Discussion on:

Ban the Box seeks to prohibit companies from asking about criminal records on applications

This has the potential to be good or bad. The bad side I can see is a company such as a bank might like a candidate's qualifications only to find out they have a fraud conviction. Then the bank is out the money and hassle of interviewing someone and has to start from square one. On the other hand I don't believe people should be barred from employment simply because they have a criminal record. A good friend of mine who is an honest and hard working person has a manslaughter conviction and you would never know it. Basically someone broke into his home and threatened his family so he lost control of his temper and the guy ended up dieing. There are always circumstances to everything.

Unfortunately it is how much justice you can afford
That is why some states have a "Castle Doctrine"
and if some scum bag breaks into my house I will splatter them all over and not think twice about it. I guess judges do not get the news? Everyday around here someone is murdered, sometimes in their own house and that is bull$hit and it will only stop when we kill all the criminals.
Oh and for all you Liberals who are about to flame me, grow a pair, some of us are sick of scum bags

its not a liberal \ conserative thing, its a common sense thing. Conservatives are the only dbags that pull the "hey you suck liberal" crap. Yes I agree, if someone breaks into my home and threatens my family or property, thats a dead or seriously injured person and I'm a democrat .. with common sense. You are a dbag conservative with none.

I am not a conservative. I am informed, sick and tired of the pu$$ies in this country. (ie liberals like you) you probably feel sorry for the criminal.
BTW is dbag douche or dick? Knowing the Liberal it is probably douche as that is what pu$$ies use......

Can we leave the politics and profanity at home, and just discuss the issue at hand like adults?
If you don't want to admit past criminal acts on an application then don't commit crimes. It seems very cut and dried. BTW - I'm not a Liberal or a Conservative. I'm an AMERICAN who can think for himself

I like a good argument

then you should be fully aware that the "liberals" are not the only ones to blame for our current circumstances...

Then you would understand I never blamed liberals for anything?

Oh and for all you Liberals who are about to flame me, grow a pair, some of us are sick of scum bags

Given that this is a variation on the standard conservative response to anything that smacks of being "soft on crime", it sure sounds like blaming to to me.

We all know what Richard is long for.

He should have been commended instead of convicted.

Why are barriers to people with criminal records unfair? If you don't want to be barred by your criminal record, DON'T COMMIT CRIMES. Questions about circumstances should be expected, and can be covered in a cover letter.

I'd like to see replies from those who cast '-1' votes.

The majority of society is made up of good, caring people. I've met successful doctors who visit the lake house and enjoy smoking some pot. Now they do this confided in their own property where getting caught by police is impossible. Or if a drunk patron at a restaurant bumps into you, throws a fist, and you defend yourself and the manager is friends with that guy and say you started it. This happened to me at my one and only bar fight. Convicted of disorderly conduct. I feel most people have commited multiple crimes and haven't been caught. Some get caught and that one mistake, whether it was intentional or wrongly accused, shouldn't prevent a career from blooming. Also, 18-22 year olds can have a much different mentality at those ages then later in life. So should you be denied a job at 25 or 30 for a minor crime or two commited at 18-22? I had an interview a couple years ago and these people went as far as to explain a noise complaint. The law was broken. Loud music on a weekend after 10pm. Should one be denied due to this?

The majority of the applications I've ever seen only require candidates to disclose felony arrest records, or perhaps misdemeanors that resulted in your incarceration (i.e. as opposed to simply paying a fine).

Note that, by those definitions, "small" offenses (i.e. speeding/parking tickets) wouldn't even come up on a candidate's application.

As for the criminal record affecting your employment...if employers are already starting to cull candidates based on their social media profiles (i.e. posting of photos of their drunken antics on Facebook), then yes, they should be taking into consideration actions where you were arrested & found guilty. However, by the same token, a candidate that lists a single arrest for public intoxication is not going to be viewed in the same light as someone with multiple instances of vandalism, drug possession, & trespassing, let alone someone with multiple counts of robbery, manufacture and/or sale of drugs, embezzlement, or more severe crimes.

