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My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

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Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#361

Post by hinkley »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #111
vincentmarle wrote: post #5

The way that ex-felons are treated in society is despicable, no wonder there's a 55% recidivism rate if you get blocked at every attempt to becoming a productive member of society. The Last Mile seems like a great program to share our tech skills and knowledge with people who really need a leg up. I will be signing up as a volunteer today.

Felon disenfranchisement is also disgustingly anti-democratic and further segregates them from society at large. If you have enough felons for them to affect the outcome, your problem isn't that they have the right to vote, it's that you're arresting too many people.

As someone with a civics background once explained to me, what you don't want are laws that inspire contempt. Contempt for one law tends to blur into contempt for The Law, and then you've got anarchy.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#362

Post by downandout »

Meph504 wrote: post #304
downandout wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see what the recidivism data on longer sentences is. There is a big difference between someone that served a 90 day sentence for something, then goes and commits a serious crime, and someone that serves 13 years for something. There is a much more significant lesson in the 13 years. Also, crime rates decrease among populations as they age. The mere fact that people who serve longer sentence…

You don't get 90 days for a felony, something that short is usually served in local lockup (city/County) and aren't typically included in these sort of stats. But there is data on people doing under 5 years, and if you compared to that you would likely be right, but don't have the data to prove it.

Many, many people get 90, 60, 30 days or even probation for felonies as part of a plea agreement. Felony simply means that the maximum sentence is over 1 year. There is even a term for it..”felony probation”.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#363

Post by sebmellen »

staticassertion wrote: post #177
sebmellen wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As am I. The point I was trying to make was that there isn't really a "path to rehabilitation" for people who have made very minor missteps online. In the case of the linked TED talk, the persecuted woman made a mistake, and was not a "career-racist". I think even accusing her of racism is a distortion of the word — she made a bad joke in bad taste. Meanwhile, there is an established, albeit broken path to rehabilita…

Oh I agree entirely that we lack paths to rehabilitation for both the (a) and (b) cases, couldn't agree more - it makes the judgment call to hire that much more difficult.

I'm glad we can agree on that.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#364

Post by INTPenis »

koiz wrote: post #60
Chernobog wrote: post #53

I was convicted for drugs and firearms in Norway. The only time it has ever come up during my many years as a programmer, was when a consulting company I worked for had the police IT service as a candidate for my next project. Since it was for the police, a background check would be required. I politely told my department head that I would not pass that, and a short summary of my case. At that time I had worked for a…

In the USA, background checks are often just part of the process. There's an entire industry built around providing the service.

No kidding. My sister went off to the states almost 20 years ago. Got a job as a teacher, she was trained for it here in Sweden.

At the time I worked at a small web hosting company, we had her personal homepage for free since she was my sis.

Suddenly she calls me from the states telling me I need to go into her website and edit out some links.

Apparently lawyers working for the school where she was applying to work had found her homepage (which she made under an alias and afaik had no references to her person) and didn't like some of the links on it.

I'm still blown away by this. The links were about certain sexual fetishes, but again, her website was under a pseudonym. I have no idea how they connected it to her. Could have been something dead simple like her using an e-mail address on the same domain, or using her pseudonym in her e-mail address on hotmail. She wasn't that careful about remaining anonymous, it was just a thing back then that people would have alter-egos online.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#365

Post by notacoward »

aero142 wrote: post #85
thelean12 wrote: post #14

There are a lot of people saying they're in favor of this type of thing. And for non-violent offenses I'd probably also be on board. But this person committed a "serious, violent crime" that sent them to prison for 13 years. Are you comfortable sitting next to someone who is capable of a "serious, violent crime"? Are there certain crimes that cross the line for you? Would you expect your employer to inform you of the…

Honestly, I'm more worried about what 13 years in prison did to the person than the original crime. We don't know what the original crime was so it is hard to say in this case. Perhaps they have some deep, anti-social personality flaw and I wouldn't want to sit next to them. I would be concerned about sitting next to an innocent person who spent 13 years in prison, though. For me, that is a root issue. How many crimi…

> I'm more worried about what 13 years in prison did to the person than the original crime.

