[evujumenuk]

I understand this is the general policy in a few places, like Germany. The general idea seems to be that it is more beneficial to a society if criminals are given a viable avenue to lead non-criminal lives again, with the alternative being people going "ah fuck it, I guess I'm a criminal now".

I'm surprised at this concept spreading in the US, since the system would generally benefit from having perpetual perpetrators percolating through the prison slavery system.

[impossiblefork]

There are enormous problems with this kind of thing though, especially when for example, a murderer is part of the establishment or is cuddled by the big established entities.

There was a guy who was a motor journalist for a major Swedish newspaper (Dagens Nyheter) who stabbed a man to death while his friends prevented the man's escape, and you basically don't get to hear about. It's even been removed from the journalist's Wikipedia page.'

I think truth is much more important and I think what a court does must be inherently public and I see a court, is as a proxy for going before the people itself to deal with a matter that can't be decided privately (and obviously, when somebody is dead, there's private way to make up), and therefore I believe their decisions have to stand forever and should be as public as possible.

[like_any_other]

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

[matheusmoreira]

> I think truth is much more important

The truth is the most important thing there is. The problem is newspapers are so far removed from the truth it's not even funny. Journalism and truth do not even belong in the same sentence.

Especially today where they engage in shameless rage baiting for engagement and therefore have every incentive in the world to defame someone who might very well turn out to be innocent.

Even the most tyrannical court in the world cannot repair a destroyed reputation. It takes a lifetime to build and seconds to destroy.

Journalists should not be condemning anyone before proper judgement is rendered. Courts staffed by fallible and corruptible human beings are enough of a necessary evil. We really don't need journalists profiting handsomely off of the court of public opinion.

[Yeul]

Before things like the FBI and the telegraph it was quite common for Americans to find a new life in another state. You could be married in New York but nobody in Montana would know unless they actively started an investigation. The world has become a village.

[ddingus]

True story:

In the late 70's my Uncle had a run of bad luck and a dubious business partner basically sink him financially. After some discussion, he made a plan. It was simple:

Uncle goes back to Virginia to lay low in one of the back hollers.

My mom gets his mail, due to him living with us for a while[1], and writes "Deceased" on it, and "Return to Sender"

5 years pass. Maybe 4, I can't remember.

Uncle shows up, everything is fine, and he and my aunt live out the rest of their days in a small comfy trailer no worries.

[1] Living and other time with this Uncle was a great time in my life.

Edit due to device change: My uncle had one eye, the other lost when he was young and unlucky in the woods. He read everything and acquired a great many skills which he proceeded to pass along to me: lock picking, electronics, engine rebuilding and a ton about autos, working with wood, metals, tools... He is probably still doing that in his afterlife. Good soul who I treasure having known.

[_DeadFred_]

The US used to believe in second chances. Now it believes in maximum retribution. Unless you are big business. Then not only will you get a second chance, but the government will fund it.

[jackstraw14]

it was the main selling point of the US for quite a while.

[HPsquared]

It's one of those feudal villages you can't leave.

[o11c]

The advantage of the world being a village is that you no longer have to have extreme paranoia over everyone who isn't from your village.

It turns out that in a world of "people forced to leave the village to live a new life free from the consequences of their prior deeds", the main reason people would try to start living in a new village was because they had done something that made them no longer welcome with all the people they knew before.

One oft-understated advantage of an explicit noble class is that it provides a medium for verifying "this person really is traveling for legitimate reasons".

[FredPret]

There are private prisons in the US that benefit from more prisoners.

But there are many more people and organizations there that benefit from fewer prisoners.

For most purposes, a country is not a singular thing.

[jbmchuck]

I suspect that is true but here is the difference: organizations that benefit from fewer prisons have a multitude of other things they benefit from (and can lobby for). Private prison operators on the other hand really only have one thing that can improve their bottom line at the end of the day - more prisons.

Outside of a few non-profit orgs I suspect there aren't a lot of dollars lobbying for fewer prisons, it's not a great look and it's easily to spin as "company X doesn't want to lock up violent criminals!

On the other hand that's really the only agenda item private prison operators put their lobbying dollars toward.

[eadmund]

> There are private prisons in the US that benefit from more prisoners.

So do public prisons! Their employees — and those employee’s unions — want to make money just as much as anyone.

I don’t think that public vs. private is material here.

