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crime and (social) punishment

Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
I'd like to have a discussion about the social aspect of punishment. By which I mean, how society should treat/punish individuals who commit crimes. There are two ways in which I think societal punishment is most obvious, employment (firing or not hiring) and the internet (you are forever tied to the google result for your name being the crime you committed/"right to be forgotten").

But first I want to mention a few things to help define this discussion. One, there are basically two levels of conviction. One is criminal conviction (held to the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt), and the other is something I will call "social conviction", by which I mean the level at which society thinks you are guilty but can't prove it (no defined or commonly held standard). I want to talk about the appropriate punishment for both cases, but I do NOT want to talk about how to determine if someone is guilty.

For the purposes of this thread I would like to propose that we ignore how we decide if someone is guilty in the case of social conviction. It is a thread unto itself. Instead let's just assume that whatever method you would propose, 1% of all people that are determined to be guilty (social conviction) will actually be innocent. That is to say, because social conviction by necessity has a lower bar to clear than criminal conviction, we will likely have more innocents who are determined to be guilty, and we should consider those innocents, but in the context that the guilty are a far larger portion of the socially convicted than the innocents.

To get back to the topic of social punishment, lets start with employment. This covers not only being fired for committing a crime (even if that crime was not committed at work and does not pertain to anything related to work), but also being hired after having been convicted (either criminally or socially) of a crime. The question is then, when should it be ok or encouraged to fire someone for committing a crime, and when should it be ok or encouraged to not hire someone who has committed a crime. Just a few of my own thoughts to start:
  1. I think that most people would agree that, for almost any crime, the punishment of never being able to work anywhere again is too harsh. Criminals must be able to get work for them to continue to be a functioning part of society. I also think that the viewpoint of "I believe criminals should be able to get jobs, but I would never hire someone accused of sexual harassment, for any job" is incompatible. It's a freeloader problem. I want criminals to get jobs, just not working with me, preferably the should work at some shitty job (cause it's not like that also punishes the other non-criminals who already work at that shitty job). That doesn't mean that employment (firing or refusing to hire) can never be a punishment, but it does mean that when it is, it needs to be more thought through than blanket statements, and sometimes it will mean that we should all be willing to work with someone who has done something bad.
  2. Relating to the first point, I would say any job that is public facing should be a job that is open for punishment (and I would be very strict in defining a public facing job). So jobs like CEO, professional athlete, movie star, high level government employee (think SCOTUS) etc. There is no way to separate the business/product/brand, from the people in those jobs, so it is totally reasonable to say people socially convicted should be ousted from those jobs and never rehired to jobs like that.
  3. I think all other jobs should come with some level of legal protection that says you can not discriminate against someone who was socially or criminally convicted if it is reasonable to assume their past transgressions would not affect their work. This will have caveats abounding, but I think it at least starts to define my position here.

The second form of social punishment is related to "the right to be forgotten." That is, in the age of the internet, peoples transgressions are tied to them forever. This is, unequivocally, a punishment. Are there cases where we should allow people who have been socially or criminally convicted, the ability to erase their past transgressions from the public knowledge-base?

RadioLab, did a podcast about the "right to be forgotten", in which they talked about how a Cleveland newspaper had started a practice where people could submit requests to have stories about them taken down, not because they were false, but because they just wanted that part of their past to be forgotten. As a jumping off point for this discussion I will just include some details about one of the people who submitted a request:
  • They were convicted (and plead guilty) to flashing two women.
  • They served time in jail and had not repeated the offense for many years (5 or 10 I think).
  • The very first google result for their name was the story about their crime.
  • Because of the above point, they couldn't get jobs almost anywhere, their kids were harassed at school a lot, they had a hard time going out and doing anything fun for fear of social rejection.
  • I believe (could be wrong here), that the women who were flashed specifically wanted the story to remain up, and they felt it helped them cope with what happened.

For both types of punishment there will likely be differences in what should happen based on whether you are criminally convicted and serve time, or if you are socially convicted and have received little to no other punishment. I didn't really talk about that above, but it is something to keep in mind.

There's lots more here to unpack, but that is probably a fine starting point.

"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
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Posts

  • CelestialBadgerCelestialBadger Registered User regular
    If you have done something so shameful (like the flasher in the example) that it is causing you problems, why not change your name?

  • Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    If you have done something so shameful (like the flasher in the example) that it is causing you problems, why not change your name?

    Most name change laws have exceptions for things like that. The judge could very well say no. If they don't, most name change laws also require the change to be public record and in some cases published as an ad in the paper

  • evilmrhenryevilmrhenry Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    I think all other jobs should come with some level of legal protection that says you can not discriminate against someone who was socially or criminally convicted if it is reasonable to assume their past transgressions would not affect their work. This will have caveats abounding, but I think it at least starts to define my position here.

    This should probably tie into the "Ban the box" campaign, which aims to remove the "have you ever been convicted of a crime" box from most employment forms. (Which also ties into the racial disparity in arrest/conviction rates, but what doesn't?)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box

    In general, the way to break the freeloader problem (aside from implementing a basic income) would be to only have relevant crimes show up on a background check. (And also make it so that counts as due diligence in hiring.)

    Social consequences are a different matter, but those are only really an issue if it managed to make the news, and mostly affects public-facing positions anyway.

    EDIT: I would strongly recommend reading up on the effects of "ban the box" on racial hiring practices. It does create problems in this area, which need to be addressed.

    evilmrhenry on
  • evilmrhenryevilmrhenry Registered User regular
    A separate path is the proposed AB-1076 bill in California (and a similar law in Pennsylvania) that wipes criminal records clean after a period of time without reoffending. While this is technically available now, it takes time and money to do so. This does so automatically.
    https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-08-27/clean-slate-laws-criminal-justice-reform-california

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.

    jungleroomx on
  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    Imagine a web scraping algorithm that used natural language processing to log all published social offenses, local or national, that employers could audit as compared to the imperfect nature of a google search. Once that sort of system gets going, banning the box, wiping criminal records, and the right to be forgotten will be almost meaningless. As long as there is a demand for such things, they will exist in some form or another.

    As publicity becomes more and more decentralized - as is already happening in a big way - every job becomes a public facing job, at least every job over minimum wage. A legal protection against not hiring someone who was socially or criminally convicted is pretty much not letting employers judge a person's character. Any employer would rather make their jobs as public as possible if it means skirting this restriction.

    I think at some point in the future, there will be a social accountability bubble - there will be so much information to process that we will become overly reliant on automation to perform social judgment, and it will either be hijacked or someone will just go full moneyball and hire a boatload of morally onerous people and profit extremely from their cheaper talents. Maybe they'll do so privately and create a shadow cabal of employment that would be protected by these very laws that are being proposed.

    Either that, or people just stop violating the social contract out of respect for the increased transparency and global power of social retaliation. That could also happen, but if you show mercy to these people with these proposals, it could be said that you are sabotaging this outcome in the ways I can imagine and the ways I can't. Either buy into the social movement that's going on, or don't - a half measure that doesn't account for our final evolution will only confuse things.

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
    Paladin wrote: »
    Imagine a web scraping algorithm that used natural language processing to log all published social offenses, local or national, that employers could audit as compared to the imperfect nature of a google search. Once that sort of system gets going, banning the box, wiping criminal records, and the right to be forgotten will be almost meaningless. As long as there is a demand for such things, they will exist in some form or another.

    As publicity becomes more and more decentralized - as is already happening in a big way - every job becomes a public facing job, at least every job over minimum wage. A legal protection against not hiring someone who was socially or criminally convicted is pretty much not letting employers judge a person's character. Any employer would rather make their jobs as public as possible if it means skirting this restriction.

