally speaking I believe in enforcement of Reckless Driving Laws and less on arbitrarily defined laws. For the most part speed limits are less about safety and more about revenue generation for local government. Even under todays law if you are driving the speed limit and a cops believes that is unsafe for the road conditions you can be ticketed and even arrested.
>>>One can sell outdated food as long as no client gets sick?
>> However if the property owner, in this case the school board, chooses on their own to disallow guns on their property then a person violating that would be guilty of criminal trespass.
But who is the victim then? What was the damage? How does that compare to the case where they didn't make that rule?
The property owner is the victim. Property owners have the right to deny entry/use of their property for any reason or no reason at all.
They can say "No one wearing blue shirts", or "No entry after 5pm" or any other rule they want to impose, if you violate that you have violated their property rights.
I don't think this works for you. Most "victimless crimes" have victims, you just don't believe they should count as victims, or the punishment isn't proportional. I suppose you could say not every instance actually has a victim, just some of them, but then should I get to walk if I shoot at you and miss?
Copyright: IP owners who lose money, everyone who no longer benefits from new content because making it is economically unsustainable.
Regulation: consumers who buy defective and dangerous products (particularly drugs), people who drink contaminated water and breathe contaminated air, people whose radio electronics won't work anymore because some asshole is jamming them, people whose retirement accounts evaporate on irresponsible trades or investment in fraudulent businesses, people who become suddenly homeless on the whims of their landlords, people who get hit by speeding cars, drunk drivers, cars without working brakes, cars that don't properly signal their presence and intentions.
War on Drugs: people whose friends and family members become unreliable and/or dead because of their addictions.
Tax fraud: people whose economic and medical situations get worse when government is underfunded.
>>>Copyright: IP owners who lose money, everyone who no longer benefits from new content because making it is economically unsustainable.
Setting aside the fact that I do not believe in the concept of IP. To the extent that the government grants such a privilege, there is a victim, the "owner" of the intellectual privilege. That person can raise their hand and say "I am a victim of Infringement on my government granted intellectual privilege"
>>>Regulation: consumers who buy defective and dangerous products (particularly drugs), people who drink contaminated water and breathe contaminated air, people whose radio electronics won't work anymore because some asshole is jamming them, people whose retirement accounts evaporate on irresponsible trades or investment in fraudulent businesses, people who become suddenly homeless on the whims of their landlords, people who get hit by speeding cars, drunk drivers, cars without working brakes, cars that don't properly signal their presence and intentions.
All of these are victims to some extent, I do not think you understand what the term victim means in this context. One does not have to be physically harmed to be a victim, you can be a victim of fraud, theft, negligence, these are all victims.
>>>War on Drugs: people whose friends and family members become unreliable and/or dead because of their addictions.
A person using drugs of their own free will can not be classified as a Victim, it is tragic yes but so is suicided, or countless other things. Family members are not being "victimized" by that. Further arresting a Drug abuser has been objectively proven to be about the worst thing you can do for them, and a sure fire way to turn a drug user into an abuser is to ruin their lives with criminal records and penalties.
No Families are not "victims" when a family member uses drugs, any more than they are "victims" when a family member makes any other life choice that is poor.
>>>Tax fraud: people whose economic and medical situations get worse when government is underfunded
Setting aside the fact that I believe taxation to be theft, Taxation produces victims every day, every single taxpayer is a victim of unethical and immoral theft by government...
Setting that aside no one is entitled to other peoples money, if a government program is underfunded that does not make a victim.
Many countries prosecute attempted suicide, and yes family members are absolutely "victimized" by their loved ones' self-destruction. Of course the response of jailing suicidal people and drug users isn't helpful either, but now we're talking about a more interesting standard (whether punishment is helpful) than whether a victim exists.
>using drugs of their own free will
Some proponents of drug prohibition would argue that people (particularly teens) are not using drugs of their own free will, but exploited by dealers and peer groups. Others of a more liberal bent might argue that people don't use hard drugs of their own free will, but as a release from desperate circumstances - becoming a heroin addict is no more a "free" act than jumping from a burning building.
>no one is entitled to other peoples money
Says you. It's certainly not a property of the universe - just 400 years ago there'd have been no question that the lord of the manor owned all your labor, graciously giving you your daily bread out of Christian obligation. Every man for himself is a relatively recent development in human history. You may consider it progress. But a leftist wouldn't - he would say progress is the replacement of the lord of the manor by a democratic state, or the people as a whole, or something like that.
