In SF, the jail will only accept bail from registered bail bondsmen. They will not accept bail money from the arrestee, friends of the arrestee, or family. The average rate for a bail bondsman is 10%. A common practice that a vindictive police force will use is tacking on charges that they know will not stick in order to push the bail higher (eg Felony Conspiracy to Commit a Crime can be tacked on to any crime involving more than one person regardless of its nature and will set bail at $18k minimum). My neighbor is a criminal defense attorney and I asked her about this; she said that it is common knowledge that the SF DA, police, and bondsmen are all scratching each others' backs.
An initial court date can take a few days to a week of waiting in jail, which means missing work. An innocent person -- or a person guilty of a victim-less crime -- of little means will likely lose their job as the result of one arrest if they cannot afford bail.
The other practice that is commonplace in SF and California is confiscating a phone as evidence even if there is no reason to believe the phone will have evidence. Even if a person is wrongfully arrested and the charges are dismissed, property return is only done if the District Attorney elects to cooperate. If the DA does not voluntarily request the police return your property, then you need to file a motion to obtain a hearing. The going rate is $500+ to have an attorney do this. Most people simply do not get their phones back because the time and monetary cost are too high. If you are living in an expensive city on a tight budget, this is a significant loss.
Some employers offer such a thing as group legal insurance, but that protects a privileged few and is more like a band-aid.
I think most people are against this sort of corruption when the learn of it. Reform should be a realistic goal.
I shared what I know with the hope that greater awareness will lead to more successful reform efforts -- whether that be by political candidate, proposition, or innovation.
I have not had time to do more research -- it is in my queue -- but I have wondered if there is a public data source for archived petitions and motions. Putting a nice frontend onto a search engine for property return motions by location could enable a strong-willed person to try and pursue property return on their own.
Bail bondsman play an important role too. They're on the hook for the money, so they make sure the guy shows up to court and doesn't become a fugitive. And if he does flee, they go find him. Otherwise, the police and therefore taxpayers would have to do all these things themselves.
I'm not saying this is the right system, I don't know, but if you're going to criticize it, you should at least acknowledge the reasonable arguments for it.
Losing a lot of money if you post your own bail is another big incentive to show up for court, but unlike most counties in the country, San Francisco does not allow an individual or their friends, family, or attorney to pay the bail. While there is a lot of criticism against the United States bail bonds industry, I am criticizing the specific corruption in San Francisco.
For most crimes, it does not make sense to skip town or skip a court date. If the person gets pulled over for speeding, then he has new fines and potentially new charges. If you pay $100k bail out of your own pocket for a DUI, you are not going to flee the country to avoid court. There is no need for a bondsman. Hell, there is no need for a $100k bond. The $100k bond is the result of lobbying by the insurance industry that backs bail bondsman:
"Indeed. Before ABC began lobbying, in 1990, commercial bail accounted for just 23 percent of pretrial releases, while release on recognizance accounted for 40 percent. Today, only 23 percent of those let go before trial are released on recognizance, while 49 percent must purchase commercial bail. Since 1990, average bail amounts have almost tripled for felony cases. Between 2004 and 2012, revenues of the ABC companies whose income comes almost entirely from bail increased 21 percent." (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/bail-bond-prison...)
The bigger savings to the taxpayer would be to reduce aggressive sentences and over-reaching laws. The prisoner per capita rate in the United States is the second highest in the world and 3x that of the countries with the highest rates in Europe (http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_popula...).
The police can sell property for funding. A convoluted process for recovering property increases demand for law services, so even though defense attorneys might be against the process ethically, they still stand to gain from the process financially. The DA wants to have as many power levers as possible. The courts collect fees to file a motion.
There's very little to no overtime bribing, it's rare enough to make the news. Kickbacks though, or simply fucking over someone you don't like, runs rampant.
Worse than our actual thieves. I am on the paranoid side and most Americans don't think this way as far as I know, but I feel safer walking through a bad neighborhood with a pile of cash than going by a cop. I'll most likely get mugged in the bad neighborhood but the cops will take the money and put me in jail
The active word is "should". Society didn't forgive him. He worked his butt off, impressed the right people, and is the one-in-a-million success story of life after a felony. Society as a whole hasn't changed. He changed.
One of the comments amply illustrates the meaning:
"Once a violent criminal, always a violent criminal. That part of him will always be part of him. How dare our legal system release such dangerous people back into our world. Maybe he changed, but most all of them go on to harm many more people. Too bad he wasn't killed during the robbery. I only wonder how some of his victims are coping with his violent acts, and how many other victims he harmed before he was caught."
I like how there is one sentence between 'once a violent criminal, always a violent criminal' and 'maybe he changed', if they'd been right next to each other it would have been too jarring.
Aside from that comment being absolutely repugnant, it's also a very unfortunate and limited way of thinking. Thanks for clarifying. Hang em high sentiment indeed.
It's not really the way most of those people are thinking. If the fact pattern was changed to one with more conservative valence, like an ex-con running an important trucking concern, the roles in the thread would be reversed.
debt? sounds like you want retribution.
As long as your mindset is on punishment, rather then to fix (if possible) what drove the person to such undesired behaviour, it's going to be hard to forgive. You want to lock up people because you have to, either as a WORKING deterrent, or to keep people outside jail safe.
No, I don't want retribution. I've slowly come to the belief that prison should be to keep people who cannot function in society separated from society until they can function in society. It's punishment enough for such separation, I don't agree with "hard" time.