    I think at some point in the future, there will be a social accountability bubble - there will be so much information to process that we will become overly reliant on automation to perform social judgment, and it will either be hijacked or someone will just go full moneyball and hire a boatload of morally onerous people and profit extremely from their cheaper talents. Maybe they'll do so privately and create a shadow cabal of employment that would be protected by these very laws that are being proposed.

    Either that, or people just stop violating the social contract out of respect for the increased transparency and global power of social retaliation. That could also happen, but if you show mercy to these people with these proposals, it could be said that you are sabotaging this outcome in the ways I can imagine and the ways I can't. Either buy into the social movement that's going on, or don't - a half measure that doesn't account for our final evolution will only confuse things.

    Of course we would all prefer to not hire someone with a criminal background. Which is why the regulation against it is so important.

    And I disagree that any regulations would be pointless or toothless. While I’m not suggesting making criminal backgrounds a protected class, I think there has been relative success improving discrimination against protected classes. Which isn’t to say it never happens, but the laws do make things better. Similar laws could likely be used to help with criminal backgrounds.

    "The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    Imagine a web scraping algorithm that used natural language processing to log all published social offenses, local or national, that employers could audit as compared to the imperfect nature of a google search. Once that sort of system gets going, banning the box, wiping criminal records, and the right to be forgotten will be almost meaningless. As long as there is a demand for such things, they will exist in some form or another.

    As publicity becomes more and more decentralized - as is already happening in a big way - every job becomes a public facing job, at least every job over minimum wage. A legal protection against not hiring someone who was socially or criminally convicted is pretty much not letting employers judge a person's character. Any employer would rather make their jobs as public as possible if it means skirting this restriction.

    I think at some point in the future, there will be a social accountability bubble - there will be so much information to process that we will become overly reliant on automation to perform social judgment, and it will either be hijacked or someone will just go full moneyball and hire a boatload of morally onerous people and profit extremely from their cheaper talents. Maybe they'll do so privately and create a shadow cabal of employment that would be protected by these very laws that are being proposed.

    Either that, or people just stop violating the social contract out of respect for the increased transparency and global power of social retaliation. That could also happen, but if you show mercy to these people with these proposals, it could be said that you are sabotaging this outcome in the ways I can imagine and the ways I can't. Either buy into the social movement that's going on, or don't - a half measure that doesn't account for our final evolution will only confuse things.

    Of course we would all prefer to not hire someone with a criminal background. Which is why the regulation against it is so important.

    And I disagree that any regulations would be pointless or toothless. While I’m not suggesting making criminal backgrounds a protected class, I think there has been relative success improving discrimination against protected classes. Which isn’t to say it never happens, but the laws do make things better. Similar laws could likely be used to help with criminal backgrounds.

    If you conflate people with criminal backgrounds and social offenders, you will be facing bipartisan opposition. This will make it extremely hard to move forward. If you're only talking about those with a criminal record, that makes things easier.

    You are right regarding the status quo. But I predict that it won't take much more development of machine learning in the field of HR before my scenario supplants yours. At that point, all the current laws that can work now suddenly won't.

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.


    I agree that there is a balance that is tough to find.

    But I don’t think that firing anyone accused of wrong doing (sexual or otherwise) is a necessity. Nor am I saying no one should ever be fired. I think the severity of the crime, and the proximity to work, should factor heavily in the decision.

    But mostly I am against blanket statements like “I will never hire someone accused of X.”

    "The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    There's also the issue of what we think happens with social punishment versus what actually happens. This was an interesting thread on the matter by a doctoral candidate who is researching sexual violence:



    I recommend reading the whole thing, but the short version is that there is a massive gulf between what we think happens, versus what does happen, at least in the case of sexual violence. This was the one I felt was most chilling:

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • evilmrhenryevilmrhenry Registered User regular
    Paladin wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    Imagine a web scraping algorithm that used natural language processing to log all published social offenses, local or national, that employers could audit as compared to the imperfect nature of a google search. Once that sort of system gets going, banning the box, wiping criminal records, and the right to be forgotten will be almost meaningless. As long as there is a demand for such things, they will exist in some form or another.

    As publicity becomes more and more decentralized - as is already happening in a big way - every job becomes a public facing job, at least every job over minimum wage. A legal protection against not hiring someone who was socially or criminally convicted is pretty much not letting employers judge a person's character. Any employer would rather make their jobs as public as possible if it means skirting this restriction.

    I think at some point in the future, there will be a social accountability bubble - there will be so much information to process that we will become overly reliant on automation to perform social judgment, and it will either be hijacked or someone will just go full moneyball and hire a boatload of morally onerous people and profit extremely from their cheaper talents. Maybe they'll do so privately and create a shadow cabal of employment that would be protected by these very laws that are being proposed.

    Either that, or people just stop violating the social contract out of respect for the increased transparency and global power of social retaliation. That could also happen, but if you show mercy to these people with these proposals, it could be said that you are sabotaging this outcome in the ways I can imagine and the ways I can't. Either buy into the social movement that's going on, or don't - a half measure that doesn't account for our final evolution will only confuse things.

    Of course we would all prefer to not hire someone with a criminal background. Which is why the regulation against it is so important.

    And I disagree that any regulations would be pointless or toothless. While I’m not suggesting making criminal backgrounds a protected class, I think there has been relative success improving discrimination against protected classes. Which isn’t to say it never happens, but the laws do make things better. Similar laws could likely be used to help with criminal backgrounds.

    If you conflate people with criminal backgrounds and social offenders, you will be facing bipartisan opposition. This will make it extremely hard to move forward. If you're only talking about those with a criminal record, that makes things easier.

    You are right regarding the status quo. But I predict that it won't take much more development of machine learning in the field of HR before my scenario supplants yours. At that point, all the current laws that can work now suddenly won't.

    On the other hand, machine learning is "imprecise" at the best of times, which makes use of this system extremely vulnerable to lawsuits. (Consider: You didn't get hired because the system found out you went on a racist tirade on Twitter...well, someone with your name did that...well, not your exact name. And that's before the trolls start creating fake accounts to keep people they dislike from getting jobs.) A lot of the hiring process in competent companies is in place to avoid getting the company sued into oblivion, and the use of this system would not help.

  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    Paladin wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    Imagine a web scraping algorithm that used natural language processing to log all published social offenses, local or national, that employers could audit as compared to the imperfect nature of a google search. Once that sort of system gets going, banning the box, wiping criminal records, and the right to be forgotten will be almost meaningless. As long as there is a demand for such things, they will exist in some form or another.

    As publicity becomes more and more decentralized - as is already happening in a big way - every job becomes a public facing job, at least every job over minimum wage. A legal protection against not hiring someone who was socially or criminally convicted is pretty much not letting employers judge a person's character. Any employer would rather make their jobs as public as possible if it means skirting this restriction.

    I think at some point in the future, there will be a social accountability bubble - there will be so much information to process that we will become overly reliant on automation to perform social judgment, and it will either be hijacked or someone will just go full moneyball and hire a boatload of morally onerous people and profit extremely from their cheaper talents. Maybe they'll do so privately and create a shadow cabal of employment that would be protected by these very laws that are being proposed.

    Either that, or people just stop violating the social contract out of respect for the increased transparency and global power of social retaliation. That could also happen, but if you show mercy to these people with these proposals, it could be said that you are sabotaging this outcome in the ways I can imagine and the ways I can't. Either buy into the social movement that's going on, or don't - a half measure that doesn't account for our final evolution will only confuse things.

    Of course we would all prefer to not hire someone with a criminal background. Which is why the regulation against it is so important.