Failure to help your fellow man obviously has victims - thousands of people die of circumstances that could have been alleviated by your money. As do taxes, as do environment regulations (some are spared cancer; some are out of a job; some are out a great deal of capital equipment). The question of politics is what distribution of harm is just.
Incidentally, if you're ever tempted to shit on liberal arts majors... this is what they do all day. Philosophy is, in large part, working through very old and complex arguments on questions such as this. "What is justice?" is at least as old as Plato's Republic and the conversation continues for thousands of years.
>>>yes family members are absolutely "victimized" by their loved ones' self-destruction.
They may be traumatized, but they are not victimized
>>>Some proponents of drug prohibition would argue that people (particularly teens) are not using drugs of their own free will
those same people believe that nothing is "free will". That free will does not exist. You should ignore those people.
>>>It's certainly not a property of the universe - just 400 years ago there'd have been no question that the lord of the manor owned all your labor,
Using unethical policies in history to justify more unethical polices today is ridiculous.
>>>Failure to help your fellow man obviously has victims - thousands of people die of circumstances that could have been alleviated by your money.
You keep using the word victim to describe tragedies, I do not think you understand the difference. Humanities failure to help people in need is not victimizing them, it is a tragedy.
"It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.
People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we’re compassionate we’ll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint." -- Penn Jillette
every single taxpayer is a victim of unethical and immoral theft by government...
But insofar as governments are constituted or upheld by the will of the citizens, there's no moral injury. People want physical and social infrastructure and voluntarily group together to set up institutions to achieve those ends. Now, since nobody alive in the USA today was around to sign the Constitution you could argue that everyone living in the US at present was opted into a social contract without their consent, but on the other hand there's a longstanding legal principle called quantum meruit that says it's OK to charge for services that were provided out of reasonable necessity even if they weren't requested. This is why you can be knocked unconscious and later receive a bill for being transported to the hospital by ambulance, even though you were aware of or competent to contract with the ambulance operators. (This has happened to me, and it's quite a strange experience to get a large bill for a service you have no memory of receiving.)
I fail to see what that has to do with a modern justice system.
Crime can be personal, but law and justice are statistical, bureaucratic instruments that target societies, not individuals. They only produce as an accidental external factor occasional catharsis for the victim.
This is pretty bad, there is no way this law can be legal. If anything, I dare the folks who get fired to challenge the law and sue the county down to bankruptcy.
If the offender has only ever committed one crime, and they did so while a teen, then OK. Give them another chance, provided they have a workable budget that includes a non-criminal job.
If the offender repeated the crime while being older than 25, then no. There is no realistic hope that the person will ever be non-harmful. Never let them free.
(cases between those two extremes are questionable)
I would be extremely wary of making such cosmological, sweeping generalisations about anything. "Realistic hope that the person will ever be non-harmful" really depends on a gazillion other variables.
And why start with a semantically negative presumption, anyway? A world of difference in attitude can be reaped from daring to ask whether a person might harm again, rather than if they will "ever be non-harmful".
You missed the word "repeated". Also, some participants in drunken fights act in self-defense or as part of a fighting sport, and so would not be criminals.
So it's actually like this:
You reach 25. You assault somebody. You serve time in prison. (now a questionable case) We decide to give you a second chance. You feel no need to follow the law, and you enjoy assaulting people, so you do it again. OK, at this point we know what kind of person you are. You didn't just make a bad decision one day. Simply letting you out into society is pretty much the same as assaulting a random person, because that is clearly what you are going to do.
> The County issues business licenses for the privilege of doing business …
Never mind the issue of ex-cons, the premise that freedom of contract and association (i.e. gather a group of people to engage in commercial activity) is a “privilege” granted by the government is arguably unconstitutional.
There are reasons to regulate but the default position should be that you have a right to engage in commercial activities and that right should only be restricted via due process (such as the levels of scruitiny employed by the Supreme Court).
Is the issue not that society agrees to limit your liability in exchange for these businesses doing something beneficial for society? You can argue that you have a right to engage in commercial activities, but I don't think you have a right to escape personal liability for those activities.
Getting a business license and incorporating are not the same thing, and the former has no impact on our legal liability. If you run a business as a sole trader then anyone with a legitimate grievance can go after your personal assets.
A business license is what frees you from personal liability. I don't know of any approach to contracts or personal freedom which suggests society automatically owes zero-personal-liability to everyone without conditions or restrictions attached.