And what's so wrong with retribution? If you cause suffering to another during their short and precious time on this world, why should you not be made to suffer as well?
This desire for retribution is a central part of the human psyche. As we have done for our other wild drives, we have tamed it with process and institutions, but we should not deny our moral intuitions. If you reject the legitimacy of moral intuition, then you'd have a hard time justifying why blackmail should be illegal, for example.
The problem for me is, if they were a violent criminal, is your conviction that they are a changed person strong enough to override your fear that they are not a changed person, or that they might revert back to their violent tendencies at a later date?
Perhaps this will help. I've been mugged at gunpoint. The robber was satisfied with his loot, and did not physically hurt me. He was never caught. He should have spent time in prison for that, and I would be willing to forgive after he'd spent his time.
This isn't that much different from what this bank robber did. He robbed at gunpoint, but didn't physically harm them.
He was 21. People calm down and mellow out as they get older; violent crime is the purview of young people. So I'm not particularly concerned about it - and all of us harbor the potential for violence under the right circumstances. In his position now I'm sure he's well aware of what he'd lose if he robbed banks again, and I seriously doubt a sane person would take such a risk.
> He was 21. People calm down and mellow out as they get older; violent crime is the purview of young people.
This is one thing that is so often overlooked. Someone who is violent at 21 and gets a long sentence doesn't come back out at age 21.
> and all of us harbor the potential for violence under the right circumstances.
My mother said she could never hurt someone, in response to some article or other on the news. I said "yes you would - if I was about to be killed by an assailant, you wouldn't hold back". She then amended her position to outside of that situation, she could never hurt someone... :)
Violence is not solely limited as the “purview” to young people. While they represent the mean, they do not own the entire curve. Your statement is a generalization.
As to other ways to avoid lifetime employment denial, a lot of places are forcing at least public sector places and many private sector employers to "Ban The Box" [1] that is to say remove the initial questions about criminal history. They are still allowed to ask at a later date, but the idea is that the people just won't be completely culled without care (which is technically against US employment law anyways).
Ban the box legislature seems to do very little, it exists in Mass but it's paired with the CORI system where the court system simply gives you the court history over to employers. I have seen a business rescind an offer from an engineer <5 days from when he was supposed to start and after he had ended employment with his previous company, over a misdemeanor on his CORI.
The first amendment concerns with the EU's right to be forgotten aren't answered yet in my book, but as long as everyone's life is tracked and passed around effortlessly via the internet it will be difficult to impossible for former criminals to maintain employment at good jobs.
Like many things that worked out in the past, such as cops being able to look up any individuals license plate, but are now incredibly cheap and easy to do because of technology, background checks are becoming onerous because they are done for _everyone_ instead of being done only when necessary
Edit: I want to add that businesses rescinding offers like this means the employee I quit can not access unemployment because they have quit their oldjob but not been "fired" from their new job. The obvious response is to no longer give two weeks notice to your old employer but then people talk and you get a reputation as a mercenary while companies look for some level of loyalty. The end result is you get fucked either way
you could have something like the rehabilitation of offenders act from the UK. After sometime old convictions are spent and don't need to be declared to potential employers, even if they ask about them.
Would you similarly feel that we should ignore the "bs 3 century old" text of the First Amendment, or how about the right to a jury trial? Or how about double jeopardy? Certainly, continental Europeans feel such notions are antiquated as they've basically abolished free speech if it ventures too far outside the Overton Window. And the English have steadily chipped away at the jury trial, and recently allowed double jeopardy.
We have a process for changing that text. A process that is intentionally difficult. I prefer we follow that democratic process than the whims of nine unaccountable men.
You might like it when you have a majority on the Supreme Court that feels your way, but it wasn't so long ago that the Lochner-era court forced a conservative and intentional misreading of the Constitution instead. That was as much a perversion as the liberal judicial activism of late. The whole point of a constitutional system is that we have a supermajoritarian process to put certain things above daily politics.
>Would you similarly feel that we should ignore the "bs 3 century old" text of the First Amendment, or how about the right to a jury trial?
I'm not an American, so I don't feel anything for the invocation of the First Amendment as some semi-holy foundational text -- or any other text for that matter.
Now, for the ideas behind the First Amendment or the jury trial, it's historical legacy is irrelevant as to whether people should continue to bear it/enforce it today. 2017 people should push what makes sense for 2017 -- regardless of the dictums of some long gone noble figures and without their weight...
>Certainly, continental Europeans feel such notions are antiquated as they've basically abolished free speech if it ventures too far outside the Overton Window.
Or we have different ideas on the matter, and we don't base ours in what some 18th century figure said or did not say. Now, our ideas could be better or worse, but the latter part is important.
>The whole point of a constitutional system is that we have a supermajoritarian process to put certain things above daily politics.
In other words -- to force certain laws some leaders felt strongly about above the easy reach of the democratic process -- which can very well be "daily", why not?
The tempers of democracy are dangerous, so we put some things beyond its reach, unless extraordinary consensus is found to change that set of things.
McCarthy and his ilk could shame people all he wanted, but they weren't able to get people thrown in prison for allegedly believing in communism, because the Constitution doesn't allow it.
At various times in history you could have gotten bills through Congress declaring people guilty and authorizing their punishment without trial. Thankfully, the Constitution doesn't allow such things.
