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

theguardian.com

241–250 of 390 posts

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

#242

> 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.

As a nerdy, middle class, white guy, I and many of my male friends have been arrested between ages 18 - 25. Usually for drinking underage, public intoxication, or small amounts of marijuana.

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

#243

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.

> There are private prisons in the US that benefit from more prisoners. So do public prisons! Their employees — and those employee’s unions — want to make money just as much as anyone. I don’t think that public vs. private is material here.

and a lot overestimate the percentage private prison systems greatly. However, I think systems like Alabama that abuse prisoners to output widgets for corporations should be dealt with by the Feds as well. It's clearly cruel and unusual punishment. It's a complicated issue but calling prisoners "slaves" is a far left talking point that they continuously use with no nuance allowed.

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

#244

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 are enormous problems with this kind of thing though, especially when for example, a murderer is part of the establishment or is cuddled by the big established entities. There was a guy who was a motor journalist for a major Swedish newspaper (Dagens Nyheter) who stabbed a man to death while his friends prevented the man's escape, and you basically don't get to hear about. It's even been removed from the journa…

What is this journalist's name? I couldn't find any information on this, but I don't have much to go on - Dagens Nyheter being a newspaper means "Dagens Nyheter murder" surfaces a lot of results of the newspaper reporting on murders.

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

#245

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.

You see no difference between being a legal prisoner and being a captive?

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

#246
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't work well. It results in additional discrimination. The state of the art is, as I understand it, "Fair Chance employment", where the employer explicitly agrees to hire people with criminal records. We're well on our way to the majority of employers opting in, it's snowballed nicely. And it gives jobseekers a big red flag if the company doesn't have that policy.

that's not how fair chance works -- it just means the company will consider whether or not the offense(s) are relevant to the job. the employer isn't committing to hire more people with criminal records

We are saying the same thing. :)

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

#247
post #220
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article isn’t strictly talking about prisoners. In the example in the article, a kid vandalized a tombstone in a graveyard, and can’t find a job years later.

I'll be honest, I want to know more about the monument vandal. The article mentions that after graduating high school, a man "became rowdy with some friends and broke a small stone monument".[1] 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 inco…

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

#248
post #232
post #177

IRL I knew someone who was charged with child sexual abuse. He went to prison awaiting trial, but the prosecution dropped the charges before it got there. He was released and went about his life. Meanwhile his mug shot photo in the local paper was the number one google search result for his name. And then it reached syndication for other news sites as well. Ideally those news paper articles should be updated to say t…

In the Netherlands media never names suspects. But it's more of a cultural thing people just mind their own business.

To clarify, we name them partially. The first name and then the first letter of the lastname. So John Doe would be John D.

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

#249
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

> The US penal system is explicitly a continuation of the former slave system.

Penal labor is not exclusive to the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour

> It isn't coincidental that so many prisons were built on former plantation property, or that the incarceration rate of black men is so high.

32% of prisoners are Black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

56% of homicide perpetrators are Black: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...

Using homicide as indicator of general criminality because it's hard to fudge the numbers or inflate them with over-policing. Granted the correspondence is surely not perfect, but given such a parsimonious explanation, we'd need strong justification to reach for conspiratorial alternatives.

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

#250
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, it's my opinion that it's meaningless pedantry to argue involuntary servitude is not included in the definition of slavery when used in casual speech on a forum.

I don't believe there's a need to soften language to attempt to weaken the narrative of a "prison slavery system". If one is a proponent of forced labor for convicts then just say so: plenty of people will agree (and plenty will disagree).

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