    And I disagree that any regulations would be pointless or toothless. While I’m not suggesting making criminal backgrounds a protected class, I think there has been relative success improving discrimination against protected classes. Which isn’t to say it never happens, but the laws do make things better. Similar laws could likely be used to help with criminal backgrounds.

    If you conflate people with criminal backgrounds and social offenders, you will be facing bipartisan opposition. This will make it extremely hard to move forward. If you're only talking about those with a criminal record, that makes things easier.

    You are right regarding the status quo. But I predict that it won't take much more development of machine learning in the field of HR before my scenario supplants yours. At that point, all the current laws that can work now suddenly won't.

    On the other hand, machine learning is "imprecise" at the best of times, which makes use of this system extremely vulnerable to lawsuits. (Consider: You didn't get hired because the system found out you went on a racist tirade on Twitter...well, someone with your name did that...well, not your exact name. And that's before the trolls start creating fake accounts to keep people they dislike from getting jobs.) A lot of the hiring process in competent companies is in place to avoid getting the company sued into oblivion, and the use of this system would not help.

    Companies also get a lot of flak for hiring the wrong person in the eyes of society, which may outweigh the scenario you propose (which is currently relevant and has not triggered a bunch of lawsuits). In any case, false positives can be handled by quality control. The underlying issue is a 100% sensitive screening tool robust to data control efforts.

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    There's also the issue of what we think happens with social punishment versus what actually happens. This was an interesting thread on the matter by a doctoral candidate who is researching sexual violence:



    I recommend reading the whole thing, but the short version is that there is a massive gulf between what we think happens, versus what does happen, at least in the case of sexual violence. This was the one I felt was most chilling:


    Yeah, I mean kind of the point of the MeToo movement was to highlight how ridiculously often sexual assault crimes go unpunished, with victims bearing all of the social ill will.

    But it’s not clear to me where social punishment fits in. It doesn’t seem like society would benefit from limiting anyone’s education. Were there a way to limit the risk of re-offending (say by forcing them to school remotely or something), would it not be better to make sure both victim and criminal still got an education?

    If risk minimization is infeesible, then I don’t know. I mean it’s not like they stop existing if they are expelled. So they will still have opportunities to reoffend.

    Although I guess you would hope the more bad outcomes they have (get fired, expelled, etc), the more likely they would be to stop.

    Jebus314 on
    "The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    It's not clear to me that social punishment only punishes 1% more innocent people, or even a minority of innocent people.
    Without knowing how many innocent people are punished by things such as malicious rumours pushed by bad actors, I'd be hesitant to make any generalisations on that at all.
    If we're talking something more specific, like #metoo, then I'm happier taking about specifics, knowing that dishonesty is far less likely.

    And on that, I would not want anyone who has abused a position of power to have a job in a position of power unless that person can demonstrate that they've changed.
    Which is to say, that they never work in a position of power again.

  • IncenjucarIncenjucar VChatter Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    People are frequently socially punished by not being corrupt and complicit with harmful groups.

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    There's also the issue of what we think happens with social punishment versus what actually happens. This was an interesting thread on the matter by a doctoral candidate who is researching sexual violence:



    I recommend reading the whole thing, but the short version is that there is a massive gulf between what we think happens, versus what does happen, at least in the case of sexual violence. This was the one I felt was most chilling:


    Yeah, I mean kind of the point of the MeToo movement was to highlight how ridiculously often sexual assault crimes go unpunished, with victims bearing all of the social ill will.

    But it’s not clear to me where social punishment fits in. It doesn’t seem like society would benefit from limiting anyone’s education. Were there a way to limit the risk of re-offending (say by forcing them to school remotely or something), would it not be better to make sure both victim and criminal still got an education?

    If risk minimization is infeesible, then I don’t know. I mean it’s not like they stop existing if they are expelled. So they will still have opportunities to reoffend.

    Although I guess you would hope the more bad outcomes they have (get fired, expelled, etc), the more likely they would be to stop.

    The woman he assaulted had to drop out of school, because the trauma of not just the assault, but the school basically doing nothing (not only did they not rule that he assaulted her until he graduated, but notified him of the ruling at the same time as they extended him an invitation to graduate school) made it such that she couldn't even look at the school logo. Through no fault of her own, her education was ruined.

    And we're supposed to be concerned about the impact on him? You mentioned society doesn't benefit from limiting anyone's education, without any acknowledgement that his victim's education was profoundly limited. This is the whole problem that the researcher was trying to highlight.

    I believe in restorative justice, but as part of that, I also believe that the first step must be contrition. And by that, I mean that the perpetrator must acknowledge and accept the harm done by their actions, and their own culpability in the matter.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    I think all other jobs should come with some level of legal protection that says you can not discriminate against someone who was socially or criminally convicted if it is reasonable to assume their past transgressions would not affect their work. This will have caveats abounding, but I think it at least starts to define my position here.

    This should probably tie into the "Ban the box" campaign, which aims to remove the "have you ever been convicted of a crime" box from most employment forms. (Which also ties into the racial disparity in arrest/conviction rates, but what doesn't?)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box

    In general, the way to break the freeloader problem (aside from implementing a basic income) would be to only have relevant crimes show up on a background check. (And also make it so that counts as due diligence in hiring.)

    Social consequences are a different matter, but those are only really an issue if it managed to make the news, and mostly affects public-facing positions anyway.

    EDIT: I would strongly recommend reading up on the effects of "ban the box" on racial hiring practices. It does create problems in this area, which need to be addressed.

    Do y'all not have a pardon process?

    Up here once you've served out your sentence and met some other criteria you can apply to have your record hidden from these kind of searches:
    https://www.canada.ca/en/parole-board/services/record-suspensions/what-is-a-record-suspension.html

    This kind of thing (I doubt it's perfect and couldn't be improved) are an important part of the process.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.

    It seems like one has to ask the question: If you've served out your sentence, isn't it over by definition? Isn't that the point of a crime having a length of punishment? That it ends and one is considered to have paid for the crime now and it's all back to normal?

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    shryke wrote: »
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.

    It seems like one has to ask the question: If you've served out your sentence, isn't it over by definition? Isn't that the point of a crime having a length of punishment? That it ends and one is considered to have paid for the crime now and it's all back to normal?

    It should be, yes. Especially if someone did a stupid thing and never did it again.

    Not everyone is Harvey Weinstein

    jungleroomx on
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.

    It seems like one has to ask the question: If you've served out your sentence, isn't it over by definition? Isn't that the point of a crime having a length of punishment? That it ends and one is considered to have paid for the crime now and it's all back to normal?

    It should be, yes. Especially if someone did a stupid thing and never did it again.

    Not everyone is Harvey Weinstein

    Yes, but on the flip side, we should be treating Harvey Weinstein like, well...Harvey Weinstein. Which has been the problem in the past.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • LoserForHireXLoserForHireX Philosopher King The AcademyRegistered User regular
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.

    The bolded is a right that people have? I have a right to feel safe and that justice was rendered? So until I do feel safe what, the system needs to keep restricting the liberty of the person who was making me feel unsafe?

    Since we are inclined to talk about things in terms of rights, it might be helpful to get clear on what it is that something being a right means. Or rather, the various things that it can mean.

    It might mean that no one is allowed to interfere with me in using what I have a right to (this is like the right to free speech)
    That I can make a claim on someone else so that I can get something (like what the right to healthcare would be, a right that lets me claim the healthcare that is entitled to me)

    I have a hard time saying that a victim has a right to feel a certain way. Largely because they just might not be able to, at least not without significant theraputic intervention. Someone who has been the victim of a sexual assault just might not be capable of feeling safe and thus how should we think about that right?