>The tempers of democracy are dangerous, so we put some things beyond its reach, unless extraordinary consensus is found to change that set of things
I understand the notion, but who determines what those things are though? And who judges that/those persons? Who says those things that "need extraordinary consensus" to change are indeed good and should be kept difficult to change?
Slavery took a civil war to change, and it could just as well have been noted down as one of those "things beyond its reach". Would that be ok?
Or, for an recent example, that some consider a bad thing but still requires "extraordinary consensus": private gun ownership.
>McCarthy and his ilk could shame people all he wanted, but they weren't able to get people thrown in prison for allegedly believing in communism, because the Constitution doesn't allow it.
At various times in history you could have gotten bills through Congress declaring people guilty and authorizing their punishment without trial. Thankfully, the Constitution doesn't allow such things.
I'm not so sure. For the communists, for example, if they really wanted that (and merely FUD wasn't enough to thwart them) that could be achieved with some trivial technical re-definitions (e.g. from "believers in communism" to "traitors" and "collaborators with the enemy"), and few would bat an eye. Like with the Japanese-Americans during WWII.
But being able to declare people guilty without trial is usually not necessary except in the direst of dark rules -- if the decisions of trials fit the intents and prejudices of the ruling elites that's just as well. Most dictatorships for example also have trials. It's just that they make the laws and have the support of the judges.
The "right to earn a living" is a pillar of the common law tradition that hasn't gotten the respect and deference it deserves since at least the 1930s.
depends on the sense of the word. In another sense, like irregular, it would simply be a self fulfilling prophecy, ie. it's forbidden to use what can't be used, isn't in the regulation, etc.
If you appoint to the Supreme Court enough clowns willing to pretend to find their own politics between the lines of the Constitution, anything is possible.
Another example is James Kilgore, a convicted (second degree) murderer/kidnapper/activist who was on the lam and is now a professor at UIUC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kilgore
As an European the "though on crime" spirit in the USA is just the oposite to what we actually have here.
Here there are very forgiving laws, short prison sentences, very soft and polite police attitude against criminals (compared with what you experience in the USA). Prissons are well equiped and there it's relatively easy to transition to more open sentences where you only go to sleep to the prison.
A lot of money is spent in reabilitation, economic help, free university and courses in the prison, etc...
In a way, if you are a law obeying citizen you feel that you are the fish and the criminals have it their way. Very unjust, even dangerous as they are able to roam openly and prey in the innocent. We really wish for harsher laws, policing and prissons.
But the reality is that now a days is difficult to find a place in a Spanish city where you can be mugged with a knife or any other weapon. There is almost no perception of danger in the streets.
Last week I was in a dinner with a district chief in the police. He says there are some property thieves, mostly youth, but they rarely have to draw the gun, criminals may run or shout to cops, but they usually don't fight them. They know they probably are going out of the jail faster than the cop finish filling the papers, so why bother being violent?.
Most criminals are not hardened psicopaths, and with this method the system removes hate and tension from the violence spiral(I don't know if this makes sense).
Of course is far from perfect, at the end of the day some very violent killers and rapists get through this very lax system creating victims and social alarm, but the overall results are very very positive for everybody. Felons get a new oportunity, tax payers save money, citicens get to enjoy a safer city.
Talking about the gun problem in the USA (somebody was blaming guns for th violence in other comment), it seems to me that the people that is trying to ban guns are just doing the oposite of what they are trying to do, they draw more attention to guns, so more people buy them. This people surely would have ignored them if nobody recalled them the topic.
For example in Spain we have a very vigorous antibullfighting movement. But I remember perfectly how in the 80s and early 90s all the bull fighting business men were worried on how the people had stoped going to the corridas. My grandfather loved them (I dont) and he watched all of them in the tv. The plazas were half empty most of the times, and the business was dying (they even were worried about the loss of the race of toros bravos that only gets rised for corridas)
Then the antibullfighting movement gained strength and all the people that had been ignoring the corridas, started paying attention and taking a stance, some pro, some against. But the net result was a very healthy increase in the expectator figures of all thing related to bullfighting.
In a way I think it is the same reason Trump got to president, way too much free propaganda and attention from everybody even if it was negative.
As other people have mentioned, this is only strange because of our bizarre popular notions of crime and punishment in America.
First of all, we love partitioning people into good and evil sets. If we can only root out and imprison the evil people (and, btw, give all the good guys guns), there would be negligible crime.
Secondly, we believe punishment fulfills justice. Despite well documented issues in applying the death penalty equitably, or even solely to guilty people, we maintain that heinous crimes must be met with human sacrifice.
And to be honest, I think human sacrifice is literally what we believe in. When something goes wrong, we require someone to feel pain. The more permanent that pain, the better. This goes beyond crime. Look how sports players are immortalized for their blunders. Look at the mob justice of the Internet. Look at how we crack down on the vulnerable when the middle class struggles.
I agree we impose unfair lifetime constraints on former felons, but even without those this would be a remarkable turnaround. Almost everyone who clerked with him on the DC Circuit, or authored briefs the same term in the Supreme Court, or started as a professor at a top law school, carefully pursued a track that often started in high school. This guy got his degree while in prison for a “real crime” (armed robbery).
>> "First of all, we love partitioning people into good and evil sets. If we can only root out and imprison the evil people..."