As to whether it's "fair" or not... ask the victims of their crimes whether what the ex-criminal did to them was "fair".

What about crimes where there is no "victim" ?

Every action has a consequence. That consequence is felt somewhere, sometime, by someone or something.

I could argue that if you post drunken photos of yourself on Facebook, then you're effectively volunteering that information (whether you realise it or not) by publishing it to a public forum.

I don't think too many people would publicly publish (or wish to be published) their criminal history, so they're not volunteering that information.

I think it makes sense to have some limits on what potential employers can discover about candidates, even if they use their superior negotiating position to coerce candidates into to signing release forms and the like.

There needs to be a balance between the interests of employers and the wider community. Besides, have you considered that even past criminals needs jobs, otherwise they're just going to commit more crime for an income and you're effectively creating a professional criminal class.

"The majority of society is made up of good, caring people."

Toni's statistics are correct: 1 in 4 Americans have criminal records.

Does anyone honestly think that 25% of the US population are evil people? Or is it that we just have too many laws, or too many stupid laws?

???The more laws are enacted and taxes assessed, the greater the number of lawbreakers and tax evaders??? -- Lao Tzu

No one is saying that an employer should be obliged to hire murderers, rapists, pedophiles, thieves, vandals, or the like. People generally understand that there is a difference between those who commit crimes like these and those who commit victimless crimes or crimes of self-defense.

After all, laws are written by human beings, not carved in stone by gods. And laws are written by powerful people who have motivations which might not be entirely noble or in the best interest of the citizens who are expected to abide by them. The Fugitive Slave Act was a law too. A bad law. A law that many compassionate people were willing to break. This is just one example from our early American history, but it is not the only bad law ever enacted by our legislature. There are a plethora of laws out there, and when Charles Bundy says that good people break these laws everyday, he is absolutely correct. When I worked at AAA, they used to say that a person breaks 7,000 traffic laws to every one in which he gets caught. Is that person a criminal, then?

Weeding out the good applicants from the bad is not a simple task, and it certainly can't be determined by whether or not the applicant indicated on an application that he/she had a criminal record. Your applicant might have no criminal record and pass a drug test and yet still have the sticky fingers that makes him a very bad bet on the job.

"No one is saying that an employer should be obliged to hire murderers, rapists, pedophiles, thieves, vandals, or the like."
But they can't ask if the people they're hiring have been convicted of those things? How else would they determine it? I think a conviction in court should get more weight that weather the person looks like a thief to the employer.

A) I think you meant "DON'T GET CAUGHT" as I'm pretty sure we all commit crimes every day.
B) Crime and its subsequent punishment should fulfill the transaction principle of "atomicity" in the discipline department. Or are you advocating punishing people for eternity?

I mean, "Don't commit crimes", exactly as I stated it. People who commit criminal actions on the 'Don't get caught' theory are EXACTLY the ones I don't want to hire.

I'm not punishing anyone; that's a choice to be made by the hiring authority. If the interviewer or HR department doesn't have a problem with a 20-year-old littering citation or night in the drunk tank, I don't either. My point is only that the best way to insure your criminal record doesn't reflect poorly on you is to don't do the things that may result to a criminal record.

Have you checked your state code lately? I can find statutes that I've broken every day. Some are just shy of felony e.g. It's a class 1 misdemeanor for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle with its lights on in most states.

So thus I have to call BS on your not so veiled assumption that you, me and everyone reading TR right now hasn't committed a crime today. The only difference between those that have criminal records and those that haven't is how pervasive and intrusive law enforcement and the judicial system are in their ability to catch and prosecute crazy laws dreamed up by the legislature. e.g. Check out Title 16, Chapter 15 of the South Carolina code for some doozies involving 'Offenses Against Morality and Decency.'

I'm normally not a conspiracy theorist but an underlying issue to this 'never mind their criminal past' might be a political state that wants wage earning tax payers who are unable to vote or run for office... Which means upping the felony ante... Talk about having your cake and eating it too...

regarding your unveiled assumption that other members here committed crimes today.