    In general I think that social punishment is bad and that is generally because there is no formality to it. It's highly informal. I prefer codified legal punishment (though maybe punishment isn't the point really at all?), because I want rules that can be understood and utilized. Social punishment seems by it's very nature to be informal and thus it doesn't allow for a systematizing.

    "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
    "We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
  • evilmrhenryevilmrhenry Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    I think all other jobs should come with some level of legal protection that says you can not discriminate against someone who was socially or criminally convicted if it is reasonable to assume their past transgressions would not affect their work. This will have caveats abounding, but I think it at least starts to define my position here.

    This should probably tie into the "Ban the box" campaign, which aims to remove the "have you ever been convicted of a crime" box from most employment forms. (Which also ties into the racial disparity in arrest/conviction rates, but what doesn't?)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box

    In general, the way to break the freeloader problem (aside from implementing a basic income) would be to only have relevant crimes show up on a background check. (And also make it so that counts as due diligence in hiring.)

    Social consequences are a different matter, but those are only really an issue if it managed to make the news, and mostly affects public-facing positions anyway.

    EDIT: I would strongly recommend reading up on the effects of "ban the box" on racial hiring practices. It does create problems in this area, which need to be addressed.

    Do y'all not have a pardon process?

    Up here once you've served out your sentence and met some other criteria you can apply to have your record hidden from these kind of searches:
    https://www.canada.ca/en/parole-board/services/record-suspensions/what-is-a-record-suspension.html

    This kind of thing (I doubt it's perfect and couldn't be improved) are an important part of the process.

    We do, but it sucks. It's not automatic, some people don't even know it's an option, and it costs significant money in order to get a lawyer who can navigate the process. In some states, this process only really works well if you're white. By making it automatic, we remove the financial barriers, and ensure that one mistake doesn't ruin your life.

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.

    It seems like one has to ask the question: If you've served out your sentence, isn't it over by definition? Isn't that the point of a crime having a length of punishment? That it ends and one is considered to have paid for the crime now and it's all back to normal?

    It should be, yes. Especially if someone did a stupid thing and never did it again.

    Not everyone is Harvey Weinstein

    Yes, but on the flip side, we should be treating Harvey Weinstein like, well...Harvey Weinstein. Which has been the problem in the past.

    Harvey Weinstein is not really applicable to the topic here because he's never actually been punished for his crimes.

  • PaladinPaladin Registered User regular
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.

    The bolded is a right that people have? I have a right to feel safe and that justice was rendered? So until I do feel safe what, the system needs to keep restricting the liberty of the person who was making me feel unsafe?

    Since we are inclined to talk about things in terms of rights, it might be helpful to get clear on what it is that something being a right means. Or rather, the various things that it can mean.

    It might mean that no one is allowed to interfere with me in using what I have a right to (this is like the right to free speech)
    That I can make a claim on someone else so that I can get something (like what the right to healthcare would be, a right that lets me claim the healthcare that is entitled to me)

    I have a hard time saying that a victim has a right to feel a certain way. Largely because they just might not be able to, at least not without significant theraputic intervention. Someone who has been the victim of a sexual assault just might not be capable of feeling safe and thus how should we think about that right?

    In general I think that social punishment is bad and that is generally because there is no formality to it. It's highly informal. I prefer codified legal punishment (though maybe punishment isn't the point really at all?), because I want rules that can be understood and utilized. Social punishment seems by it's very nature to be informal and thus it doesn't allow for a systematizing.

    You can have social punishment with a codified rule set, if you can imagine an agreed upon extrajudicial punishment process akin to a religious group or public order.

    Marty: The future, it's where you're going?
    Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    We should not make the mistake of conflating society's treatment of convicted felons with concerns over "cancel culture."

  • HefflingHeffling No Pic EverRegistered User regular
    This is a well written post on a very complicated subject, and I applaud you for making the effort. Because of how complicated this is, my response to your statements and own thoughts are going to result in a rather long post.
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    I'd like to have a discussion about the social aspect of punishment. By which I mean, how society should treat/punish individuals who commit crimes. There are two ways in which I think societal punishment is most obvious, employment (firing or not hiring) and the internet (you are forever tied to the google result for your name being the crime you committed/"right to be forgotten").

    I think that there is an underlying point that needs to be addressed before discussing the current impacts, and that is should the focus of our criminal system be on punishment or should it be on rehabilitation? Because the answer to this question will drive the answers to all of the topics you have raised.

    If the answer is that the purpose of our criminal system is to punish criminals, then the impacts we see such as barriers to meaningful employment and a permanent record make sense. There is a belief in the US (that I do not share) that criminals should be punished beyond any time served in prison. This belief results in things like making it illegal for a criminal whom has served their sentence to own a firearm, barriers to apartment rental, and in many states to be allowed to vote. Steps like the above are purposefully made to exclude the former criminal from society, regardless of time served. For many, making one mistake has destroyed their life and possibly the lives of their family as well.

    And this leads to recidivism, because if the former criminal cannot legally provide for themselves or their family, then they must turn to illegal means of doing so. This is exasperated by the privatization of the prison industry, as private prisons need prisoners to stay open and are in the perfect position to ensure that people are forced back into a life of crime.

    Racism plays a huge part in this as well. Because criminals are treated like second class citizens, racist police policies are used to turn minorities into second class citizens as well. For example in Ferguson, MO, the recidivism rate is was several times the US average due to policies that all but made it illegal to be African American in a community that was almost 80% African American.

    We need to turn our efforts towards prisoner rehabilitation and work to introduce training, therapy, and other items needed to have productive members of society exit prisons, rather than desperate poor with few options.
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    But first I want to mention a few things to help define this discussion. One, there are basically two levels of conviction. One is criminal conviction (held to the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt), and the other is something I will call "social conviction", by which I mean the level at which society thinks you are guilty but can't prove it (no defined or commonly held standard). I want to talk about the appropriate punishment for both cases, but I do NOT want to talk about how to determine if someone is guilty.

    I am leery of talking about social conviction because social standing plays a HUGE role in social conviction. O.J. Simpson, for example, while not worth what he once was still has a net worth in the millions. And Jeffrey Epstein was able to continue being a predator of underage girls even after a conviction for that exact crime. If you or I were just accused of a crime one tenth the scale of what Epstein was, it would cause our lives to completely collapse.
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    For the purposes of this thread I would like to propose that we ignore how we decide if someone is guilty in the case of social conviction. It is a thread unto itself. Instead let's just assume that whatever method you would propose, 1% of all people that are determined to be guilty (social conviction) will actually be innocent. That is to say, because social conviction by necessity has a lower bar to clear than criminal conviction, we will likely have more innocents who are determined to be guilty, and we should consider those innocents, but in the context that the guilty are a far larger portion of the socially convicted than the innocents.