Wiser men than us thought the same thing [0]:
"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
As other people have mentioned, this is only strange because of our bizarre popular notions of crime and punishment in America.
is extrapolating. This isn't weird because of notions of justice (cue soapbox), it's weird because for anyone to become a Georgetown law professor is incredible, for a convicted felon to do it is difficult to believe, it's missing the forest for the trees.
I don't read the comment that way. If we consider prison terms to be the debt to society when they are complete they should be irrelevant. This means a person's ability to become a Georgetown law professor should not change based on their criminal record. This doesn't imply that all prisoners should become Georgetown law professors.
Aside from poorly-drafted laws, committing a felony is a good signal to the rest of society, most of whom well never be convicted of a felony, that you are different in a way that makes you more likely to commit a felony worth charging. Your debts are not cleared when you've served your time, you are still a convicted felon even after you're out.
If the debt is not cleared why let the person out at all?
Why is a felony conviction a good signal for anything? We know convictions are disproportionate based on race and economic status. The executives at Equifax did a lot more damage to the American public than most drug offenders and yet they will never serve a day of time for their actions.
You can't separate poorly drafted laws from felony convictions because the conviction itself carries the consequence. If the laws are poorly drafted the consequences are unfair.
They let them out because they believe they are no longer a threat. That's different than what people call their debt, in that it is just a portion of the total debt.
If not obvious, I don't agree with that sentiment. I think prisons should be about reform more than debt or punishment. Very few people pose a real risk and a significant number of them could be reformed, if studies are to be believed.
we know convictions are disproportionate based on race and economic status.
we also know that all protected classes are equally likely to murder. The standard for guilt is the same regardless of any protected class status.
The executives at Equifax did a lot more damage to the American public than most drug offenders and yet they will never serve a day of time for their actions.
It's a sorry state of affairs that retribution is subordinated to wealth, but we can fix that with tougher laws.
> And to be honest, I think human sacrifice is literally what we believe in. When something goes wrong, we require someone to feel pain. The more permanent that pain, the better. This goes beyond crime.
I don't think it's about human sacrifice. Rather, I think it's about imposing enough of a punishment to deter other people from committing the crime. Presumably people committed the crime knowingly, being aware of the fact that the punishment may go in such a direction.
There was this well-publicized case in Canada. A man was beheaded and partially cannibalized in a Greyhound bus [1]. The killer was determined to be not criminally responsible. It was proven that he was suffering from severe mental health issues and did not understand what he was doing. He was sent to a high security mental health facility. There was no death penalty in Canada, so everyone was content for as long as he was behind bars in the facility. But when he was deemed treated in 2015 and scheduled for discharge, people on the internet lost it. They didn't care that he did not knowingly do anything wrong. They said he brutally killed someone and for that he should be punished. Some said they wouldn't mind if "an accident happened to him." Others wanted him behind bars for the rest of his life. Everyone blamed the government and the justice system for bring too soft and naive. It was sad to read the discussions. After seeing that, I have to agree with the commenter you are replying to rather than you. People want an eye for an eye.
Well, I would interpret that as "With something so horrible, people want to make sure it never, ever happens again and they don't really believe that someone who would do something like that can ever be trusted."
Compassion is one thing. Giving people a second shot at doing something heinous is another.
We don't really know how to cure more prosaic mental health issues, like depression or social anxiety. If they are wrong about him having been successfully treated, we will likely find that out the hard way: When we discover he has done it again. Only, possibly, multiple times and covered it up successfully for some time, what with being older and savvier.
I'm confused where the contradiction is. The question is why people want an eye for an eye. I was saying it's because they believe it will deter future crime. That can still be the case even if the court does not believe the person is guilty.
He cut off someone's head. To get out after seven years for beheading someone is a real luxury, you can hardly be shocked that people would find that problematic, regardless of his mental situation.
Many people who feel wronged end up growing a bloodlust and indulge in schadenfreude. This is probably due to some corruption of our animal nature. These feelings are of course hard to come to terms with, so it's hidden under the guise of "deterring other people" which is much more palatable
> And to be honest, I think human sacrifice is literally what we believe in. When something goes wrong, we require someone to feel pain. The more permanent that pain, the better. This goes beyond crime. Look how sports players are immortalized for their blunders. Look at the mob justice of the Internet. Look at how we crack down on the vulnerable when the middle class struggles.
Reminds me of René Girard[1]. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about him, but I found his thoughts quite interesting.
As other people have mentioned, this is only strange because of our bizarre popular notions of crime and punishment in America.
I believe it's more of a Calvinism thing. I mean predestination as stronger than free will. If that person is a criminal, it's shocking that he will rehab and live a productive life later. In catholic countries this wouldn't be seen as strange.
According to Calvinism, all are sinners who deserve eternal damnation and some are chosen to be given a new life and repent. So his case is not strange from a Calvinist point of view at all. Edit: Neither (in Calvinism) can one say "he was predestined to be a criminal". The blame for sin lies at the feet of the sinner. Sin is the sinner's choice. Grace, to give someone the heart to repent, is God's choice.
That's... interesting. I have no idea what you mean, but it's intriguing anyway :)
BTW, I'm not really interested in Theology or in religion for that matter. Actually it seems that protestant countries are usually richer, so I would happyly admit it's a better solution for people that can't resist being Christians.
Anyway, don't disregard what your culture looks like from outside. If there's something you can't really see is the air you breath.
Fantastic story. I noticed that he won a scholarship from the Gates Foundation; that's quite some journey, and great to see the difference a chance at redemption may offer.
