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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'

#191

Post by pessimizer »

rangestransform wrote: post #169

This sort of paternalism by “elites” who are “enlightened” and “know better than the proles” is why there is a global pushback against elitism. If people feel like they need this information to protect themselves or their businesses, however misguided, who are you to tell them otherwise?

> If people feel like they need this information to protect themselves or their businesses

The "people" you are referring to here are the "elites." Conservatives adopting left-wing rhetoric has confused everybody for some reason. The people who own everything and can keep you from working, attending school, or having a place to live are the elites.

> who are you to tell them otherwise?

The person who the information is about. It's worth making an argument as to why that person shouldn't have a say, instead of railing against the "elites."

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

#192

Post by pessimizer »

mmooss wrote: post #139

This could create an imbalance of power: It could prevent the public from knowing of the past misdeeds of the powerful. It's much different to give someone with no power an opportunity to move forward, compared to removing an essential check on people who have power. Also, it seems likely that powerful people will still have access to this data, in news databases, in the data accumulated in the profiles of marketing…

Powerful people can pay professionals to erase their crimes from the internet. You can barely find any specific information about everybody involved in the 2008 mortgage fraud, because everybody involved had it scrubbed.

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

#193

Post by [deleted] »

yuliyp wrote: post #146
UncleEntity wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, this feels like it's got to include speeding tickets in the mix to get something that high. Speeding is a civil, not criminal, infraction. You can't have the highest prison population in the world for decades and not end up with a bunch of people with criminal records.

The U.S. prison population is around 2M people. I'm not sure how that translates to 77M people with criminal records. (I'm serious about wanting to know more about these statistics and how they're generated. My brief searches trying to find where the data claimed in the linked infographics comes from got me nowhere. EDIT: I found the [National Longitudinal Survey of Youth]( https://www.bls.gov/nls/nlsy97.htm ) and as…

[deleted]

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

#194

Post by pessimizer »

smsm42 wrote: post #161
jmyeet wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure who's downvoting this because the comment is objectively correct [1][2][3]. The practice of "convict leasing" is modern day slavery. This system should be abolished or, at a minimum, the prisoners should be paid at least minimum wage so we don't have the state to pay to lock people up and then some private corporation to profit off slave labor. [1]: https://harvardpolitics.com/involuntary-servitude-how-priso…

> the prisoners should be paid at least minimum wage so we don't have the state to pay to lock people up and then some private corporation to profit off slave labor. Minimum wage is supposed to cover sustainable food, shelter, clothing and other basic physical needs (leaving aside the question whether it really does, it is the intent). The prisoner has these basic physical needs already taken care of. Therefore, it m…

> Minimum wage is supposed to cover sustainable food, shelter, clothing and other basic physical needs (leaving aside the question whether it really does, it is the intent).

You've simply made this up. This is what you think minimum wage should be, so this is what you've decided it was meant to be.

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

#195

Post by jgalt212 »

nashashmi wrote: post #127
jgalt212 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the prison slavery system. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Where is the enslavement?

Slave is sometimes also referred to as captured person or captive. An imprisoned person is a captive.

But there's no purchase or sale of a human. So where's the slavery?

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

#196

Post by worik »

cynicalkane wrote: post #46
coliveira wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> especially for low level, non violent stuff This is codeword for financial, white collar crimes. So, it is definitely a policy serving the rich.

It's generally the disadvantaged and poor who get hit for low-level, non-violent stuff.

> It's generally the disadvantaged and poor who get hit for low-level, non-violent stuff.

In my country (New Zealand) judges let off young people who look like them, regularly.

"This young man [not but almost always a man] has a great future and he should not be burdened...."

That is if they are an aspiring accountant, laywer, sports star, etcetera

If they are a young bricklayer, welder, etcetera it is tough luck

It is absolutely disgusting. No wonder so many people want to burn the whole thing down

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

#197

Post by tzs »

jmyeet wrote: post #147
krapp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The US penal system is explicitly a continuation of the former slave system. Slavery wasn't outlawed in the US, just made a monopoly franchise of the US governmen…

Not sure who's downvoting this because the comment is objectively correct [1][2][3]. The practice of "convict leasing" is modern day slavery. This system should be abolished or, at a minimum, the prisoners should be paid at least minimum wage so we don't have the state to pay to lock people up and then some private corporation to profit off slave labor. [1]: https://harvardpolitics.com/involuntary-servitude-how-priso…

I would guess it is being downvoted because while what it says about the 13th Amendment is correct it isn't really relevant to the question it was answering.

The question was whether or not US prisons use slavery. He answered the question of whether or not it would be legal for US prisons to use slavery. While is it legal, it is not mandated.

A proper answer would examine the labor requirements actually in use in US prisons, compare them to labor requirements in other first world country prisons (and yes, several other first world countries make prisoners work), define just what they mean by slavery, and then try to make the case that the differences between what the US does and what other first world countries with required prison labor do is enough to make it slavery in the US.

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

#198

Post by jgalt212 »

Brybry wrote: post #164
jgalt212 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the prison slavery system. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Where is the enslavement?

To add to sibling comments about the 13th amendment's exception clause (which is what legally allows forced prison labor[1]): forced prison labor has been a state-level ballot issue in recent years. Colorado voted to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime in 2018 (though enforcement is reportedly poor). [2][3] In other states voters have upheld forced labor[4] but sometimes it's because of…

> You can argue it's involuntary servitude instead of slavery but to most people that's a meaningless distinction.

The purchase and sale of humans, or the lack of such transactions is a meaningless distinction?

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

#199

Post by karaterobot »

I'm sympathetic to amending articles related to people who were accused of crimes they didn't commit, and were later acquitted or had those charges dropped—that's a matter of correcting the record. I disagree with destroying the historical record itself, if the expunged stories were factual accounts of real events. Those things ought to be immutable. Journalists engaged in real journalism have special protections because they have special responsibilities in society, one of which is to truthfully document history as it unfolds. If they just give up those responsibilities, people may eventually start questioning what makes them different than everybody else with a hot take on the internet.

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

#200

Post by vldmrs »

I have a good story related to the topic of discussion :)

I am the author of one site - a dictionary of the English language, which, in addition to the definition of a word from several dictionaries, shows the use of words in different contexts. One of the contexts is news - so for example for the word "window" it shows several news headlines containing the word "window".

So, about 10 years ago, I received a very rudely written email demanding that I remove a reference to a certain person from the text of a news story. The news story was about a misdemeanor that a certain person had committed. Since the email was very rudely written and since I hadn't broken any law, I just ignored it and forgot about it. Over the course of about six months, this person bombarded me with dire threats and also wrote complaints to my hosting provider. The hosting company forwarded these letters to me and asked me to look into it, but did not demand anything because no law had been broken.

One day, after many e-mails with threats of legal action, and about 6 months, I received the first normal message, in which the person asked what he should do to make me delete the information he wanted.

Here I need to mention that for all this time this person has parroted me quite a lot with his threats and I had no desire to meet him halfway.

I wrote that I would delete the necessary information as soon as I received a request from him, written in the form of a short (!) verse.

Another month or so passed, during which this person argued and tried to change my mind (instead of sending a short verse)

…

As soon as he did, I connected to the database with a smile, deleted the entry he asked for and wrote him an email wishing him good luck. I hope he is doing well now :)

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