    Do we have that many, though? Our criminal system is designed specifically to protect the innocent, so that we would rather release an almost certainly guilty person (O.J.) rather than potentially incarcerate an innocent person. Of course, this is for cases where the criminal system isn't perverted as in Ferguson.
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    To get back to the topic of social punishment, lets start with employment. This covers not only being fired for committing a crime (even if that crime was not committed at work and does not pertain to anything related to work), but also being hired after having been convicted (either criminally or socially) of a crime. The question is then, when should it be ok or encouraged to fire someone for committing a crime, and when should it be ok or encouraged to not hire someone who has committed a crime. Just a few of my own thoughts to start:
    1. I think that most people would agree that, for almost any crime, the punishment of never being able to work anywhere again is too harsh. Criminals must be able to get work for them to continue to be a functioning part of society. I also think that the viewpoint of "I believe criminals should be able to get jobs, but I would never hire someone accused of sexual harassment, for any job" is incompatible. It's a freeloader problem. I want criminals to get jobs, just not working with me, preferably the should work at some shitty job (cause it's not like that also punishes the other non-criminals who already work at that shitty job). That doesn't mean that employment (firing or refusing to hire) can never be a punishment, but it does mean that when it is, it needs to be more thought through than blanket statements, and sometimes it will mean that we should all be willing to work with someone who has done something bad.
    2. Relating to the first point, I would say any job that is public facing should be a job that is open for punishment (and I would be very strict in defining a public facing job). So jobs like CEO, professional athlete, movie star, high level government employee (think SCOTUS) etc. There is no way to separate the business/product/brand, from the people in those jobs, so it is totally reasonable to say people socially convicted should be ousted from those jobs and never rehired to jobs like that.
    3. I think all other jobs should come with some level of legal protection that says you can not discriminate against someone who was socially or criminally convicted if it is reasonable to assume their past transgressions would not affect their work. This will have caveats abounding, but I think it at least starts to define my position here.

    1) I think that criminals should receive training while in jail so they can pick up a decently paying job once out of prison. Reducing recidivism would have huge impacts on our productivity as a society. Criminals will never be able to dig out of the recidivism hole if people hold attitudes such as the bolded. You can't NIMBY criminals, because that's a way of excluding them from society and forcing them back into criminal behavior.
    2) People like CEOs, athletes, actors, etc make their living off of being popular. Should they do something to damage their reputation, they will lose their lifestyle. That's separate from social convictions, though. And there are a lot of people who have been convicted of felony crimes who still are able to work as CEOs, athletes, actors, etc. Many in this position are protected from criminal convictions by their social status (again, see Jeffrey Epstein).
    3) You can't legislate against "social convictions". We certainly should eliminate allowing to discriminate based on criminal history, with very specific exceptions. Like, I wouldn't want to allow someone convicted of child rape work at a day-care center.
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    The second form of social punishment is related to "the right to be forgotten." That is, in the age of the internet, peoples transgressions are tied to them forever. This is, unequivocally, a punishment. Are there cases where we should allow people who have been socially or criminally convicted, the ability to erase their past transgressions from the public knowledge-base?

    I don't think we have a "right to be forgotten". But, as people grown older and their youthful transgressions keep catching up to them, I think society will shift to be more forgiving of things from someones past.
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    RadioLab, did a podcast about the "right to be forgotten", in which they talked about how a Cleveland newspaper had started a practice where people could submit requests to have stories about them taken down, not because they were false, but because they just wanted that part of their past to be forgotten. As a jumping off point for this discussion I will just include some details about one of the people who submitted a request:

    [*] They were convicted (and plead guilty) to flashing two women.
    [*] They served time in jail and had not repeated the offense for many years (5 or 10 I think).
    [*] The very first google result for their name was the story about their crime.
    [*] Because of the above point, they couldn't get jobs almost anywhere, their kids were harassed at school a lot, they had a hard time going out and doing anything fun for fear of social rejection.
    [*] I believe (could be wrong here), that the women who were flashed specifically wanted the story to remain up, and they felt it helped them cope with what happened.
    [/list]

    For both types of punishment there will likely be differences in what should happen based on whether you are criminally convicted and serve time, or if you are socially convicted and have received little to no other punishment. I didn't really talk about that above, but it is something to keep in mind.

    There's lots more here to unpack, but that is probably a fine starting point.

    My problem with this example is that so many people in positions of power (Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Kevin Spacey, etc) would use their "right to be forgotten" to make all of the history of their transgressions go away without demonstrating any repentance or remittance for their actions. There's an all too often joked about sequence of events that follows these kinds of things. I didn't do it, you misunderstood me, it was a joke, etc.

    I don't think that the concept of "Societal Convictions" is very valuable, because the conviction varies from person to person. For example, half the country things Trump is a bullying misogynistic racist thieving rapist. And 30% of the country thinks he walks on water.

  • Anon the FelonAnon the Felon In bat country.Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    I found myself to be the owner of a dozen+ felony charges as a bright eyed and bushy tailed 19 year old young man (Caucasian, if it matters). I navigated the legal system and did the bargaining to reduce it to a single felony, then lost my withheld judgment due to (foolishly) trying to live a semi-normal life with the few friends I could make. I spent 8 years under supervised felony probation, couldn't find work for a long time due to having to check the box. I also lost every friend group I had or could make over that time*, because I had curfew and location restrictions and inspections and... and...

    *One small benefit of this was a large distrust of people who call themselves my "friend", my history is littered with people who said they were there, but when the going got tough, the support structure evaporated. Fact is, I don't really bother trying to make friends these days. I either have to explain my past and deal with the fallout (usually never to see the person again), or hide something that is a defining point of my life.

    Just a month ago, I had to explain my conviction to a potential employer, we are now 14 years from that event. Because my state publishes all convictions and does not redact the record after any amount of time. While a background check won't show the conviction (most only go 5-7 years), a simple google search with the state appended will. It still impacts my ability to function regularly in society.

    I am not ashamed of my past, and in fact it's a bit of a badge of honor I was a smuggler for the Mexican Mafia who survived and didn't actually get caught for smuggling. But I still deal with the stigma and profiling more than a decade hence. I've had horrible interactions with police just a few years ago, simply because it's on my record. I'll happily answer any questions folks might have, and if the anecdote of my experience will help the conversation, I can get something a bit longer winded together.

    Anon the Felon on
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    @Anon the Felon I love hearing your work-related stories but I question how good an idea it is to just brazenly declare "I never got caught for committing this specific crime, this crime right here." Are you sure the statute of limitations is out on that crime?

    DarkPrimus on
  • Anon the FelonAnon the Felon In bat country.Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    Most non-violent felonies have a 5 year statute, state and federal (Some states do go to 7, not mine though). I did just look this up.

    It should be noted: The charges they arrested me on were trafficking charges, which is the same charge true smuggling would fall under. I was just charged on the (many) sales I'd made to a C.I. They didn't really need the interstate business, I was already dead to rights. On tape and everything. I always found it fascinating that many of the deals I'd made with the C.I, I wouldn't have done if she hadn't instigated the deal. When I bought this up to the prosecutor, how I wouldn't have committed these crimes if the police hadn't enabled the C.I. to convince me to do them and funded her, I was hand waved away.

    Anon the Felon on
  • Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    There's also the issue of what we think happens with social punishment versus what actually happens. This was an interesting thread on the matter by a doctoral candidate who is researching sexual violence:



    I recommend reading the whole thing, but the short version is that there is a massive gulf between what we think happens, versus what does happen, at least in the case of sexual violence. This was the one I felt was most chilling:


    Yeah, I mean kind of the point of the MeToo movement was to highlight how ridiculously often sexual assault crimes go unpunished, with victims bearing all of the social ill will.

    But it’s not clear to me where social punishment fits in. It doesn’t seem like society would benefit from limiting anyone’s education. Were there a way to limit the risk of re-offending (say by forcing them to school remotely or something), would it not be better to make sure both victim and criminal still got an education?

    If risk minimization is infeesible, then I don’t know. I mean it’s not like they stop existing if they are expelled. So they will still have opportunities to reoffend.

    Although I guess you would hope the more bad outcomes they have (get fired, expelled, etc), the more likely they would be to stop.

    The woman he assaulted had to drop out of school, because the trauma of not just the assault, but the school basically doing nothing (not only did they not rule that he assaulted her until he graduated, but notified him of the ruling at the same time as they extended him an invitation to graduate school) made it such that she couldn't even look at the school logo. Through no fault of her own, her education was ruined.

