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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

#141

Post by betwixthewires »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #130
betwixthewires wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me ask you, do you think that white America's gun culture is partly responsible for violent crime in the US?

no because 99.99% of people aren’t walking into schools shooting people, the .01% doesn’t represent the entirety of culture… at best it represents how outliers with mental health issues don’t have access to mental health services

Well I'm glad you're intellectually consistent on that.

I don't really think that accepting that cultural trends influence behavior, including violent and/or criminal behavior, is racist. Culture is influenced by environment, and culture influences behavior. To pin all criminal behavior on culture though is incorrect IMO.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#142

Post by Nevermark »

Jobs are either:

1. Rising in impact, so employers simply have to rank candidates mercilessly, ...

Think: Creatives, White Color Workers, Executives, ...

2. ... Or becoming homogenized in order to be easily scalable and easily replaceable, so employers have no incentive not to weed mercilessly

Think: Driver, Warehouse Worker, Restaurant/Retail Chain Employees of all Kinds, Low Level Managers, ...

This is natural trend for LOCAL-OPTIMIZED action in an economic system continually optimizing for efficiency. Trust is a huge efficiency.

But while I am a fan of ever rising standards, GLOBAL OPTIMIZATION of the economy requires rising standards to be coupled with on-ramps and advancement support. So people can also efficiently rise to those higher standards.

Easily identifiable on-ramps, and self-advancement opportunities are important for those with lack of experience, and overlooked talents, but also victims of inequitable or self-inflicted history.

Acceptance of dead ends for people creates immediate local problems (unemployment, family stress), but also metastasizes into global societal problems (political instability, tribalism, crime, less capable work force, less wealthy consumer class, retirement problems, social support oversubscription, etc).

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#143

Post by Animats »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #48
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the military consider criminal records even for support jobs? Theres a very broad variety of military jobs outside of being a solider, and the military offers structure, potential long term friendships with people from different backgrounds, a long term career based on good behavior, or a launching pad into a wide variety of other post-military jobs. I know it's not glamorous work but reliable and well respected…

I think a felony disqualifies you from military service (hard to get clearance). Maybe someone else can speak on getting waivers but I've heard that the possibility is grim. And keep in mind, that in the US between prosecutor overcharging and harsh sentencing, everything is a felony. Drug convictions make up the plurality of felony cases[1]. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S...

U.S. Army Recruiting Command Fiscal Year 2019 Overview

"Qualified youth: 71% of youth do not qualify for military service because of obesity, drugs, physical and mental health problems, misconduct, and aptitude."

"Quality: 3.2% fewer waivers than FY18, with the bulk of the reduction coming from conduct waivers. Lowest percentage of conduct waivers in two decades."[1]

So, no, the U.S. military is not looking for people with criminal records. Waivers are hard to get.

[1] https://recruiting.army.mil/pao/facts_figures/

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#145

Post by LorenPechtel »

mulmen wrote: post #40
brnaftr361 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude I got dinged for a weed possession charge from my 17th year when I was 21 for a job at Kum'N'Go. I don't give a fuck what kinda logical hoops they jumped through, but it's obscene considering about a month after that I was working in a critical industry with literally millions of dollars of equipment in my hands and a high-risk environment. It doesn't make sense in so many cases, probably most and it only increa…

Ok but if I run a bank I don't want to hire Bernie Madoff, no matter how much time he served. So having the government tell me I can discriminate based on conviction for financial crimes but not drug possession more than 5 years ago seems reasonable. At least to improve the status quo.

"Drug possession" is also not monolithic to me.

I'd be *much* more leery of hiring someone convicted of possession of addictive drugs than someone convicted of possession of recreational drugs. Recreational use can be done only in appropriate situations. Addictive use likely means they come to work impaired.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#146

Post by LorenPechtel »

yuliyp wrote: post #26
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.

You'll just get discrimination based on proxies for criminal background instead (poverty, suspicious gaps in employment, zip code).

I'd like to see some of those proxies removed from the picture.

1) Employment history: Ban putting dates on a resume and in general make it a prohibited question. You worked there X years, not from YYYY to ZZZZ. The current approach is obviously looking for whether you were fired, but ends up tainting you if you're ever laid off in a bad market, or even if you simply chose non-employment activity for some reason.

2) Address likewise should be removed. Phone & e-mail is all they need.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#147

Post by LorenPechtel »

Analemma_ wrote: post #31
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.

This is not a new idea, it goes by the name "Ban the Box" ("the box" here meaning the "I have been convicted of a felony" checkbox on a job application) and has been implemented in a bunch of US states. The general consensus is that it doesn't really move the needle on employment rates for felons, while at the same time making employment prospects worse for black men because employers now just discard them from the a…

What I would like to see:

Utterly ban "have you been arrested".

The highest offense I have been convicted of is: xxxxxx

In special cases I would permit highest offense in certain categories.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#148

Post by micromacrofoot »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #139
micromacrofoot wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you might think it’s classist if you have no experience being subjected to it, it’s an incredibly pointed claim that has been used for decades… note that no one blames white “culture” when a white suprematist goes on a shooting rampage

It seems like at least part of what you are reacting to is blaming racial culture. I agree that is far too broad to be meaningful. Would you agree that part of the transgenerational cycle of poverty and crime involves family and community factors. I think this is true and spans genetic divisions. There are communities that are blighted in noneconomic ways that are difficult to address only with money.

it seems more likely that factors like continued poverty and unfair policing and incarceration rates (minorities are both stopped more frequently and punished more severely) are to blame for both violence and the resulting culture, as these are things we have actual evidence for

blaming culture and ignoring measurable factors is almost always lazy racism

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#149

Post by kingcharles »

slt2021 wrote: post #99
kingcharles wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having just done 8 years inside, I saw the split two ways: (1) a lot of people with a huge variety of undiagnosed mental health issues that made regular jobs difficult; and (2) those that had been indoctrinated since birth to believe that working a regular job was a loser path and that gaining income through crime was the only route acceptable due to peer pressure.

Would you agree that group (2) is not actually unemployed, since they dont seek employment in the first place, but rather employed full/part-time in criminal scene industry?

Well, then I guess it comes down to how you define "employment". I've never thought about that before. If I'm employed as an assassin, I guess I'm employed, even though the work I am doing is illegal. tl;dr: yes.

Re: Study finds most unemployed young men have criminal records

#150

Post by nate_meurer »

elipsey wrote: post #138
blip54321 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Those jobs require trustworthy people too. If I were running a meat processing plant, and there was: - Sexual harassment - Racism - Violence - Etc. I'd have a huge liability on my hands. Unfortunately, prison convicts would be much more likely to expose me to those types of liability. If an employee catcalls another employee, that places a lot of burden lands on the employer. This happened largely due to progre…

Yep. When I was a student I worked in a restaurant with an ex convict who described his previous job at the meat packing plant in precisely those terms. He told me it was a hard dangerous s*** job, and back of the house in the restaurant was a lot better. He said safety measures and equipment were inadequate, and some of the other guys that worked there wanted to kill him (his remarks on your other areas of concern w…

Why are you censoring yourself? If a job is a shit job, just fucking say it. Why pretend?

> his remarks on your other areas of concern would be ill suited to this forum

This isn't a kid's show. Your comment is really interesting to me, and I'd like to hear what he said about these issues.

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