Business licenses (in the US) have nothing to do with personal liability. That's what LLCs and other structures are for. A 'business license' just gives you the ability to run a business without being shut down for, well, running a business without a license, as tautological as that sounds.
Presumably the idea behind business licensing at the local level is that commercial entities require extra service from the government with regard to code enforcement, city planning, fire/police protection, and so on, and the license fees help pay for those services. Discriminating against anyone for pretty much any reason would be grounds for a lawsuit against the municipality or county.
How does this not violate due process and equal protection?
Edit: Hell: add the Fifth amendment (double jeopardy, due process, just compensation), Eighth (cruel and unusual punishment), Ninth (generally), Thirteenth & Fourteenth (if one cannot work gainfully, what options remain, equal protection), and Fifteenth (statistically given crime and conviction statistics)?
Well, they had due process, since that's how one becomes a felon in the first place. But I suspect a blanket ban on being able to earn a living in a particular region will be found cruel and unusual.
Plus as a purely practical matter, banning former criminals from making a legal living seems like a pretty good way to ensure they continue to commit crimes.
Ironically, this would probably have been an unconstitutional violation of the business's right to enter into a contract according to early 1900s doctrine (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_contract).
That doctrine was reversed in the 1930s to permit states to set a minimum wage, but granting states greater authority to regulate contracts cuts both ways.
Well, that "doctrine" was largely based on deciding that the 14th Amendment had nothing to do with ensuring equal rights for former slaves and their children, but rather was enacted to turn the US into libertarian paradise.
See Holmes' famous dissent in Lochner in which he said "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics."
> Plus as a purely practical matter, banning former criminals from making a legal living seems like a pretty good way to ensure they continue to commit crimes.
This county wants ex-cons back in prison or in another state.
How do you know they had due process? Because they had a trial? Are you under the impression that that actually guarantees due process in this country?
Hence "modulo legal gloss". Which includes such elements as effective counsel, unbiased jury selection, proper procedure, evidentiary rules, etc. Now let's look at your link....
Yeah. Biased jury selection.
The Sixth Amendment lays out most of what comprises due process:
the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Also Art III Sec 2:
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment; shall be by Jury...
And again, the Virginia statute clearly fails XIV:
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...
As an ex-con, these kind of attitudes really concern me! Hoping when I graduate university I can find a job somewhere that will be willing to overlook my teenage years.
I work for a major healthcare provider and we hired folks with not-so-clean backgrounds as long as they're disclosed. If you do not disclose any issue and it comes out that you did find something, you can either 1) appeal the decision by reviewing the background check with our provider or 2) wait a full year before reapplying again.
Background checks are not perfect, we know. That's why when you apply, you have the right to get a full report for free. I always recommend checking that box to get it when applying. That way, if something comes up, you can dispute it with the background check agency, and it's very easy.
What would you advise for smaller companies that don't background check? Or if I don't fill out an application and get an interview? Do I still bring it up and if so, when is it appropriate?
If you know for sure that they don't do background checks, then don't include any information that may hurt your chances. After all, you are a human resource, not a friend of a company.
Really depends on where you work. In SF, it's pretty amenable to that. A smart friendly co-worker had gotten locked up for drugs a few years before he started, even warning the HR department that his background check wouldn't come up clean, and that'd been no problem at all, and he's since moved gigs. (If you'd like an intro just hit me up :-) and I'll see what I can do)
IANAL, but I highly doubt this would hold up in court by any means for several reasons:
1. Virginia is a "ban the box" state, meaning it is state law that the state or government contractor cannot ask about a criminal background until a formal offer of employment is on the table. Unless of course the job requires prior to extending the offer (i.e. schools can't employ sex offenders, law enforcement jobs don't want convicted felons, etc..).
2. The Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits job discrimination on a criminal background when it comes to race or nationality.
The law seems to have been written with a very broad pen. While I understand there are certain businesses that should not be run by certain convicted felons (i.e. you don't want a daycare center run by someone convicted of molesting children), this law seems like it was written to solve a specific problem and needed a very general approach. Comparably, many states/cities do have restrictions on the types of licenses an individual can get based on their background (commonly referred to a collateral consequences of a conviction - http://www.abacollateralconsequences.org/). For example, some states prohibit the issuing of a real estate license to individuals convicted of fraud.
I don't know if it is a coincidence or not, but this ordinance came into effect a month after the governor of Virginia signed the Ban the Box law.