    And we're supposed to be concerned about the impact on him? You mentioned society doesn't benefit from limiting anyone's education, without any acknowledgement that his victim's education was profoundly limited. This is the whole problem that the researcher was trying to highlight.

    I believe in restorative justice, but as part of that, I also believe that the first step must be contrition. And by that, I mean that the perpetrator must acknowledge and accept the harm done by their actions, and their own culpability in the matter.

    I'm not sure what you're arguing with here. I never said that the example given was an optimal outcome. And quite obviously the first priority of the university should be to make sure the victim is safe, and has access to resources to help them.

    But if they could simultaneously make sure that the victim was safe, and still allow the criminal to get an education, that still seems like a better outcome.

    I just feel like employment/education are a poor way of punishing people as it often hurts society in general as well. Pushing more people into low wage, low skill jobs makes things harder on the folks who need those jobs and haven't done anything wrong. Not to mention you're forcing all the low skill labor to bear all the burden of working with socially and criminally convicted individuals.

    That doesn't seem like a good outcome. That doesn't mean I think we should just ignore reports of abuse and force the victims to continue working/going to school alongside their attacker. Just that I question if maybe there is another approach (transferring criminal, making them school remotely, etc) that might lead to better outcomes than expelling/firing them and shifting the burden onto someone else.

    "The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
  • Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.

    The bolded is a right that people have? I have a right to feel safe and that justice was rendered? So until I do feel safe what, the system needs to keep restricting the liberty of the person who was making me feel unsafe?

    Since we are inclined to talk about things in terms of rights, it might be helpful to get clear on what it is that something being a right means. Or rather, the various things that it can mean.

    It might mean that no one is allowed to interfere with me in using what I have a right to (this is like the right to free speech)
    That I can make a claim on someone else so that I can get something (like what the right to healthcare would be, a right that lets me claim the healthcare that is entitled to me)

    I have a hard time saying that a victim has a right to feel a certain way. Largely because they just might not be able to, at least not without significant theraputic intervention. Someone who has been the victim of a sexual assault just might not be capable of feeling safe and thus how should we think about that right?

    In general I think that social punishment is bad and that is generally because there is no formality to it. It's highly informal. I prefer codified legal punishment (though maybe punishment isn't the point really at all?), because I want rules that can be understood and utilized. Social punishment seems by it's very nature to be informal and thus it doesn't allow for a systematizing.

    I think that you can use the victims feelings as part of the equation, without being forced to let the victim dictate everything.

    But more importantly you hit on something I also think is a big problem for me with social punishments in general. The non-uniformity of it.

    My biggest issue is that almost always the magnitude of the response is not based on the severity of the crime. It's based on other factors, like if the person accused was a valued employee, if they were well liked, if the PR for the business will be affected, etc. So you can end up with people committing small crimes (telling a sexist/lude joke) getting way to harsh of a punishment (fired, can't get another job in the field, etc), while others commit huge crimes (nassier, weinstein) and have little to no punishment.

    And it will be very difficult to bring uniformity, since there isn't a centralized authority, it's kind of just how anyone given person feels when faced with a situation where they have to enact consequences.

    "The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    It's difficult because you have to balance people's right to earned redemption with other people's right to feel safe that justice was done.

    Maybe there should be a statute of limitations on stuff like this. 10 years is a long time.

    The bolded is a right that people have? I have a right to feel safe and that justice was rendered? So until I do feel safe what, the system needs to keep restricting the liberty of the person who was making me feel unsafe?

    That is the underlying question I'm struggling with here when it comes to this new capability to nationally shame people within minutes, and to easily look it back up if required.

    Especially when it's up against issues that have been suppressed or ignored (or both), like sexual assault that was alluded to before.

    jungleroomx on
  • Jebus314Jebus314 Registered User regular
    shryke wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    I think all other jobs should come with some level of legal protection that says you can not discriminate against someone who was socially or criminally convicted if it is reasonable to assume their past transgressions would not affect their work. This will have caveats abounding, but I think it at least starts to define my position here.

    This should probably tie into the "Ban the box" campaign, which aims to remove the "have you ever been convicted of a crime" box from most employment forms. (Which also ties into the racial disparity in arrest/conviction rates, but what doesn't?)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_the_Box

    In general, the way to break the freeloader problem (aside from implementing a basic income) would be to only have relevant crimes show up on a background check. (And also make it so that counts as due diligence in hiring.)

    Social consequences are a different matter, but those are only really an issue if it managed to make the news, and mostly affects public-facing positions anyway.

    EDIT: I would strongly recommend reading up on the effects of "ban the box" on racial hiring practices. It does create problems in this area, which need to be addressed.

    Do y'all not have a pardon process?

    Up here once you've served out your sentence and met some other criteria you can apply to have your record hidden from these kind of searches:
    https://www.canada.ca/en/parole-board/services/record-suspensions/what-is-a-record-suspension.html

    This kind of thing (I doubt it's perfect and couldn't be improved) are an important part of the process.

    Not only is there not a formal process, a whole scam industry has popped up, built around the idea that they can grab these kinds of public criminal records, create a database and get it to the top of google results, and then try and extort people for money to take their information down.

    "The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
  • VeeveeVeevee WisconsinRegistered User regular
    There is already a formal process for social conviction. It's called the criminal justice system, and the premise of this thread is that it is broken. I can't help but feel like the calls for making a formal or unified social conviction process are nothing more than a distracting herring that is red in color.

  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    There's also the issue of what we think happens with social punishment versus what actually happens. This was an interesting thread on the matter by a doctoral candidate who is researching sexual violence:



    I recommend reading the whole thing, but the short version is that there is a massive gulf between what we think happens, versus what does happen, at least in the case of sexual violence. This was the one I felt was most chilling:


    Yeah, I mean kind of the point of the MeToo movement was to highlight how ridiculously often sexual assault crimes go unpunished, with victims bearing all of the social ill will.

    But it’s not clear to me where social punishment fits in. It doesn’t seem like society would benefit from limiting anyone’s education. Were there a way to limit the risk of re-offending (say by forcing them to school remotely or something), would it not be better to make sure both victim and criminal still got an education?

    If risk minimization is infeesible, then I don’t know. I mean it’s not like they stop existing if they are expelled. So they will still have opportunities to reoffend.

    Although I guess you would hope the more bad outcomes they have (get fired, expelled, etc), the more likely they would be to stop.

    The woman he assaulted had to drop out of school, because the trauma of not just the assault, but the school basically doing nothing (not only did they not rule that he assaulted her until he graduated, but notified him of the ruling at the same time as they extended him an invitation to graduate school) made it such that she couldn't even look at the school logo. Through no fault of her own, her education was ruined.

    And we're supposed to be concerned about the impact on him? You mentioned society doesn't benefit from limiting anyone's education, without any acknowledgement that his victim's education was profoundly limited. This is the whole problem that the researcher was trying to highlight.

    I believe in restorative justice, but as part of that, I also believe that the first step must be contrition. And by that, I mean that the perpetrator must acknowledge and accept the harm done by their actions, and their own culpability in the matter.

    I'm not sure what you're arguing with here. I never said that the example given was an optimal outcome. And quite obviously the first priority of the university should be to make sure the victim is safe, and has access to resources to help them.

    But if they could simultaneously make sure that the victim was safe, and still allow the criminal to get an education, that still seems like a better outcome.