Why would you not yield to an emergency vehicle? I can only assume you toss that one out as an example of something you've done, something you think I've done. I get the heck out of their way as safely as my braking speed and traffic conditions allow. Who knows, it may be my house the fire truck is headed for, or one day me in the back of the ambulance.

I include myself along with high ranking members of congress and upstanding leaders of the community!

You assume an awful lot if you haven't read the code, including the particulars of what it might mean to 'yield'. Not surprising tho In the section of VA code I've dealt with even the deputies get confused over enforcement!

I think the main point we disagree on is you seem to think all laws are rational and just, thus being a criminal makes one irrational and unjust.

I don't think they're all good. I do believe in accepting responsibility for our decisions and acknowledging that they may have consequences. Banning the question of a criminal record from employment application is another attempt to deny those notions.

about what "failure to yield" means and how it's applied. I was in a situation where, due to a blind turn, road/shoulder conditions, speed limit, and plain old timing of the event, an ambulance hit a stopped car that WAS yielding to it. It's difficult to describe in a comment how it all went down, but long story short, the driver was convicted of failing to yield to an emergency vehicle...a class 1 misdemeanor. This is just one example (there are plenty more), of a law that is generally approved of by everybody, being improperly applied. If you think that only happens with relatively minor traffic violations and won't affect otherwise good people, you are sorely mistaken, and I hope you never wind up on the losing end of an unjust legal battle.

I never said you punished people directly, but you are advocating that a person's past should be held against them in perpetuity.

I double checked and I've never said that. Did I not say that was a choice of the person doing the hiring?

I'm not punishing anyone; that's a choice to be made by the hiring authority

I'm not advocating it be held against them in perpetuity. I'm advocating that the employer be allowed to ask. What he or she does with that knowledge is his choice, and should take into account the job applied for and the crime convicted.

Fail a class, & you carry the failure on your college transcript in perpetuity.

Fall off a cliff that was labeled as hazardous & off-limits to hikers, and -- assuming you survive -- you'll carry the scars on your body & bones (or even impaired and/or lack of mobility) until the day you die.

Post a picture on Facebook/Myspace of you & your friends getting drunk during freshman year at college (i.e. while under the legal age limit), & the picture will follow you around the Internet & real life until the last server in the world bites the dust.

Life isn't a golf game played with the "Mulligan" rule. You can attempt to atone for past mistakes, but you can't expect to avoid the consequences of your actions. Anyone who thinks so is living in "De-Nile", Egypt.

I draw the line at beating children (and adults) for the rest of their lives over past actions.

So you don't think it's right that a murderer, rapist, serial killer or child molester have to carry that as a burden the rest of their lives?? Personally I believe actually physically beating them for the REST of their lives is not such a bad idea. I also think you might change your mind if you were raped or molested or a member of your family was murdered or one of your kids was molested.

I make it a principle to commit crimes once a month at the most.
The rest are all misdemeanors

That at the present rate things are going by the year 2050 the USA will have a 100% incarceration rate. That means every man, woman, and child in the entire country will be behind bars then. It also means you, and everyone you know will be on the block. Maybe you weren't aware that things were that bad?

Now that you are a future ex-con how do you feel? That's right, today we have laws to lock up anyone, you just haven't been caught for your crimes yet. We'll catch up to you though. You can count on it!

Extrapolations can be hilarious...

I like Mark Twain's take (from Life on the Mississippi):

"In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

nt

Newsflash: The state of Texas has just executed it's last citizen. In related news, Texas Department of Housing has just announced cash payments to people and familys willing to move to Texas. Anybody interested please call the state Dept. of Housing for more information at 1-800-MOVE HERE.

now that anyhting anyone seems to do is a mjor crime we are flooded with so called criminals when most do not commit any serious crime but affect of many no tolorence laws. As many as half of the laws on the books are technically unconsitutional, as does not direclty provide means to protect peoples rights granted by the delclartion of independnce in the US and protect by the contstitution but insteads takes away many of the so called protected freedoms and rights of the people and makes simple honest mistakes a major crime. We have gotten most offeses now upgrade from what would have been simple misdomeanors to now feolonies.
Something has to be seriolsy done in this country soon or we are no longer as free as many other countries are.
So, that person that may have technically comminted some little minor offense when 18 still has to pay even though a very model citezen ever since at 50 year old !!!!!!!

