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

This is a straw man argument, which is also discouraged on HN. Literally no one -- besides you and the sibling comments below -- has suggested that everyone has been captured by private prisons.

Instead there are businesses all along the spectrum of those that incidentally do businesses with prisons to those that exclusively do business with prisons to those that are (private) prisons. And that doesn't even include police and sheriffs departments or politicians who benefit from prisons.

I sincerely suggest that you engage with the discourse at hand rather than dismissing it with straw manning and other logical fallacies.

Unpopular opinion (it seems): I think it is OK to some extent. Not for serious crimes (violence, murder etc.) but there's an awful lot of 'lesser crimes' reported with full names where I think subjects might deserve a clean slate or where people have some right to privacy. In the extreme case, everything court-related and all infractions could be public and subject to auto-generated news, and forever searchable: traffic fines, civil cases, neighbor complaints (either way) etc. All parts of an immutable record for everyone to look up by name. I personally think that is a violation of privacy, so it has to be balanced. Maybe the best balance is not to write the names to begin with.

In Denmark where I'm from, court cases are almost always public and the subject names are read aloud as well; however the names are not listed on the court lists or in the publicly accessible version of the verdicts. In order for the media to learn the name, a journalist has to physically go and see the trial. This already prevents automation and ensures prioritization by the media. Furthermore, most news media have a policy of only writing the subject's name after a guilty verdict has been found and even then only if the verdict was of some severity (unless it is a public person). I just checked on media outlet and their policy was to only write the name in case of a custodial sentence of at least 24 months. If it weren't for such policies, even relatively small cases would be reported with full name and be searchable forever.

If the reason he couldn't get a job was that every employer googled his name, discovered what he did, and decided not to hire him, then clearly his actions were something that most people would want to know. If it was as inconsequential as the journalist claims, then why did his actions disqualify him from employment? Without details of the case (which would likely reveal the man's name), we can't decide whether memory-holing his past was beneficial to society or not.

And that's exactly my point: People want to decide for themselves whether a person's past disqualifies them from becoming an employee, a friend, or even a lover. There are some crimes that most people are willing to overlook, especially if they happened long ago and the perpetrator has turned their life around. Nelson Mandela is an excellent example of that. But there are some crimes that most people are willing to shun someone for. The actual harm inflicted doesn't matter as much as how the actions reflect upon the person's character. For example: If you knew someone had been caught keying cars on three separate occasions, wouldn't you be a little hesitant to associate with them? The harm they did was minimal, but such actions say something about that person's psyche. Should their actions be googleable for all time? I don't know, but I know that I want to judge for myself whether those actions can be overlooked or if they're beyond the pale. I don't trust others to make that decision for me.

Most importantly, if people realize that they can't trust public information, then they will be less trusting of strangers who can't prove their bona fides. They'll revert to how people solved this problem before the internet: preferring to hire relatives, former classmates, people who go to the same church, friends of friends, relying on stereotypes, and so on. It will become harder for someone to without the right connections to get their foot in the door, and it will hurt social mobility.

1. https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2015/09/help_us_imagine_ho...