Maybe this is a little churlish, but while I agree that we should say that a person that finishes out his prison sentence should be considered to have paid his debt and from then forward be on an equal footing, I think that should be equal footing. We shouldn't let our cultural love affairs with redemption narratives sway our judgments to the point where we are treating someone better for having gone to prison.
It is really really hard to become a law professor. Not only are there a huge group of lawyers that would love to become law professors, but because of the difficulty in getting social science appointments and because law professorships pay significantly better than social science appointments, there's now a huge group of Phds also vying for these spots.
Shon Hopewood went to the University of Washington law school. He may well have been the only tenure track hire that graduated from that law school in ten years. Not that its a bad school, but law and especially the law professoriat is incredibly credentialist. Yes, he got a good Court of Appeals clerkship, but I'd bet there's members of the Elect (those that had SCOTUS clerkships) on the market that didn't get tenure track offers this year, much less offers at Georgetown. Maybe you'd say, well he's going to be great in the classroom -- students will get an entirely unique perspective. I'm sure that's true, but law schools don't hire tenure track professors because they'll be good in the classroom. At best that might be a partial factor in hiring adjuncts (the primary factor being willingness to take the starvation wages they pay adjuncts).
All of which I mention just to show that this really does look like putting a finger on the scale. I grew up in this society, I'm not immune to the pull of a redemption narrative. It does speak to me, but I think when we step back and think about it we really shouldn't be favoring people that did things like commit armed robbery over those that didn't. Even if they paid their debt. Equal footing, sure, but not better.
Without formal training, he wrote a petition for certoriari that was accepted by the US Supreme Court. That's a hell of an accomplishment, and one that bespeaks an unusual level of talent. I don't think we have to see this as a finger on the scale at all.
I think that’s a big part of it. Getting a cert petition accepted puts you in a small pool of lawyers. Doing it from prison, more than once, without a SCOTUS clerkship or a stint at the SG’s office to give you insight into the unique dynamics of that process, shows some talent and also puts him in a niche that could be valuable to a university like Georgetown.
Did you actually get through the entire story? This guy got 2 cases in front of the Supreme Court WHILE IN PRISON! That in itself would be a career maker for any lawyer...he did it before he went to law school....WHILE IN PRISON!
Considering the restrictions on felons obtaining a job, a firearm, even voting, I would say this this story definitely represents the exception rather than the rule when it comes to how we treat them.
Could this be white privilege at work again? I mean this guy got 2 cases granted which seems to be quite an accomplishment in the legal world, but don't you think race had little something to do with it The guy interviewing him said, "[he] looked more like a lawyer then a bank robber". Why? Because he's white?
There's no way to know. It crossed my mind too to wonder about that. I would like to think that an African-American man, or woman!, who had done all the same things would have wound up in the same position. But I don't know that we're there yet.
The problem I have with invoking "white (or male) privilege" is that it tends to depreciate the person's accomplishment, and even to make them feel guilty for it. If they have done something to demonstrate prejudice or encourage it in others, that is fair game for criticism. Succeeding at something, in and of itself, is not, even if you think it was easier for them than it should have been.
I am also for second chances, but to offer a contrarian view, armed robbery is still a defining characteristic of his life.
We are just animals. If we are honest about it: For as easily as we can say different dogs have different temperaments--some make good playmates for children, some good for attacking people--certain people also are better suited to different roles as citizens of a civilization.
Years ago I used to actively play a popular Valve online game, pseudo-competitively. In this community developed toxic culture of harassment and demeaning comments towards one female player. I remember she would be interrupted with things such as "shut up whore." But there were those who would try to stop it, even though they would be negatively impacted by it, and harassed themselves.
Unfortunately in the years since then, I've read about this happening elsewhere. But fortunately I have seen a lot about the importance of respect and fairness towards women (and all people) in tech and online gaming.
But do we need to wait for every wrong to have a rights movement against it, to know that it's wrong?
I disagree. I think even those perpetuating this towards her were fully aware that it was wrong; they just didn't care. There are good and bad people, and it's an evolutionary advantage to us that we have evolved to care about this.
Armed robbery is not the worst thing anyone had ever done, and he deserves a second chance. I'm skeptical of why he is a Georgetown law professor.
If I take off my moral lense of the world, I have to ask myself in an age when a 75-year-old man spends 12 years in jail for 2 marijuana plants, Snowden is a criminal, and pedophiles and sexual predators either get a slap on the wrist or protected as long as they're rich, who exactly the cultural trends minimizing dastardly behavior benefits...
Did you consider the fact that his felony, or other factors caused by his incarceration, may have made him ineligible for admission into the upper-tier law schools? I'm having a bit of a hard time seeing why you feel other candidates should have been selected before Shon.. maybe he was really the best of the candidates with regards to some quality they were looking at.
>>I think when we step back and think about it we really shouldn't be favoring people that did things like commit armed robbery over those that didn't.
I think people do not understand things like adversity and redemption do to a person's psychology.
The sheer motivation and drive to beat all odds and succeed are likely to be way higher in a person like this.
It might sound unfair to you. But some forms of failure are life altering, reformative and helpful, than success can ever be.
He has a unique experience from within the system, this has some value that other lawyers don't have.
Would you want all agronomists to just have PHDs or just experience in agronomy or would you also like a farmer who then trained in agronomy in the mix?
Checkout Mindhunter, I think it's pretty BS relating it to real life it's a little cliched, but it's a fun way to think.
