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Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

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Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#61

Post by nicoburns »

WalterBright wrote: post #8
gwbas1c wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can’t just ask businesses to stop doing background checks and employ convicted felons and hope they will not embezzle funds from their new employer. The risk is too high. No, you can't. The problem is that the criminal history prevents employment for life, not just for the few years while someone is getting back on their feet after jail. For example, when I was in college, my fraternity paid our cook cash. He (…

One way around this is for them to become contractors, consultants, and other businesses.

Yes, but that's not always easy. And they shouldn't have to do this.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#62

Post by Terry_Roll »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

One of the few 501(c)3's I will give money to is an organization that helps offenders go straight when they get out of jail and I see my name on a very short list of private donors. In the 1990s I was a victim of what I would call "Domestic Terrorism", the ringleader of the group didn't go to prison for his actions against me and other people at my college but I did hear that he went to prison for drug charges not lo…

No post body was provided.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#63

Post by dahfizz »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #46
KorematsuFredt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would not work. I do not want my teenage daughter to do part time work in a business that employs a sex offender. I do not want to work with an insurance agent who engaged in a financial fraud few years ago.

You've said why you don't like it but not why it wouldn't work.

It's pretty straightforward to extrapolate from his examples: people do not want to work with nor do business with ex cons. Therefore businesses that hire lots of ex cons likely "wouldn't work" because customers and employees would be scarce.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#64

Post by dahfizz »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #29
jl6 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s only a solution if you think there aren’t any genuine trust issues in hiring people with criminal records.

That points to a major issue of the criminal justice system. You should be clear after your sentence and have repaid your debt to society. If society wants to send people to correctional facilities for life for things like theft or drug charges, then it should be honest and do that.

I don't want you in prison. I just don't want to interact with you.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#65

Post by crimthrw2022 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23
earspider wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This misses the point. There's an obvious solution: disallow employers (except in outlier cases where there are safety concerns) from using criminal background checks in hiring decisions.

I think you've missed the point. Employers have a valid reason to want to disallow those with criminal backgrounds from a large swath of jobs. This is an area where I think regulation would be helpful/necessary, in that when doing a background check that the employer needs to enter business and job scope, and then the law would define which types of criminal background would be relevant and potentially disqualifying…

IIRC some countries in Europe do this; if you are hiring for a specific job, you call some office/bureau and they say whether you can do it or not based on your record, no why/etc.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#66

Post by dahfizz »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #51
chrisseaton wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative to public conviction information? Secret trials?

In Europe there are no such things as: 1) secret trials (there are in US[1]) 2) background checks (for the majority of jobs). Also, criminal records get erased after a period of time, depending on the crime committed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

If court records are public, is there any technical reason a company could not scrape the records and perform background checks? Or is it a cultural difference that makes background checks less popular?

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#67

Post by dahfizz »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #60

This is horrifying. You have a huge number of disfranchised people, who can't normally participate in society -- they can't get a job, they can't a mate. On this path lies radicalization and violence. I'm not sure you understand how truly chilling this is. These people, with nothing to lose, absolutely nothing to lose, have easy access to weapons and ammunition. You are sitting on a very very large powder keg and it…

> These people, with nothing to lose, absolutely nothing to lose, have easy access to weapons and ammunition.

Isn't it illegal to buy a gun if you have a felony?

Putting aside the whole "they're criminals, they don't follow the law". Unless that was your point

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#68

Post by dahfizz »

earspider wrote: post #17
slt2021 wrote: post #3

They need to study deeper, why these young men engage in criminal activities in the first place, only to find themselves arrested and later ineligible for any job. Do they think that benefits from criminal activities outweigh the risks of being caught and not being able to pass any background check for entire life? First step if to stop young men from engaging in criminal behavior, to stop feeding jails with fresh bl…

You can’t just ask businesses to stop doing background checks and employ convicted felons and hope they will not embezzle funds from their new employer. The risk is too high. You can, actually. Businesses exist at the pleasure of the state and the state can fix these problems. Unfortunately, we've been run by right-wing enablers and crooks (in the sense of unethical rule-breakers, not people with criminal records) fo…

> we've been run by right-wing enablers and crooks (in the sense of unethical rule-breakers, not people with criminal records) for so long, we've forgotten that the left has been proposing workable solutions to these problems for decades.

Okay, but we've had a Democratic Senate for 10 of the last 16 years and a democratic president 9 of the last 13 years.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#69

Post by GeoAtreides »

dahfizz wrote: post #67
GeoAtreides wrote: post #60

This is horrifying. You have a huge number of disfranchised people, who can't normally participate in society -- they can't get a job, they can't a mate. On this path lies radicalization and violence. I'm not sure you understand how truly chilling this is. These people, with nothing to lose, absolutely nothing to lose, have easy access to weapons and ammunition. You are sitting on a very very large powder keg and it…

> These people, with nothing to lose, absolutely nothing to lose, have easy access to weapons and ammunition. Isn't it illegal to buy a gun if you have a felony? Putting aside the whole "they're criminals, they don't follow the law". Unless that was your point

Hardened criminals they aren't, most of them probably are convicted for having some marijuana on them. They study doesn't say all of them are felons.

And really, does it matter if they personally can't buy guns? It's the US, guns grow on trees. They probably already have a gun, gifted to them by their parents. And it's a moot point once they start organizing.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#70

Post by tyingq »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #29
jl6 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s only a solution if you think there aren’t any genuine trust issues in hiring people with criminal records.

That points to a major issue of the criminal justice system. You should be clear after your sentence and have repaid your debt to society. If society wants to send people to correctional facilities for life for things like theft or drug charges, then it should be honest and do that.

It also ignores how the criminal justice system works, especially in the US, on both ends. Money buys all sorts of sealed, adjudicated, pardoned, plea-bargained down to a misdemeanor, etc, type solutions. Lack of money makes it easy to press "accept this plea bargain or risk eons in jail" convictions on innocent people. There's also a myriad of ways to enhance charges that make a relatively minor crime sound much worse.
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