That Criminal Records Should Be Secret From Employers

There is a problem in our society. Certain areas, and certain demographics, are entrenched in a cycle of crime and poverty that is destroying lives and communities. America imprisons more people than the Russia under communism, or South Africa under apartheid, and the continuing discrimination faced by people who were previously criminal forces them to remain in that poverty and in that life of crime. I propose a clear solution. Employers should have no access to record of past criminal convictions, and should not be allowed to ask about past convictions in interviews, similar to the way it is illegal to ask about sexuality in a job interview. Judges, however, should be allowed to stipulate that a criminal should be banned from a particular career path, like being a CEO for someone who has committed fraud, or working with children for a paedophile. I will show that judges should be allowed to make that decision, while employers should not. I will also show that judges will be better at making that decision under my proposal. Crime is an awful thing, but so is discrimination. I"m going to show two things. First, that employers do not have a legitimate right to hand out additional punishment to past criminals. Second, that my proposal aids in rehabilitating past criminals. Employers do not have a right to punish people in this way. Our society has determined that the nexus of punishment should be the courts, and there are very good reasons for that. Firstly, judges are accountable to the state. This means that they are able to take rights from individuals (like employment or freedom) while the employer is not; because the judge is an agent of the state, and represents society. Secondly, a judge is a trained professional, and is thus more able to determine what is in the best interest of society. An employer cannot be expected to understand the social impacts of their decision to systematically deny these people jobs. Third, a judge has access to the whole story. When an employer looks at a criminal record, they simply reject that applicant. There is no discussion of mitigating circumstances or what lead to that particular crime. That means that people lose a potential job, regardless of whether that is actually what they deserve. Fourth, judicial decisions will be better under my proposal. Judges, when trying to decide on an appropriate level of punishment, currently have to predict what will happen to that criminal out in society. Judges shouldn"t have weigh the irrational response of potential employers, especially when that employer will make their decision based on a popular conception of the risks associated with criminality. That conception is constantly changing and may have no relation to reality anyway. That leads judges to impose sentences that are different to what justice requires, because they are trying to compensate for that. Furthermore, strict limits must be placed on when we allow employers to discriminate. An employer"s perception of threat cannot be the test; we have anti-discrimination laws precisely because employers cannot be trusted to do that rationally. At a very minimum, that discrimination must be because of something directly related to the work they are doing. I"ve already said that judges can place restrictions if there is an actual threat, and judges with access to expert testimony are able to do that better then employers. Moreover, employers can and should judge everyone"s trustworthiness and competence at the point of the job interview, because not all untrustworthy people have a criminal record. Irrationally trusting to a computer record that doesn"t give the full story and which has the stigma of criminality attached to it means employers are not fulfilling their duty in actually determining trustworthiness. Criminals deserve to be punished but that punishment ought be appropriate to the crime. Judges can determine that, not employers. My second argument, is on how this affects rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is the most important aim of the criminal justice system. Firstly, given that criminals are going to be released, society has an interest in them not committing more crimes. Secondly, given the overwhelming statistical co-relation between poverty and criminality, it is often the entrenched policy caused by the governments own failures that cause that criminality, so the government has a moral duty to try and fix that problem. Criminality isn"t usually an innate and inalienable part of someone, but is caused by a confluence of circumstances. To commit a crime, a person has to have need, opportunity, and an ability to rationalise the behaviour as "fair" or "just". My proposal helps with all three, and so makes recidivism less likely. Firstly, on need. When people are systematically denied a job they are more likely to need to resort to criminal behaviour to provide for themselves and their family. In the most extreme cases they need shelter and food and are driven to crime to provide that. But even if welfare covers the basics, wealth is a part of social status in our society, so a job with the prospect of advancement, productivity and promotion is more likely to cover the need for that sort of status as well. Moreover, the systematic loss of dignity involved in being denied job after job after job drives people into gang culture in order to restore that dignity. Secondly, on opportunity. When people are being systematically denied jobs because of a criminal record, those employers that are willing to overlook that record tend to have multiple ex-felons working for them, because there is virtually nowhere else they can get a job. This means two things, first, that the employer has a captive labour market and so can get away with never paying more than minimum wage, which speaks to their need. Secondly, it means those people are always exposed to other criminogenic elements, which provide them opportunity to commit more crimes. Every day at work, and in the slum neighbourhoods they are forced to live in, they meet people in gangs, people with access to drugs, people who can sell stolen goods, people who have certain criminal skill sets, who can crack safes, launder money, get guns, have a hideout, can make false IDs. When those people are all concentrated in one area it creates more opportunity for them to commit crimes, if they can get jobs wherever they want they are less likely to have that opportunity. Thirdly, on the ability to rationalize the behaviour. When someone feels they are a part of an underclass that is systematically discriminated against then they are less likely to feel beholden to the laws of their society. Nearly 40% of African-Americans will have a criminal record by the end of their life. Part of the reason for that is the poverty forced on them by the discrimination of employers. Another part is that in certain areas that population feels like they are being shut out from society unjustly. This doesn"t just speak to preventing recidivism, but beginning to fix the systematic alienation of African-Americans also prevents the original crimes, because youths in those areas are better provided for by their parents, but also because they feel less alien as a whole from the society whose laws we wish them to obey. They will feel more like those laws are legitimate, they will feel more like society represents them when it makes those laws, and so will be more likely to obey them. How can an employer be expected to know the harm they are doing to society when they deny a felon a job? They can"t. The state should intervene to protect people from recidivism and the creation of entrenched cycles of poverty and crime. I proudly stand in proposition.