If I were in charge of hiring for law schools it would look very different. There'd be lots of people with practical experience. But I'm not in charge and those that are never hire anyone with practical experience for tenure track jobs. The hire people that went to Yale or Harvard Law School, clerked for a Supreme Court justice, and preferably have a Phd in some allied field.
Do you think this is the beginning of a new trend and from here forward they aren't going to hire like I outlined above?
If we want to know if there was a finger on the scale, we need to look at how things work, not how we would wish them to work.
It is difficult to do quite a few things in the US once you are convicted of a felony.
You are limited on grants, student loans, SBA loans and most programs in areas like the medical field will not even accept people with criminal backgrounds at all due to the low likelihood of finding employment post training (when there is a waiting list felons will be at the bottom).
So add on top of that the fact that most people won't hire a felon...where do you go. Difficult to find gainful employment, less chance of training and then you are limited in finding funding for a small business.
Edit: In this world to In the US
Also, housing. Having a felony can exclude you from rentals entirely. Most property management companies will not rent to felons regardless of time since last conviction.
> Having a felony can exclude you from rentals entirely
Thanks to European data protection laws at least this kind of discrimination is illegal over here.
But the rest is valid in EU too, it might not be an express "we don't hire felons"/"we don't loan to felons", but good luck trying to "cover up" a stint in jail. A few months, maybe a year tops might be excusable as "I went to India and found myself" (and still if your employer ever finds out you doctored your CV, he's eligible to fire you at an instant, even in Germany)... but anything above a year, much less a decade in prison, and you're SOL for anything but literally mowing lawns. And of course being in jail also does nothing to help your credit, quite on the contrary - lawyer bills might send you into bankruptcy too, so you're stuck with no job, no money, no credit and next to no chance to get back on your feed without serious external help - the chances are higher if you're white and speak the language, though.
There's a reason why recidivism rates are so damn high, and a massive systematic underfunding of the "after-jail-services" is a huge part of it.
If your idea is that it should be shocking that a former felon becomes a successful and lawful member of society we are in agreement.
I think it’s improbably to expect felons to write legal briefs that the SCOTUS examines and it’s also improbable to expect felons to become law professors are a prestigious law school.
Lots of lawyers will work their entire lives and never have either of those two situations.
How common should it be? The overlap between convicted felon (one extreme of crime) and Georgetown professor (do you know how hard it is to get into Georgetown law as a student?) is really, really small.
If you are saying that you wish there were more extraordinary people in the world, nobody is stopping anyone from doing that.
How many extraordinary people have had their lives ruined by being asked to conquer one too many obstacles?
This story shows that there is potential in prisoners and despite the deck being stacked against him this one person succeeded. How many others would have done the same if they received support instead of discouragement?
It's small because Georgetown law professors are the most elite of elite in society.
You could do a random sample of non-prisoners and you'd get as many potential Georgetown law professors as in prison.
I don't doubt that there are a lot of prisoners that would thrive with encouragement, but you also aren't being realistic: the people who end up prison often end up there because they made a series of very bad choices which were the result of being raised in an unfavorable environment. Some people in prison will never be rehabilitated and they certainly aren't going to became Georgetown law professors. Prison tends to select for people who aren't law school material, so the likelihood is not surprisingly very low. It's not something that can be fixed by pleading to the better angels of our nature.
Most of us do stupid things. Some of us just get caught.
I worked in detention, at a military facility. There was a sign where we went from the staff area to the secure area. It read, 'There but by the grace of God go I.' I'm not religious, but it has stuck with me all these years.
I've probably done everything the OP has done, and more. The only difference is that I wasn't caught and/or have enough wealth to not have been looked at in the first place.
If you ended up in prison from your own mistakes (whether it was breaking the law, appearing to break the law, getting caught or something else entirely), it does warrant thinking about whether the choices you made are suitable for where you want to go in life. Of course if you were partaking in civil disobedience, it's another matter and my comment here assumes we are _not_ talking about civil disobedience.
This has nothing to do with whether the law is good/fair etc.
Even if you the have right of way at an intersection, wouldn't you wait for the truck to pass if you see that it has no intention (and/or chance) of stopping to let you pass?
So you think it is ok for a person's life to be ruined by a prison sentence just because they appeared to break the law?
You're ignoring the most fundamental assumption of the American criminal justice system. The presumption of innocence.
You also miss the lesson that can be learned from the article. If prison is treated as rehabilitation criminals can change their path to go in a positive direction. What your comment supports is the idea that consequences have permanent and devastating consequences on future potential. This is an attitude that hurts everyone.
Your last paragraph makes no sense to me. Presumably the truck driver is breaking the law and should go to prison?
I did not make a judgment on any of those options. I was just saying that if one were in such a system and had that kind of an outcome, one must question one's choices.
I'll clarify again that I've not stated which side of the fence I'm on when it comes to who should go to prison and what prison's purpose is. I was just saying that as a rational being, if you end up in prison and do _not_ want to be in prison after you are out, you should do something about it and not expect that doing the same thing will not have the same result again.
As for the hypothetical truck driver, I was trying to say that, in such a situation, saying "I have right of way" and just going ahead is not going to save you from the accident. Though, at that point, it is unfair to you, it is still the safer option to let the truck pass. How much effort one is willing to put into doing something about the errant truck driver depends on the individual who's experiencing this and his/her circumstances.