It is a good things for the applicant because there is a chance that their application will get to the hand of the HR or whoever reviewed the application. The bad things is the company needs to have extra time and money to do extra background check and interview. But from my experience, usually the interviewer will have more than one cadidate as the result of the interview and I don't think all of the cadidate will failed the background check.

To bpate - your friend isn't a criminal. He is a HERO! Anyone who breaks in to my house and threatens my family is going to die from lead poisoning! And to all the bleeding heart liberal pukes out there, no I won't feel bad about it! I would hire your friend based on ability to think under pressure and good judgement! The next time your friend checks the box for criminal record on an application tell him to write "for protecting my family" next to the box. I would pull that application just to hear the story.

There should also be a ban on requesting/using credit report information, unemployment history, health history, social security, and driver license numbers. The intrusiveness of information gathering against applicants is rapidly approaching Orwellian proportions.

except for those jobs where it would have a direct impact; no one with hepatitis should expect to be hired by a blood bank.

I so agree! Credit report, unemployment history, etc. etc. is noone's business and is not necessary a reflection on performance. Shame on us as a society for even taking these things into consideration.

Financial companies prefer to avoid people with low credit scores because a) those people have access to larger amounts of money than the average worker, thus having a higher exposure to potential fraud & embezzlement, and b) especially for companies hiring financial planners, it doesn't look good if you're trying to advise people on how to improve their financial planning habits when your financial planners don't have the best track records themselves.

Driver's licenses are used to verify your driving history...which is important if there's the potential for you to have access to drive a company-owned car (bad driving history = less chance you'll be allowed to drive the company car).

Unemployment history isn't really that hard to deal with. Remember, there's a good chance they'll be contacting your former employers anyway. So not mentioning that the "employment" gap was because Employer X fired you is going to look worse when they hear that from the employer; better to come clean about it in the first place. And if you were unemployed through no fault of your own (i.e. company downsized your division), then it's not detrimental to your hiring potential to note that on the application. Again, it's better to fill everything out than to try to hide details... they have a way of coming up on their own.

I don't think down economy has anything to do with it. Any job worth having will have several to dozens of applications. The hiring manager doesn't want to read them all so the easiest way is to filter things out quickly.
1) no criminal record
2) Once I see a spelling mistake unless I'm impressed already throw the thing in the "maybe later" pile
etc.

I don't think criminal record should be a factor unless the crime is related to the job (fraud in a bank, child abuse in a daycare etc). So rather than use boiler plate application forms the companies should have ones that catch the things they are concerned about. In Canada you don't have to mention a criminal record if you have a pardon (usually 7 years after the crime) not sure if it is the same in the US but something like that would be good too. At some point you have to forgive the criminal or they end up serving life sentences for every crime.

This is were automated application systems both suck and are awesome depending who you are. They suck if you are an applicant you have to create an account, often manually reenter the data for your experience and the jobs you want etc for each job. I can see customizing your cover letter and being selective of what you include when you are applying in several different industries but for each job? What a nuisance. But for the employer it is great they can filter. So start with the most restrictive: no criminal record, every qualification we want, lives near by, available immediately and loosen your criteria up until you get the amount of candidates you are willing to consider.

It only makes sense to meet a prospective employee face to face depending strictly on their qualifications. Then when the backround is done, a second interview can allow for explanation. Theft and violence would be a big deal. When I was 19 20 and 21 I had some disorderly conducts and just over the limit dwis. Then at 22 changed all that and obtained a degree. Graduated in June 2008 and gave it my all. These previous, non-violent charges and a terrible economy didn't go well with eachother. Now I'm 28 and been working steady for the last few years. Criminal backrounds are typically 7 years unless it's a felony.