    I just feel like employment/education are a poor way of punishing people as it often hurts society in general as well. Pushing more people into low wage, low skill jobs makes things harder on the folks who need those jobs and haven't done anything wrong. Not to mention you're forcing all the low skill labor to bear all the burden of working with socially and criminally convicted individuals.

    That doesn't seem like a good outcome. That doesn't mean I think we should just ignore reports of abuse and force the victims to continue working/going to school alongside their attacker. Just that I question if maybe there is another approach (transferring criminal, making them school remotely, etc) that might lead to better outcomes than expelling/firing them and shifting the burden onto someone else.

    The point here is this - you've barely mentioned the victim and how her life was pretty much shattered, to the point that she attempted suicide, and ultimately had to drop out because the school itself was causing her trauma. Instead, your focus has been on the abuser, and how we should create an outcome that is good for "both".

    And then people wonder why there's so much anger in #MeToo.

    I mentioned in a prior thread about the problems with the "redemption narrative", and this is one of the bigger ones - we get so focused on the perpetrators and "rehabilitation" that the victims fall by the wayside.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    There's also the issue of what we think happens with social punishment versus what actually happens. This was an interesting thread on the matter by a doctoral candidate who is researching sexual violence:



    I recommend reading the whole thing, but the short version is that there is a massive gulf between what we think happens, versus what does happen, at least in the case of sexual violence. This was the one I felt was most chilling:


    Yeah, I mean kind of the point of the MeToo movement was to highlight how ridiculously often sexual assault crimes go unpunished, with victims bearing all of the social ill will.

    But it’s not clear to me where social punishment fits in. It doesn’t seem like society would benefit from limiting anyone’s education. Were there a way to limit the risk of re-offending (say by forcing them to school remotely or something), would it not be better to make sure both victim and criminal still got an education?

    If risk minimization is infeesible, then I don’t know. I mean it’s not like they stop existing if they are expelled. So they will still have opportunities to reoffend.

    Although I guess you would hope the more bad outcomes they have (get fired, expelled, etc), the more likely they would be to stop.

    The woman he assaulted had to drop out of school, because the trauma of not just the assault, but the school basically doing nothing (not only did they not rule that he assaulted her until he graduated, but notified him of the ruling at the same time as they extended him an invitation to graduate school) made it such that she couldn't even look at the school logo. Through no fault of her own, her education was ruined.

    And we're supposed to be concerned about the impact on him? You mentioned society doesn't benefit from limiting anyone's education, without any acknowledgement that his victim's education was profoundly limited. This is the whole problem that the researcher was trying to highlight.

    I believe in restorative justice, but as part of that, I also believe that the first step must be contrition. And by that, I mean that the perpetrator must acknowledge and accept the harm done by their actions, and their own culpability in the matter.

    I'm not sure what you're arguing with here. I never said that the example given was an optimal outcome. And quite obviously the first priority of the university should be to make sure the victim is safe, and has access to resources to help them.

    But if they could simultaneously make sure that the victim was safe, and still allow the criminal to get an education, that still seems like a better outcome.

    I just feel like employment/education are a poor way of punishing people as it often hurts society in general as well. Pushing more people into low wage, low skill jobs makes things harder on the folks who need those jobs and haven't done anything wrong. Not to mention you're forcing all the low skill labor to bear all the burden of working with socially and criminally convicted individuals.

    That doesn't seem like a good outcome. That doesn't mean I think we should just ignore reports of abuse and force the victims to continue working/going to school alongside their attacker. Just that I question if maybe there is another approach (transferring criminal, making them school remotely, etc) that might lead to better outcomes than expelling/firing them and shifting the burden onto someone else.

    The point here is this - you've barely mentioned the victim and how her life was pretty much shattered, to the point that she attempted suicide, and ultimately had to drop out because the school itself was causing her trauma. Instead, your focus has been on the abuser, and how we should create an outcome that is good for "both".

    And then people wonder why there's so much anger in #MeToo.

    I mentioned in a prior thread about the problems with the "redemption narrative", and this is one of the bigger ones - we get so focused on the perpetrators and "rehabilitation" that the victims fall by the wayside.

    So there's no point in redemption and once you do anything you're now condemned to a lifetime of punishment no matter what?

    That should go well. What's the outlook on a 100% recidivism rate?

    jungleroomx on
  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    Most non-violent felonies have a 5 year statute, state and federal (Some states do go to 7, not mine though). I did just look this up.

    It should be noted: The charges they arrested me on were trafficking charges, which is the same charge true smuggling would fall under. I was just charged on the (many) sales I'd made to a C.I. They didn't really need the interstate business, I was already dead to rights. On tape and everything. I always found it fascinating that many of the deals I'd made with the C.I, I wouldn't have done if she hadn't instigated the deal. When I bought this up to the prosecutor, how I wouldn't have committed these crimes if the police hadn't enabled the C.I. to convince me to do them and funded her, I was hand waved away.

    Pretty much any rule that would result in throwing out charges for improper government conduct has been chipped away at its entire existence. "Innocent until proven guilty" feels like it gets nothing more than lip service sometimes.

    Steam: Polaritie
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  • redxredx I(x)=2(x)+1 whole numbersRegistered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    There's also the issue of what we think happens with social punishment versus what actually happens. This was an interesting thread on the matter by a doctoral candidate who is researching sexual violence:



    I recommend reading the whole thing, but the short version is that there is a massive gulf between what we think happens, versus what does happen, at least in the case of sexual violence. This was the one I felt was most chilling:


    Yeah, I mean kind of the point of the MeToo movement was to highlight how ridiculously often sexual assault crimes go unpunished, with victims bearing all of the social ill will.

    But it’s not clear to me where social punishment fits in. It doesn’t seem like society would benefit from limiting anyone’s education. Were there a way to limit the risk of re-offending (say by forcing them to school remotely or something), would it not be better to make sure both victim and criminal still got an education?

    If risk minimization is infeesible, then I don’t know. I mean it’s not like they stop existing if they are expelled. So they will still have opportunities to reoffend.

    Although I guess you would hope the more bad outcomes they have (get fired, expelled, etc), the more likely they would be to stop.

    The woman he assaulted had to drop out of school, because the trauma of not just the assault, but the school basically doing nothing (not only did they not rule that he assaulted her until he graduated, but notified him of the ruling at the same time as they extended him an invitation to graduate school) made it such that she couldn't even look at the school logo. Through no fault of her own, her education was ruined.

    And we're supposed to be concerned about the impact on him? You mentioned society doesn't benefit from limiting anyone's education, without any acknowledgement that his victim's education was profoundly limited. This is the whole problem that the researcher was trying to highlight.

    I believe in restorative justice, but as part of that, I also believe that the first step must be contrition. And by that, I mean that the perpetrator must acknowledge and accept the harm done by their actions, and their own culpability in the matter.

    I'm not sure what you're arguing with here. I never said that the example given was an optimal outcome. And quite obviously the first priority of the university should be to make sure the victim is safe, and has access to resources to help them.

    But if they could simultaneously make sure that the victim was safe, and still allow the criminal to get an education, that still seems like a better outcome.

    I just feel like employment/education are a poor way of punishing people as it often hurts society in general as well. Pushing more people into low wage, low skill jobs makes things harder on the folks who need those jobs and haven't done anything wrong. Not to mention you're forcing all the low skill labor to bear all the burden of working with socially and criminally convicted individuals.

    That doesn't seem like a good outcome. That doesn't mean I think we should just ignore reports of abuse and force the victims to continue working/going to school alongside their attacker. Just that I question if maybe there is another approach (transferring criminal, making them school remotely, etc) that might lead to better outcomes than expelling/firing them and shifting the burden onto someone else.