It really depends on the job and position, but there has to be a justifiable reason why the individual cannot be hired. In theory the jobs that this helps felons get are the blue collar type work (for example, there is no reason a felon should not be allowed to work on a state landscape crew or a state construction team. Prior to ban the box, they may have been automatically excluded. With ban the box, they are not automatically excluded.)
The First Amendment does not cover collecting money from other people. If you want to associate with people or give away some sort of printed material, you don't need a business license. If you want to collect money from people, you need a business license.
While I'm perfectly fine with employers not hiring ex-con's under certain conditions for example not to hiring sex offenders (actual ones not a guy that was caught peeing in an ally) in schools, or some one who was convicted for financial fraud in banks or an investment agencies.
But unless other wise mandated (mostly sexual offenders stuff) It's up to the employer to make that decision, what right does a government has to force a private employer to fire their employees on any count?
what right does a government has to force a private employer to fire their employees
I'm perfectly fine with that following due process for the specific matter pertinent to the firing, or as part of an issued sentence or punishment for an original crime.
E.g., sexual predators (and no, not someone urinating in public) not working in seclusion with children, or those convicted of business fraud and related crimes not being officers of a company, losing accounting, actuary or similar licenses, etc.
> as part of an issued sentence or punishment for an original crime.
I think this is the key point. You have a fundamental right to work for anyone who wants to hire you. The government can take away that right (and other fundamental rights) as punishment for a crime when you are convicted. I don't see how they can take away rights that are not a part of that sentence. That would be like calling you back for another year of prison after your sentence was completed.
> If you're in the left and believe in equality, it's disgusting.
While many on the left believe that the criminal justice system has structural inequities that need to be addressed, few on the left would adhere to the position that past conviction of a crime is categorically unacceptable basis for discrimination (though they might agree that particular instances of it exceed what is warranted.)
So, I don't think this works as a blanket statement.
> If you're in the right an believe in freedom, it's disgusting.
Most on the right would not, IME, support the position that freedom cannot be restricted based on past conviction of a crime. So I don't think this works as a blanket statement either.
I don't what dimension of left-right you have, but no one that supports individual freedom would fundamentally support the idea that a government can take your business away if you hire a specific person. It's not the individual employer that chooses it, but a tyrannical force.
On the left, while supporting equal opportunities, there'd be simply no reason to support outcasting individuals, especially when many ex-cons were raised in poverty and are URM. You don't have to be like SFiscans(tax breaks for employers that hire ex-cons) to be against this.
Most on the right would not, IME, support the position that freedom cannot be restricted based on past conviction of a crime.
As someone on the right, one issue here is who is doing the restricting of freedom. One approach that strikes me as reasonable is requiring full disclosure, but the state then can't interfere in the relationship between a business and potential employee, aside from obvious exceptions like crimes of pedophilia and care of children.
In between there can be issues where someone is put in a position of trust over other's lives, like, say, a bus driver. But this sort of meat ax approach ... no, I doubt it's going to find a lot of support on the right. Certainly not from myself.
Well, I wouldn't say categorically unacceptable - if I had kids I wouldn't want them to be supervised by a child molester even if the person had completed parole, and that's far from the only troublesome corner case I can think of.
but as someone on the left, a great deal of what is taken for granted in the US penal system is categorically unacceptable to me. In my country (Ireland) and most other EU countries except the UK, people in prison are still allowed to vote in elections, for example; we consider the ideal of political self-determination so sacred that it is inalienable even if you lose your liberty.
Of course a cynical rejoinder to this is to point out the futility of voting as a political determinant and I can't really answer that other than to stand on principle. As a pragmatic matter I dunno how you expect people to reintegrate into society by formally excluding them from the annual rituals of civic participation but then most hardliners aren't interested in the rehabilitation arguments anyway. As a foreigner living in the US I can't vote anyway and I feel left out on election days; I think eliminating the franchise for people with a felony conviction is an appalling psychic injury to inflict on people (even if they never voted before going into prison) and it's one of the least defensible features of UK and US culture.
If you convince one person to change their vote from what you wouldn't have voted to what you would have, you've done twice as much good as simply casting a vote.
Is it common for jurisdictions in the U.S. to require licenses to do any kind of business? Seems pretty crazy. In the UK there are very few businesses that require licenses. Mainly ones involving alcohol or gambling.
You are not seriously going to try and claim that setting up a business is an easy thing to do in the uk. Between the VAT and accounting rules, and conforming to the government and council ordinances, it may as well be licensed. And in many cases is, transport, food, retail, and many other business types also have licence requirements ontop of the mountain of paperwork.
