That Criminal Records Should Be Secret From Employers

I will be bringing new argumentation about protecting against violence in the work place, and about how we protect minorities from discrimination. This material will be integrated with my three areas of rebuttal. The link between past crime and potential future crime and employment. 1: If there is a link then that speaks to the need for the state to focus on rehabilitation. My opponent doesn't solve the problem of these people re-offending in society. If employers have a need to protect themselves they do that best by not allowing the formation of a criminal underclass. 2: If that link is true and these people are always dangerous then why is my opponent supportive of these people getting a job at all? According to him they are dangerous and employers have a duty to protect their other employees and customers. But then he seems supportive of many companies not caring about the criminal record. If he is supportive of the idea that companies are not, and should not be, judging people by their record then the record is irrelevant so why not supress it? 3: Pandering to the idea of this link, whether or not it is true, has incredible harms to society. It creates a stigma and re-enforces it because people assume that if the government is allowing this form of discrimination when it bans all others it is because all ex-cons are dangerous and cannot be trusted. This causes society to treat them as dangerous, a self-fulfilling prophecy because it causes the entrenched alienation that causes them to re-offend. In my opponents own sources it states that the percentage of employers that discriminates in this way has doubled in the last 15 years. This problem is getting worse under the status quo. 4: The link between past crime and employment skills is dubious. It is unclear to me how someone arrested for possession of pot (which is a huge amount of the people we are talking about) is unfit to be an accountant or an insurance adjuster. When it is relevant a judge should decide, having employers decide it means they make decisions based on an irrelevant record. Otherwise it does not relate to the skillset required to actually do a job in the way past experience or a degree would. The comparison to a CV is further diss-analogus because CVs do not systematically entrench poverty and crime. 5: While the majority of arrests are for nonviolent crimes or crimes that occur outside the workplace, even in the case of violent crime it is better that the record be supressed because they are capable of reform and are more likely to do so under my system, thus protecting society. 6: 57% of employers are concerned about violence. That means 43% are not. Possibly this is because they feel that after having weeded out the ex-cons they have met the burden of protecting their other employees. They should be cautious of all employees. People other than ex-cons commit crimes too and employers should take precautions and have safety measures in place regardless of whether they hire ex-cons. They are less likely to do that if they feel they have met the burden of protecting their employees in whole or in part simply by weeding out the ex-cons. Do employers have a right to protect themselves at societies cost? 1: They are not protecting themselves if they are creating a massive criminal underclass with sky high recidivism rates. Employers moving that crime around doesn"t change that people will be hurt by it. 2: That argument would never be accepted for any other form of discrimination. African-Americans are statistically more likely to commit certain crimes (because of the entrenched poverty that I am fixing). That does not mean that employers have a right to protect themselves from that greater risk by discriminating against African-Americans. 3: My opponent says it is OK because employers know what is relevant to the job. That assumes that all employers are perfectly rational and have access to perfect information. I said in r2 that their irrationality is the very basis of all anti-discrimination laws, and they cannot possibly be expected to know all the circumstances of the crime or that persons situation that might be relevant, because it can take a trial weeks to get to all that information, you can give employers access to it but they won't bother looking through it. 4: By living in a society we recognise that occasionally social needs trump those of individuals. We recognise that the social need for equality between genders, religions and ethnicities trumps the individual desires of employers, and does so whether they are rational or not. Firstly because moving ex-cons on does not solve the problem of them re-offending, so does not actually protect anyone. Secondly, with employment being so important for rehabilitation it is only employers who are in a position to help, so the duty falls to them. Thirdly, employers think they gain competitive advantage by not hiring ex-cons, so government must step in to cost the externality for them. That externality is the social cost of a massive criminal underclass and the best way to deal with that is by legislating to prevent its formation. 5: The status quo harms the full functioning of the judicial system. Judges do and should think about how society will react to a decision because they should rule based on the full consequences of that ruling. But when employers make unpredictable, harsher punishment after a jail term has ended judges are likely to make decisions that are less severe and less just then they ought to be. On poverty and recidivism. 1: My opponent conceded the link between poverty and crime, so his rebuttal was somewhat confusing. He said that there are plenty of opportunities for past offenders, that no one is really out of a job. If that is the case then why is there that link? I was clear here, the lack of employment and social acceptance causes it, my opponent offers no explanation for the facts that he concedes. 2: Unfair employers can only be unfair if the system gives them a monopoly over a labour pool, because then those people have fewer other options. 3: A list of 140 employers out of the tens of millions of employers in the US doesn't impress. Further, the people who actually make the decision to hire are human and are subject to subconscious pressures like the stigma against ex-cons, regardless of policy. 4: He says that the entrenched poverty for certain ethnic groups can be fixed with appropriate legislation. Yes. This proposal is an example of appropriate legislation. He gave no other examples. 5: When ethnicity and crime are as correlated as they are in the US, allowing discrimination based on one allows discrimination based on the other by indirect means. Ethnic discrimination is an awful thing, and one that people deserve protection from. Allowing racist employers the ability to nearly halve the number of African-Americans or Hispanics they can hire based on the excuse of criminality not only allows the poverty of those communities, but entrenches that racism. Whether that is conscious or unconscious, each time it happens it gets re-enforced in society and in that individuals mind. People and communities deserve protection from that. In conclusion I want to say two things. First, my opponent thinks that employers should have all information and can decide whether it is relevant. Does he support employers asking about sexuality or religion? Or making decisions based on ethnicity or gender? Of course not, because we all recognise that they don't have a right to all information and that they often react to information based on irrational preferences, an irrationality the status quo is making worse. Second, my opponent and the status quo offer no solution to recidivism. None. People are being hurt and the problem is getting worse and worse. Let's do something about it.