100% this. Going to prison is a traumatic experience, and would be even in a country that had a real commitment to safe rehabilitation. In the US, it's all too often multiple traumatic experiences one after the other. Nonetheless, I think former felons absolutely deserve every chance to reintegrate. I just worry about their psychological safety when things get tense and others get combative. This is just one more reason why more people in tech need to grow the hell up and treat people around them with basic respect.

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#367

Post by Kosirich »

djsumdog wrote: post #110
koiz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, background checks are often just part of the process. There's an entire industry built around providing the service.

Readers from other countries, what is it like there? I remember when I lived in Australia, my friends told me that many crimes do not show up on background checks after 5 years. Also in Australia, the sex offender registry is confidential, and can only be checked for very specific things (jobs involving children, certain types of housing, etc.) In the US, there are ways of getting records expunged for some crimes, bu…

Croatia - it's common to ask a person applying for a position a proof issued my Ministry of Justice that they don't have an active criminal case against them but some will ask for an equivalen of background check from the Ministry of Internal Affairs ("police")

Denmark - I have a friend who was asked to provide something like a proof of not being prosecuted for a an engineering position, while another colleague who applied and for the same position wasn't asked for one. The difference between the two was the country they were from with, I'm guessing, appearance of the former one playing a role. The guy looks like a bouncer with his 1.90 height, 100 kg of muscle and a crooked nose from being an ex amateur boxer (under the appearance he is a teddy bear).

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#368

Post by didibus »

Anyone has the right to feel uneasy by the thought of a an ex-con working with them and all that. But you need to ask yourself what the alternatives are?

I remember seeing some general statistics, most crime are committed by men of a certain age range, and rarely after 30 do people commit more crimes. Some of it can be explained by hormones and life pressures.

Now there's exceptions, but you need to trust the prison system (I know that sounds hard) to figure out who is still a likely deranged individual needing to be kept locked up some more, and who is rehabilitated.

A rehabilitated person that has served its time, if not given a chance to equal opportunity afterwards, is more likely to again be put under life pressures that doesn't set them up to be law abiding. Even if they're law abiding, we still lose on good work they could do, by not giving them opportunities.

This is the things I try and remind myself of when I feel the unease. But rationally speaking, I don't see any better alternatives. The problem doesn't go away by just ignoring it so...

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#369

Post by lostcolony »

rorykoehler wrote: post #255
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #130

In Germany I was asked to provide my criminal record while working at a payment processing startup that had to obtain certain certificates. They were probably looking for crimes of a fiscal nature however, which is understandable. Second chances are second chances but security is mostly about trust. Another job at a startup in Germany that worked in less tightly controlled spaces has never asked me to produce my crim…

Theft, fraud and violence are applicable for all jobs surely.

I'm super curious - do you feel that all those crimes you mentioned should have life sentences?

'cause I mean...if not, what was the point of the jail term? Depending on perspective, it might be rehabilitative, or it might be punitive, but either way, time served should equate to a clear record, no? If not, you're either saying they need further punishment, or you don't believe that they've been rehabilitated, in which case why were they let out?

Re: My friend starts her job today, after learning to program in prison

#370

Post by tomjen3 »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #130

In Germany I was asked to provide my criminal record while working at a payment processing startup that had to obtain certain certificates. They were probably looking for crimes of a fiscal nature however, which is understandable. Second chances are second chances but security is mostly about trust. Another job at a startup in Germany that worked in less tightly controlled spaces has never asked me to produce my crim…

Hard disagree on that. As a programmer we have access to more than most accountants. How hard would it be for most programmers to put in a backdoor they could later claim was a bug?

Criminal convictions are perhaps not the best measure of trustability.

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