You say that some prisoners will never be rehabilitated and say they won't become Georgetown law professors. This ignores the possibility that they could become something better than a prisoner. Note that the comment you replied to did not claim that all prisoners should be Georgetown law professors.
You admit that prisoners could have better outcomes with encouragement then make unfair generalizations that reinforce our alarming incarceration rate.
This is a huge cultural problem in the United States and we need to start being honest with ourselves about these biases.
Honest about what biases? My claim is it's unlikely that a prisoner will be a Georgetown law professor, which is a statistical fact.
I had an uncle die in prison, I've known people that were in and out of prison. I don't judge them on that, but there's not an insignificant number that's not really capable of reform and ended up back in jail due to their own personal issues. Some of course, do change.
I'd like a better society, too, but change is based in reality, and if reality is "biased", it's not gonna do you any good to ignore it.
We're talking past each other. I don't think anyone is making the claim that prisoners should be Georgetown law professors. The point here is that the story shows prisoners have a lot more potential than we give them credit for. If we considered the potential for redemption instead of fixating on why the person is wasted we could make the world better for everyone. The bias I am alluding to is the assumption that prisoners cannot be redeemed.
The reality is that our criminal justice system does not do a good job of rehabilitating people because it is focused on punishment.
I agree with that. We supposed to live in society where people can make mistakes, learn from them and move on. If you stole a candy at age 14 from a local store, it is surprise to label you "criminal" at age 35 no?
Just because someone did crime and did time, doesn't mean we should continue treating them like criminal.
Interesting thought experiment: What if records were sealed by default once judgement has been satisfied? Or, rather, do as much as possible within the legal system to restore the individual's previous reputation and status.
Some version of this exists for juvenile records already, because we recognize that people can grow and learn.
I could also see arguments for allowing the above for misdemeanors but not felonies.
>I could also see arguments for allowing the above for misdemeanors but not felonies.
You'd be surprised at how many petty offenses are considered felonies. Shortly after high school, a friend of mine took a stop sign and put it in his apartment. A few years later, the police came for some reason (he might have gotten robbed) and they saw the stop sign. He was arrested on a felony charge because the stop sign cost more than $500. (the second jaw drop is the stop sign company duped taxpayers at the tune of $500 a sign).
Signs are very expensive. They require special paint that has to reflect a specific amount of light. They must be of fairly exact specs, requiring proprietary fonts, and are often low volume and customized.
There is also the installation, which must conform to various specifications and is limited in placement, meaning a certain level of expertise is required.
In short, don't get caught stealing signs. They are expensive and it pisses people off. Seriously, that paint is very expensive, as is the coating over it.
That's exactly my point. Possession of the sign does not prove that it is stolen. They may be expensive but that is also not proof of wrongdoing. The police shouldn't be arresting people for possession of road signs unless there is evidence they are stolen. The price or scarcity of the sign has nothing to do with that evidence.
I haven't offered an opinion on that, only that one shouldn't be caught stealing. Official street signs will usually have a label on the rear indicating this, they may also have information on the label about where and when it was placed. It's usually a thick sticker on the back of the sign. Some areas stencil them.
> If you stole a candy at age 14 from a local store, it is surprise to label you "criminal" at age 35 no?
Where is this point coming from? If you got caught stealing candy at age 14, you're not going to become a convicted felon. NEVER. When you commit an armed robbery, I think it's fair to label someone as a former criminal.
However if you are caught at 14 with a naked picture of a 13 year old classmate on your phone, you'll become a convicted sex offender for life.
This is not at all hypothetical. I've seen estimates that 1/4 of all convicted sex offenders were themselves minors at the time of conviction, and 14 is the age at which you are most likely to become a registered sex offender. Which will for the rest of your life affect where you live, what jobs you can take, and force you to be registered on a database where your neighbors can see that you're awful but get no useful information about your crime.
As a parent of pre-teens I'm far more concerned about them being caught up in this life-destroying lottery than I am about, say, their being kidnapped if they are so unwise as to talk to strangers.
What about burglary? Grand theft auto? Stealing bikes? Starting a barfight? Serial shoplifting? Downloading a few million documents from JSTOR? Being a street pharmaceutical sales representative? [1] Missing child support payments (Jail time definitely helps with your prospects of making the next payment)?
Do all of these brand you with the mark of Cain, for the rest of your life? If so, why do we even let criminals out of prison? Haven't they served their time?
[1] One of my acquaintances went from being a drug dealer to a very successful franchise owner (I met him after he made the transition.) Prison wasn't the catalyst for him, but getting shot at by a competitor was. Would we all had been better off if he were shut off from 'good jobs' for the rest of his life?
"Funny thing, I gave up my U.S. passport to make life simpler at tax time." (from linked article)
It seems that he renounced his citizenship in order to avoid paying U.S. income taxes, so I don't think you can call him a "US citizen living overseas" anymore.
I don't think you can reasonably claim that a person who steals candy at age 14 will never be a convicted felon, especially when labels tend to stick with people and influence their later life choices and situation.
Where is the benefit to society in labeling someone a criminal for the rest of their lives? Are you arguing that prison ought to have no rehabilitating effect?
How many "exceptions" have to come to our attention before we change the rule?
Google Dwayne Betts. He is a tour-de-force. He wants to dedicate his life to helping others, but despite the life he has lived since serving his time in prison, he was nearly prevented from practicing law in the state of Connecticut.