[Schiendelman]

As I've gotten farther in my career as a product manager, I have to do more and more slicing and dicing of markets to understand who I'm building something for, identify opportunity.

It's been really eye-opening to start realizing just how many people refer to a collective as a unit. And how many beliefs are dependent on not inspecting that fallacious thinking.

[jmyeet]

There's a much broader problem here: unnecessary background checks. If you're applying for a job or to rent an apartment it absolutely shouldn't matter that you vandalized something 15 years earlier.

It's likely automated systems building up these profiles too so what if you happen to just have the same name as someone who was convicted of something in a news article?

[cj]

The article isn’t strictly talking about prisoners.

In the example in the article, a kid vandalized a tombstone in a graveyard, and can’t find a job years later.

[dylan604]

The negative knee jerk reaction to things has become comical. It's to the point where schools will not allow the parents of a student that has a record to come on school campus. They don't even care what the offense was for; they only look that there's not a clean slate.

[ggreer]

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

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

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

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

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

[pvaldes]

Hiding it is the wrong way. Nobody cares about kids having stupid ideas. Erasing the entry closes the opportunity of providing a reasonable explanation and showing repent, that in fact could help highlight the candidate among other.

If employers still care... is a red flag. The case tells about a person that 1) has anger problems, 2) never mastered any skills valued by employers, and 3) never cultured friends wanting to vouch for him.

In sum, not the type that employers enjoy as coworker. Newspapers aren't necessarily the problem here.

[anal_reactor]

> The general idea seems to be that it is more beneficial to a society if criminals are given a viable avenue to lead non-criminal lives again, with the alternative being people going "ah fuck it, I guess I'm a criminal now".

It really boggles my mind that so many people have difficulties understanding this concept, and prefer it when the general public wants blood. Peed in public? Capital punishment it is.

[llamaimperative]

It’s almost like there are multiple competing interests at play in a country of 340 million people…

[throw_m239339]

There is need for a middle ground between privacy and the safety of the community. In my country, a lot of horrible crimes could have been avoided if the repeated criminal's past crimes were something people could at the least be aware of, one way or another. I'm talking about murders and sex crimes.

[dingnuts]

take your tinfoil hat off. the US isn't one system conspiratorially doing one thing or another. it is a myriad of competing individuals and groups.

journalists have different incentives than private prison operators and tend to be more progressive for whatever reason. they often are activists.

it should not be surprising that journalists might take a softer view and than prison industrialists in a country with free thought and expression

[jgalt212]

> the prison slavery system.

extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Where is the enslavement?

[Brybry]

To add to sibling comments about the 13th amendment's exception clause (which is what legally allows forced prison labor[1]): forced prison labor has been a state-level ballot issue in recent years.

Colorado voted to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime in 2018 (though enforcement is reportedly poor). [2][3]

In other states voters have upheld forced labor[4] but sometimes it's because of issues with how it's worded[5].

You can argue it's involuntary servitude instead of slavery but to most people that's a meaningless distinction. Especially while they are being beaten for not working.[6]

[1] https://action.aclu.org/send-message/congress-end-forced-lab...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2018/11/07/665295736/colorado-votes-to-a...

[3] https://www.npr.org/2023/11/13/1210564359/slavery-prison-for...

[4] https://calmatters.org/politics/elections/2024/11/california...

[5] https://lailluminator.com/2022/11/17/the-story-behind-why-lo...

[6] https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-inve...

[krapp]

Read the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

The US penal system is explicitly a continuation of the former slave system. Slavery wasn't outlawed in the US, just made a monopoly franchise of the US government. It isn't coincidental that so many prisons were built on former plantation property, or that the incarceration rate of black men is so high.

[nashashmi]

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

[whoitwas]

In the US police and prisons are directly derived from slave patrols. This is history and factual.

In prison and jail inmates work for rates like $.25 an hour. Many places in the south prison inmates are contracted out to work minimum wage jobs and denied parole.

Recidivism rates for people incarcerated more than 6 months is something like 66% for one year post release.

There are private prisons that benefit from more prisoners. In many places the jail or prison is the largest and best employer.

... .. . You can go on forever. It's maybe getting better in some places, but not where they used to have slavery.

[bdangubic]

you seriously asking this or joking?????!

[dsego]

Historically criminals from Germany would find a new life in Argentina. And they mostly lived out plain unremarkable lives, so this does work. Not sure everyone appreciated the benefits to society though.