Earlier quoted context omitted.
From your original comment: In fact, despite the ideas of US prison overcrowding and for profit drive conviction rates...I'd argue the opposite, that it's very likely the employer has already hired individuals who have committed various "crimes" and could but simply don't have records. So, basically, you think everyone is violent criminal scum, and are happy to only discriminate against the ones who have a record as…
Based on anything I stated how do you conclude I "think all criminals are violent scum"? I'm an attorney, have defended people accused of crimes, and I too have a criminal record, so please check your bias. What I wrote is about a hypocritical practice that hiring managers engage in (rejection out right) when the reality is other employees they have hired and even themselves have engaged in the same acts, they just d…
This is neither accurate, nor effective marketing.
For some years, I was close to someone who spent three years in prison for their political activism and was questioned under torture. For this reason, I am keenly aware that whenever a corrupt government is overthrown, the first thing that happens is all the prisoners are set free on the assumption that they are political prisoners.
An awful lot of Americans are in jail for being "the wrong kind of people." I have spent the last 5.5 years on the receiving end of ridiculous, toxic classism and sexism. It has made me keenly aware of the systemic forces that make it impossible to become the "right kind of person" for an awful lot of people whose only real crime was being born at all.
A) When the system is this fucked up, yes, society needs to find an effective, constructive means to give its victims a pass, a do-over, and let time sort out which ones will make good use of a second chance and which won't.
B) Affirming their fundamental innocence is a better marketing strategy than suggesting to employers "your firm is already full of wolves in sheep's clothing, so might as well hire more wolves."
I don't have the link handy, but I read a good piece by a white guy who talked about his epiphany about racism and part of what he said was that there were countless times in his youth that he actually broke the law, was caught by the police and basically told "Go home before you hurt yourself, son." Had he been another color, he would have gone to jail for what are merely youthful indiscretions for privileged white males.
It does not help to tell people he is just as guilty as the colored people who got arrested. It is much more effective to say they are just as innocent as him, but got shafted. It makes them more trustworthy in the eyes of most people and it is a more dignified treatment of people whose dignity is one of the victims of their crime of being born one of the wrong people.
I hope that makes some sense. I am not at my best at the moment.