"In conversations", he said "lawmakers will look at me and say 'you're an exception.' Yeah, well, in 2005, I wasn't. And I want to fight for that guy."
You shouldn't have to be as exemplary as Dwayne or this law professor in order to not be written-off from society.
One of the worst aspects of "conversational racism", the kind of racism which manifests itself in talking about attitudes and expression of opinions, is "but they're one of the good ones": "Oh, I don't like members of group Y, they're all crooks, but I like that person. They're one of the good ones."
It's so bad because it makes it impossible to refute blanket assertions by pointing to specific examples. The usual understanding of "the exception that proves the rule" (not any of the sensical interpretations of that saying, but the usual understanding of it) is a broader example of this: I have a blanket assertion, you disprove it by pointing to a contradictory example, and my belief in that blanket assertion gets stronger, as opposed to weaker, due to that thought-terminating cliche.
Even with a felony conviction for armed robbery, he was able to pass the character and fitness requirements for bar admission. In Washington State. Wonder how many other states would admit him.
He did attend a law school and graduate, and was admitted to the bar afterwards.
"He spent three years with the Cockles in Omaha, completing the undergraduate degree he'd begun in prison, and continuing to impress the lawyers he worked with. With their help and against all odds the University of Washington law school took a chance on him. He won a full scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and upon graduation was admitted to the bar."
Somebody who never robbed a bank did not become a Georgetown law professor.
Was he the most "qualified" candidate for the job or was he the most "interesting" candidate? Would "interesting" candidates enhance the institution/world more than a less "interesting" but more "qualified" candidate?
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Edit:
I'm not a domain expert on what makes a strong Georgetown Law Professor. It seems like he has some publications to his credit.
I did read the article, & I read his wikipedia page, & I even read some of his writings. While one needs to write well for the Supreme Court to accept a case, one also needs an interesting case to write about.
Assuming he is competent for the position, the question is compared to the competition, is he the strongest candidate? I'm curious over the selection criteria for the position & what led to Georgetown hiring him, compared to the other applicants. Was it swayed by his past experiences? Having a scholarship from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation undoubtedly helps as well.
Are you trying find some injustice here? Or are you really trying to compare what little you know of this person to the nothing you know of all the other candidates?
I have the number 7 on a card. Is that higher or lower than all the other numbers I have on cards? Seven is a pretty low number... There's gotta be a higher number on my other cards, right? Let's reason that one out. I tell you that seven is highest number amongst the cards I have. Now you'll call that into question because... seven seems pretty low to you? What do you know that I do not?
I'm just asking questions/reasoning about the selection process.
> There's gotta be a higher number on my other cards, right?
Not implying anything. Since this is an interesting case, it warrants more scrutiny. It's human nature to pay more attention to things that go against the norm.
> I tell you that seven is highest number amongst the cards I have. Now you'll call that into question because... seven seems pretty low to you?
In this case, I'm asking to see your other cards, or at least get a general sense over the calibur of other cards. Also, selecting a person/people is also not as simple as selecting a number. Many factors at play. In the video, the Georgetown staff gave Mr. Hopwood more credibility for being incarcerated as "being on the inside". I certainly can understand that.
Of course there's a question of ethics. Perhaps Mr. Hopwood is in a position to where the risk of him having some latent criminal impulse (or exceptionally poor judgement) is minimized. I don't fully understand the impact of ethical responsibilities of a Law Professor. There are certainly many unethical Law professionals & I'm not implying that Mr. Hopwood is one. However, he does have a past criminal history, which in his case he may have fully reconciled. On average, previously convicted felons commit crimes more often than the general public.
The devil is in the details. I'm sure these are all considerations in the selection process. Maybe I have some initial reservations, which encourages me to investigate more.
Having skepticism & looking more into things does not make me a bad person. Having moral outrage to somebody who asks questions is morally questionable (in this case) at best; not saying that you are an immoral person. I'll go out on a limb & posit that Mr. Hopwood would agree with me.
My skepticism about the value of your inquiry and your assumptions for what makes a qualified candidate are "moral outrage", while your skepticism about a company hiring the optimal employee for its own purposes is just healthy rationalism triggered by knowing they hired a convict?
In SF, the jail will only accept bail from registered bail bondsmen. They will not accept bail money from the arrestee, friends of the arrestee, or family. The average rate for a bail bondsman is 10%. A common practice that a vindictive police force will use is tacking on charges that they know will not stick in order to push the bail higher (eg Felony Conspiracy to Commit a Crime can be tacked on to any crime involving more than one person regardless of its nature and will set bail at $18k minimum). My neighbor is a criminal defense attorney and I asked her about this; she said that it is common knowledge that the SF DA, police, and bondsmen are all scratching each others' backs.
An initial court date can take a few days to a week of waiting in jail, which means missing work. An innocent person -- or a person guilty of a victim-less crime -- of little means will likely lose their job as the result of one arrest if they cannot afford bail.
The other practice that is commonplace in SF and California is confiscating a phone as evidence even if there is no reason to believe the phone will have evidence. Even if a person is wrongfully arrested and the charges are dismissed, property return is only done if the District Attorney elects to cooperate. If the DA does not voluntarily request the police return your property, then you need to file a motion to obtain a hearing. The going rate is $500+ to have an attorney do this. Most people simply do not get their phones back because the time and monetary cost are too high. If you are living in an expensive city on a tight budget, this is a significant loss.