    The point here is this - you've barely mentioned the victim and how her life was pretty much shattered, to the point that she attempted suicide, and ultimately had to drop out because the school itself was causing her trauma. Instead, your focus has been on the abuser, and how we should create an outcome that is good for "both".

    And then people wonder why there's so much anger in #MeToo.

    I mentioned in a prior thread about the problems with the "redemption narrative", and this is one of the bigger ones - we get so focused on the perpetrators and "rehabilitation" that the victims fall by the wayside.

    So there's no point in redemption and once you do anything you're now condemned to a lifetime of punishment no matter what?

    That should go well. What's the outlook on a 100% recidivism rate?

    yeah, he could go get an education somewhere that his sexual assault victim doesn't attend.

    They moistly come out at night, moistly.
  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    There's also the issue of what we think happens with social punishment versus what actually happens. This was an interesting thread on the matter by a doctoral candidate who is researching sexual violence:



    I recommend reading the whole thing, but the short version is that there is a massive gulf between what we think happens, versus what does happen, at least in the case of sexual violence. This was the one I felt was most chilling:


    Yeah, I mean kind of the point of the MeToo movement was to highlight how ridiculously often sexual assault crimes go unpunished, with victims bearing all of the social ill will.

    But it’s not clear to me where social punishment fits in. It doesn’t seem like society would benefit from limiting anyone’s education. Were there a way to limit the risk of re-offending (say by forcing them to school remotely or something), would it not be better to make sure both victim and criminal still got an education?

    If risk minimization is infeesible, then I don’t know. I mean it’s not like they stop existing if they are expelled. So they will still have opportunities to reoffend.

    Although I guess you would hope the more bad outcomes they have (get fired, expelled, etc), the more likely they would be to stop.

    The woman he assaulted had to drop out of school, because the trauma of not just the assault, but the school basically doing nothing (not only did they not rule that he assaulted her until he graduated, but notified him of the ruling at the same time as they extended him an invitation to graduate school) made it such that she couldn't even look at the school logo. Through no fault of her own, her education was ruined.

    And we're supposed to be concerned about the impact on him? You mentioned society doesn't benefit from limiting anyone's education, without any acknowledgement that his victim's education was profoundly limited. This is the whole problem that the researcher was trying to highlight.

    I believe in restorative justice, but as part of that, I also believe that the first step must be contrition. And by that, I mean that the perpetrator must acknowledge and accept the harm done by their actions, and their own culpability in the matter.

    I'm not sure what you're arguing with here. I never said that the example given was an optimal outcome. And quite obviously the first priority of the university should be to make sure the victim is safe, and has access to resources to help them.

    But if they could simultaneously make sure that the victim was safe, and still allow the criminal to get an education, that still seems like a better outcome.

    I just feel like employment/education are a poor way of punishing people as it often hurts society in general as well. Pushing more people into low wage, low skill jobs makes things harder on the folks who need those jobs and haven't done anything wrong. Not to mention you're forcing all the low skill labor to bear all the burden of working with socially and criminally convicted individuals.

    That doesn't seem like a good outcome. That doesn't mean I think we should just ignore reports of abuse and force the victims to continue working/going to school alongside their attacker. Just that I question if maybe there is another approach (transferring criminal, making them school remotely, etc) that might lead to better outcomes than expelling/firing them and shifting the burden onto someone else.

    The point here is this - you've barely mentioned the victim and how her life was pretty much shattered, to the point that she attempted suicide, and ultimately had to drop out because the school itself was causing her trauma. Instead, your focus has been on the abuser, and how we should create an outcome that is good for "both".

    And then people wonder why there's so much anger in #MeToo.

    I mentioned in a prior thread about the problems with the "redemption narrative", and this is one of the bigger ones - we get so focused on the perpetrators and "rehabilitation" that the victims fall by the wayside.

    So there's no point in redemption and once you do anything you're now condemned to a lifetime of punishment no matter what?

    That should go well.

    Let me state my position again - the first step of restorative justice must be contrition. The perpetrator must acknowledge their actions and the harm they did, and accept responsibility. Which means accepting that their victim may not be able to forgive or coexist, and that their being the victim means that the perpetrator has to be the one to make compromises.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited September 2019
    redx wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    Jebus314 wrote: »
    There's also the issue of what we think happens with social punishment versus what actually happens. This was an interesting thread on the matter by a doctoral candidate who is researching sexual violence:



    I recommend reading the whole thing, but the short version is that there is a massive gulf between what we think happens, versus what does happen, at least in the case of sexual violence. This was the one I felt was most chilling:


    Yeah, I mean kind of the point of the MeToo movement was to highlight how ridiculously often sexual assault crimes go unpunished, with victims bearing all of the social ill will.

    But it’s not clear to me where social punishment fits in. It doesn’t seem like society would benefit from limiting anyone’s education. Were there a way to limit the risk of re-offending (say by forcing them to school remotely or something), would it not be better to make sure both victim and criminal still got an education?

    If risk minimization is infeesible, then I don’t know. I mean it’s not like they stop existing if they are expelled. So they will still have opportunities to reoffend.

    Although I guess you would hope the more bad outcomes they have (get fired, expelled, etc), the more likely they would be to stop.

    The woman he assaulted had to drop out of school, because the trauma of not just the assault, but the school basically doing nothing (not only did they not rule that he assaulted her until he graduated, but notified him of the ruling at the same time as they extended him an invitation to graduate school) made it such that she couldn't even look at the school logo. Through no fault of her own, her education was ruined.

    And we're supposed to be concerned about the impact on him? You mentioned society doesn't benefit from limiting anyone's education, without any acknowledgement that his victim's education was profoundly limited. This is the whole problem that the researcher was trying to highlight.

    I believe in restorative justice, but as part of that, I also believe that the first step must be contrition. And by that, I mean that the perpetrator must acknowledge and accept the harm done by their actions, and their own culpability in the matter.

    I'm not sure what you're arguing with here. I never said that the example given was an optimal outcome. And quite obviously the first priority of the university should be to make sure the victim is safe, and has access to resources to help them.

    But if they could simultaneously make sure that the victim was safe, and still allow the criminal to get an education, that still seems like a better outcome.

    I just feel like employment/education are a poor way of punishing people as it often hurts society in general as well. Pushing more people into low wage, low skill jobs makes things harder on the folks who need those jobs and haven't done anything wrong. Not to mention you're forcing all the low skill labor to bear all the burden of working with socially and criminally convicted individuals.

    That doesn't seem like a good outcome. That doesn't mean I think we should just ignore reports of abuse and force the victims to continue working/going to school alongside their attacker. Just that I question if maybe there is another approach (transferring criminal, making them school remotely, etc) that might lead to better outcomes than expelling/firing them and shifting the burden onto someone else.

    The point here is this - you've barely mentioned the victim and how her life was pretty much shattered, to the point that she attempted suicide, and ultimately had to drop out because the school itself was causing her trauma. Instead, your focus has been on the abuser, and how we should create an outcome that is good for "both".

    And then people wonder why there's so much anger in #MeToo.

    I mentioned in a prior thread about the problems with the "redemption narrative", and this is one of the bigger ones - we get so focused on the perpetrators and "rehabilitation" that the victims fall by the wayside.

    So there's no point in redemption and once you do anything you're now condemned to a lifetime of punishment no matter what?

    That should go well. What's the outlook on a 100% recidivism rate?

    yeah, he could go get an education somewhere that his sexual assault victim doesn't attend.

    No they can't, that's the point.

    It's not a matter of "just go somewhere else," because there is nowhere to go.

    You're advocating that all crimes are now life sentences.

    jungleroomx on
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