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US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

theguardian.com

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Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#151

Post by ocschwar »

rqtwteye wrote: post #22
janice1999 wrote: post #2

> One in three U.S. adults has been arrested by age 23. Does that seem crazy to anyone else? I'm in Ireland and can't think of one person in my extended family and friends that has any interaction with the police beyond routine insurance/DUI checkpoints or reporting incidents like car accidents.

When I went to a boxing gym in Maryland there were a lot of young black guys. For them going to prison was totally normal thing. Often they themselves had been to prison or their relatives. Some had scars from gunshots. I can’t even imagine how it is to grow up in that environment.

I had a surreal experience riding a Greyhound bus where I was the only passenger who hadn't just gotten out of prison. They were comparing conditions in various prisons the way you and I might compare coffee shops.

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#152

Post by teachrdan »

Schiendelman wrote: post #121
FredPret wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are private prisons in the US that benefit from more prisoners. But there are many more people and organizations there that benefit from fewer prisoners. For most purposes, a country is not a singular thing.

As I've gotten farther in my career as a product manager, I have to do more and more slicing and dicing of markets to understand who I'm building something for, identify opportunity. It's been really eye-opening to start realizing just how many people refer to a collective as a unit. And how many beliefs are dependent on not inspecting that fallacious thinking.

> It's been really eye-opening to start realizing just how many people refer to a collective as a unit. And how many beliefs are dependent on not inspecting that fallacious thinking.

This is the top comment in a chain of siblings that are dogpiling on the parent for no good reason. I'm replying because I think it's a case of pointing out a distinction without difference, which is a low value response up there with "But correlation isn't causation!"

In this case there are many different groups that benefit from a higher prison population. Private prisons are perhaps the most commonly cited, but they hold a tiny percent of the total prison population.

But there are many, many private businesses that sell to prisons. Sudexo-Marriott makes millions selling services to private and public prisons. I once toured a "super max" prison in Ohio and saw that they had tens of thousands of dollars in commercial Hobart restaurant equipment.

The knee jerk response here is, "Of course a prison pays for commercial dining services and equipment! That's not surprising, it's inevitable!" But that's my point. It's inevitable that there's billions of dollars being made off the US's prison population. And that's not including industries based specifically on exploiting prisoners, like prison phone and teleconferencing services that overcharged the incarcerated and their families by billions of dollars.

There are many utterly conventional businesses that use slave labor from prisons. This is not hyperbole -- prisoners are often forced to work for $1 a day or less. They are punished with solitary confinement or even additional prison time if they refuse.

The final rebuttal would be, "Well not everyone in America benefits from a large prison population!" But if you read carefully, that's exactly what the parent comment is saying. But enough different and powerful stakeholders do benefit from a large and growing prison population that it's difficult to enact reforms to make that number smaller.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Sudexo-Marriott+prison+sales&t=ffa...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=prison+video+conferencing+business...

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=who+uses+prison+labor&atb=v...

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#154

Post by ocschwar »

janice1999 wrote: post #2

> One in three U.S. adults has been arrested by age 23. Does that seem crazy to anyone else? I'm in Ireland and can't think of one person in my extended family and friends that has any interaction with the police beyond routine insurance/DUI checkpoints or reporting incidents like car accidents.

The US isn't one country.

When you read things like this, compare the EU to the US, not Ireland to the US.

The Southern US is an archipelago of police states that regularly throw black and poor white citizens into jail on flimsy pretexts. New England, meanwhile is another country altogether.

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#156

Post by jackstraw14 »

Yeul wrote: post #82
evujumenuk wrote: post #37

I understand this is the general policy in a few places, like Germany. The general idea seems to be that it is more beneficial to a society if criminals are given a viable avenue to lead non-criminal lives again, with the alternative being people going "ah fuck it, I guess I'm a criminal now". I'm surprised at this concept spreading in the US, since the system would generally benefit from having perpetual perpetrator…

Before things like the FBI and the telegraph it was quite common for Americans to find a new life in another state. You could be married in New York but nobody in Montana would know unless they actively started an investigation. The world has become a village.

it was the main selling point of the US for quite a while.

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#157

Post by jmyeet »

evujumenuk wrote: post #37

I understand this is the general policy in a few places, like Germany. The general idea seems to be that it is more beneficial to a society if criminals are given a viable avenue to lead non-criminal lives again, with the alternative being people going "ah fuck it, I guess I'm a criminal now". I'm surprised at this concept spreading in the US, since the system would generally benefit from having perpetual perpetrator…

There's a much broader problem here: unnecessary background checks. If you're applying for a job or to rent an apartment it absolutely shouldn't matter that you vandalized something 15 years earlier.

It's likely automated systems building up these profiles too so what if you happen to just have the same name as someone who was convicted of something in a news article?

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#158

Post by azeirah »

gosub100 wrote: post #108
caymanjim wrote: post #49

[flagged]

> That stupid shit you said in some obscure forum when you were a teenager What's the first presidential election going to be like when the first candidate who was old enough to have a Facebook or myspace runs for election? Each opponent will do anything they can do disparage the 35+ year olds character with the words he uttered as a teenager. I think one of the unintentional consequences of this newspaper move will…

If you take a McLuhanistic perspective on the internet, then the internet is the nervous system of the human world. It's a medium through which information flows at unprecedented speeds (with major consequences worldwide). The nervous system is still new, and with new nervous system growth come weird sensations (pain, tingles, false alarms, weird flashes of joy).

It needs to adapt for a few more centuries.

Most of the things said on the internet are shared to be forgotten seconds later; Information has a half-life. And in a fast medium? That half life can be seconds or minutes.

It doesn't matter too much.

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#159

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

xrd wrote: post #58
irrational wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would happen to people’s perception of crime if only the crime perpetuated by the rich and powerful was reported on?

It's probably just me, but it feels like reporting on crime is very lopsided and slanted against the powerless.

It’s just you.

Re: US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'

#160

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #79
xrd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably just me, but it feels like reporting on crime is very lopsided and slanted against the powerless.

The powerless are usually the victims, not the criminals. Criminals are by definition exerting their power (usually through physical violence) over people who have even less "power." Not everything is about power dynamics, and crime rarely is. Far more often it is about selfishness.

This is just CRT nonsense.
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