WA State requires a license also for this privilege.
When Do You Need a License?
Your gross income is $12,000 per year or more.
Your business is required to collect sales tax.
Your business is required to pay taxes or fees to the Department of Revenue.
You are a buyer or processor of specialty wood products.
If you answer yes to any of the above statements, then you need to register with
the DOR. If you’re a corporation, limited liability company, limited liability
partnership, a limited partnership, or one of the offshoots of these three
organizational structures, you need to register with Washington’s Secretary of
State Office prior to filing a Business License Application.
I can't say exactly how many states require them, but it's not uncommon. My impression is that it's typically stupid red tape and a source of petty revenue, rather than something that actually is denied people.
Yes, it seems like most cities (at least larger cities, but at least many of the small ones too) and a few states require business licenses for any business. Some cities wave the fee for low income folks and some will happily charge you more than you made as "business income" in some cases (Philadelphia going after folks who put ads on their blog is the one I know about, there may be more).
I think most state licensing is more limited, but still tends to cover wide professional areas and often is more trade protectionism than public benefit.
I've been wondering about that too and I live in the US.
I've often seen various places asking for "business licenses" but as far as I know there's no such thing where I live (New York State). There are licenses for certain professions and types of business of course, but you don't need a license to start a business in a field that isn't explicitly regulated.
Articles of incorporation are necessary to establish a corporation; they are separate from business licenses which are required, in many local jurisdictions, for most businesses (though a business that is a corporation will need both.)
Liability is a separate question though, you're allowed to run a business as a sole proprietor without any license if you want to (irrespective of whether or not that's a good idea).
Once upon a time "felony" meant the sort of crime that you could be executed for. In that context nearly any restriction short of death seems reasonable. But our society has pushed "felony" down to mean anything which might result in custody of a year or more. That used to mean only those sent to prison (jail != prison) would be called felons. But there again society has pushed down the punishments to the point that most "felonies" don't even result in jail time (ie drunk driving).
We can all hate lawyers and laws, but throwing around "felon" and "convict" so loosely has brought us to this unsettling situation. I can understand giving a commissioner power to have a "felon" fired or barred from certain employment, but only under the old definition of the word (murders, rapists, arsonists etc).
I'm not sure the law could be used to bar any and all employment. It may be constitutional as a 'regulation' but a total ban on any form of work would be a per se deprivation. It's akin to land use rules which can limit used but cannot forbid any and all economic use. That constitutes a taking, as banning someone from any and all work would constitute an unconstitutional exile and/or an ex poste facto increase in punishment.
Curious if you could get around this by incorporating in a different state and then employing yourself. With Clerky or any of the numerous online LLC generators, incorporation is only a few hundred bucks. Then your employer isn't subject to this clause because it's located in Delaware rather than Amherst County, VA, and anyone who employs you contracts with the corporation, so they aren't liable either.
A C corp (a la Clerky) would still be a bit of a pain because you're subject to all the regulations & double taxation of a corporation, but I believe an LLC gives you pass-through taxation with little administrative hassle.
I don't know much about Virginia law, but based on the wording here, it sounds like you probably need some kind of license to do business in Virginia even if you're incorporated in another state.
Yes, you do need a license. However, you shouldn't have to have a license in Amherst county to sell your services there unless that's your primary place of business. Much like any business owner on here shouldn't need a business license from Amherst county to sell to customers in Amherst county.
If you incorporate as a single member LLC, then the IRS doesn't usually consider you to be an employee either.
Normally I whip out my Peter...Turchin and talk about how structural-demographic theory could predict the increased marginalization of vulnerable groups as societies reach their next crisis point.
The truth of this problem however is probably more prosaic. Someone in Amherst has somehow gotten under the skin of the mayor or city council - probably refused to contribute to a campaign or hire someone's dumbass relative so now the target gets to enjoy the benefits of "civil society" or whatever half-assed rationale finds its way to the local rag.
The idea of needing a licence to run any business seems absurd to me. In Australia, you need to register for an Australian Business Number, but that's for tax purposes, and it's cheap and easy to do online. Even forming a corporation costs less than $500 and a few days waiting. (literally - it's 2 days after the government receives the application form)
There are restrictions around certain trades (electricians, doctors, etc), but they're the exception, not the rule.
