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Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

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Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#311
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if made illegal, how does enforcement occur? The United States, at least, is notorious for HR being extremely opaque regarding hiring decisions. Then there's cases like Japan, where not only companies, but also landlords, will make people answer a question like: "have you ever been part of an anti-social organization or committed a crime?" If you don't answer truthfully, that is a legal reason to reject you. If…

Jesus ... that gives me a new perspective on Japan ...

The situation in the US is significantly worse, and probably numerous other countries I haven't experience with. Rather than asking if you've committed a crime, American employers/landlords will do a background check and are liable to turn you down if you've ever been arrested, even if the charges were dropped or you were found not guilty. Comparatively, the reason Japanese employers/landlords may even ask about having committed crime is because they can't find that information on their own freely. This is a fairly ridiculous criticsm, if you ask me. Nobody in any country wants to associate with criminals, often to an unfairly punitive degree, but at least in Japan you are not punished merely for being arrested. And while I don't doubt it happens, it's also far from a universal experience, despite Westerners loving to talk about Japan in broad sweeping generalizations. I have personally never been asked whether I've committed a crime.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#313
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it should be removed from consideration. Not expunged or removed from record, just removed from any decision making. The timeline for this can be based on severity with things like rape and murder never expiring from consideration. That's up to the person for the particular role. Imagine hiring a nanny and some bureaucrat telling you what prior arrest is "relevant". No thanks. I'll make that call myself.

>That's up to the person for the particular role. Imagine hiring a nanny and some bureaucrat telling you what prior arrest is "relevant". No thanks. I'll make that call myself. Thanks, but I don't want to have violent people working as taxi drivers, pdf files in childcare and fraudsters in the banking system. Especially if somebody decided to not take this information into account. Good conduct certificates are there…

> pdf files

Please don't unnecessarily censor yourself for the benefit of large social media companies.

We can say pedophile here. We should be able to say pedophile anywhere. Pre-compliance to censorship is far worse than speaking plainly about these things, especially if you are using a homophone to mean the same thing.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#314
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think stealing a pack of gum at 14 years old is a big deal, but many people have a huge problem understanding proportionality: To them, it's binary. You're either a criminal or not a criminal, and if this kid's record shows "shoplifter" until he dies, a significant number of people, including employers, will lump him into the "criminal" bucket for the rest of his life.

And what about the kids who get recruited for gang activity and do some pretty messed up stuff as kids? Should that not appear on a public record? This is where the problem lies, you essentially can only ever make it an all or nothing approach as it gets a lot harder to determine what should or shouldn't be apart of a public record. Especially since as you reflected in your comment, this becomes and opinion thing on…

I think we can at least agree that children recruited by organized crime to steal cars, break into homes, assault people, and so on, should be treated differently than a kid who stole a pack of gum from a store. Whatever the solution is, it has to take into account the seriousness of the crime, and it has to discourage this binary criminal / not criminal thinking.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#315
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>”Free to ingest and make someones crimes a permanent part of AI datasets resulting in forever-convictions? No thanks.” 1000x this. It’s one thing to have a felony for manslaughter. It’s another to have a felony for drug possession. In either case, if enough time has passed, and they have shown that they are reformed (long employment, life events, etc) then I think it should be removed from consideration. Not expunge…

> I think it should be removed from consideration. Not expunged or removed from record, just removed from any decision making. The timeline for this can be based on severity with things like rape and murder never expiring from consideration. That's up to the person for the particular role. Imagine hiring a nanny and some bureaucrat telling you what prior arrest is "relevant". No thanks. I'll make that call myself.

> I'll make that call myself.

This is why this needs to be regulated.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, why should conviction history not be a factor? I could see the argument that previous convictions could indicate a lack of commitment to no longer committing crimes.

Because we as a society decided it creates externalities we don't want to deal with. With a list of exceptions where it actually is important because risk-reward balance is too much.

We as a society have decided no such thing, it is in fact legal to refuse somebody a job for having a criminal history, and will remain so.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything should remain absolutely private until after conviction. And only released if it's in the public interest. I'd be very very strict here. I'm a bit weird here though. I basically think the criminal justice system is very harsh. Except when it comes to driving. With driving, at least in America, our laws are a joke. You can have multiple at fault accidents and keep your license. DUI, keep your license. Run i…

Arrests being a matter of public record are a check on the government's ability to make people just disappear. But the Internet's memory means that something being public at time t1 means it will also be public at all times after t1.

You can have custody information be open for query without exposing all of the circumstances, and without releasing mugshots to private sites that will extort people to have them taken down.

You can do something very simple like having a system that just lists if a person is - at that moment - in government custody. After release, there need not be an open record since the need to show if that person is currently in custody is over.

As an aside, the past few months have proven that the US government very much does not respect that reasoning. There are countless stories of people being taken and driven around for hours and questioned with no public paper trail at all.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying that it is not good if you had to hide information about yourself in order to get hired. Justice is provided by the courts.

> Justice is provided by the courts. Indeed. And as far as I know, "courts" is not an alternative spelling of "AI".

The scenario we are talking about is AI having access to court records. The courts make rulings and then the AI works off of those.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am saying that it is not good if you had to hide information about yourself in order to get hired. Justice is provided by the courts.

So you’re all for photos on job applications then? That’s information about you.

Yes, I think that could be effective. The way people dress is correlated to the group of people they associate with which influences how they think and behave. If someone properly grooms themselves or not for such a picture provides more signal for the AI to pick up on.

Re: Ministry of Justice orders deletion of the UK's largest court reporting database

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI should decide if it's still relevant or not. People should fully understand that their actions reflect their character and this should influence them to always do the right thing.

> The AI should decide That is a great recipe for systematic discrimination.

The whole goal of a hiring pipeline is to create a system to discriminate from a ton of candidates to good people to hire.
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