One partner was the son of a local police chief, the other an executive at a state-run chemicals firm. After meeting at a dinner party, they started a company here to handle the export of the most dangerous chemicals made in China, promising “outstanding service” and “good results.”
...and the craziness that is U.S. Laws created in direct violation of the constitution continues. Stories like this make me wonder how far down the road we are from it being completely torn up and a police state being officially imposed.
Some days I read the news and can scarcely believe what I'm reading. I wouldn't believe it at all if it weren't under the Washington Post banner...
I'll cop to punching up the title of this. But I actually view it as highly significant that the law at issue forbids ex-cons from employing themselves just as it forbids other people from employing them. (Actually, it allows but doesn't require the government to prevent them from doing any of those things.) The only option left is subsistence farming. The original title is missing that. Was my title misleading? :/
The HN guidelines ask you to please use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait. Your rewritten title was arguably more misleading and more linkbaity. That's exactly the opposite of what we're looking for.
We don't let people use submission titles to editorialize. If you have a point to argue, such as that a law effectively makes ex-cons unemployable, you should argue it by commenting in the thread, where everyone is on a level playing field. Otherwise the submitter of a story would get to frame it for everyone else, a huge undue influence over the discussion.
The original ("Government officials in Amherst County, Virginia can now require employers to fire any ex-con") at 93 characters wouldn't fit HN's length limitation (80 chars).
I like your original title better ("Amherst County (VA) law: felons may neither self-employ nor be employed"). HN has a blanket policy that they will change any submission title to match the title of the submitted URL as closely as possible, except when they'd rather not. I wish they'd quit doing that and limit themselves to misleading/inflammatory/clickbait titles.
Getting the original submission title is one of my favorite things about having my own HN reader.
These sort of laws create the sort of circumstances you hear about in the news. I wish them the best of luck with their lives, pushing these sort of laws on felons who then have nothing to lose. Freedom for the win, amirite guys?
The phrase "ex-con" or "ex-convict" is well established to refer to a person who has been convicted of a crime and who has completed any sentence associated the crime of which they were convicted, distinguishing them from both those who are still serving a sentence and from those who have never been convicted of a crime.
(Its derived from the usage of the term "convict" to refer specifically to a person who is currently serving a sentence for a conviction of a crime, i.e., a prisoner or inmate.)
If "convict", the noun, had a primary definition of anyone who has ever been convicted rather than someone serving a sentence for a conviction, then, yes, you might be right that you couldn't be an "ex-convict". But that's not what the word means.
> you could be stripped of your business license, so you can’t go into business for yourself
The article of course means you can't obtain government protection for your business. You can still privately transact as much as you'd like. If you've been convicted criminally, the possibility of some direct civil liability shouldn't scare you. For instance, put your savings in bitcoin or an offshore trust and have a plan to get the fuck out of dodge to avoid debtors' prison. Obviously this isn't an ideal way to live your life, but these are our times.
Of course if the government were functioning properly, keeping a business license would be contingent upon not firing "ex-cons", since having served their time their punishment is complete. But we already know it's irreperably broken.
If you've been convicted of something, you've got a huge black mark in the various tracking/surveillance databases such as the system discussed in this article.
You're thus already disqualified from relationships that require you to be a squeaky clean perfect abstraction. Those databases showing a large debt / bankruptcy / ongoing suit / etc will not harm you nearly as much as someone who was clean, and even having to relocate to duck a judgment won't hurt you as much since you're already not benefitting from touting your identity.
I'm not saying you should deliberately attract civil suits since losing one would still be quite disruptive, but that spectre of a little-merit high-payout suit destroying your perfect life is no longer so large since you're already suffering half the damage.
> If you've been convicted of something, you've got a huge black mark in the various tracking/surveillance databases such as the system discussed in this article.
Which obviously means that you have even more to lose from further setbacks, since your options were constrained to begin with.
Not necessarily. It depends on the relative amount of opportunities that are beholden to those databases vs aren't.
You're assuming that there are very few opportunities outside of those databases, so a second event would wipe out a good part of your remaining ones. If this is your worldview, then yes your best bet is to live as a second class citizen within the system.
But I say that there are many opportunities in the world that don't require assenting to being tracked. The first event has eliminated the highest quality in-system options, so you've already been forced to look for opportunities outside of the surveillance bubble.
I would think that a punishment for a crime that includes forced destitution for life independently of the nature of the crime would be considered cruel and unusual. But the Bill of Rights doesn't seem to be taken seriously anymore either.