While I agree that people deserve an opportunity to move on from their past, I still want to know who I’m employing. It’s not just about crimes that may be relevant to the role. Who decides what’s relevant?
A crime completely unrelated to my business may be very relevant to someone I already employ. I have a small business where people are working in relatively close quarters. I don’t want to put a rapist, stalker or some other kind of predator in there with the young woman I just hired. If there was ever a problem that would be on my conscience.
There are all sorts of others I don’t want to deal with either. This is a place where the people I bring in will be around my family, my employees and my customers. I have a responsibility to look out for each of them.
All that said, I wouldn’t hesitate to hire someone with a criminal background if the crime is irrelevant or I assess the risk is low. I don’t care if someone got busted with weed or that they got a DUI 10 years ago. I don’t care if it’s a one time crime related to a very specific set of circumstances that’s unlikely to ever repeat. Or a bar fight, drag racing or dozens of other dumb lapses in judgment that can result in serious charges. But I do care that I’m able to make an informed decision.
Good - they're the ones hiring, they're the ones taking on risk, it's their money they're spending. It should be up to them whether a particular criminal history is relevant to the job. Even if it's not relevant and they just don't want to work with someone with a particular criminal history, isn't that their right?
> In fact, a person’s criminal history has become so trivial that although employers can ask a prospective candidate about it during pre-employment screenings or background checks, many states do not allow that employer to discriminate based on their findings.
Is this really true? As an employer, there are some crimes I'd be happy to give people a second chance on, but others, no way.
For example, I would 100% not hire a rapist or a pedophile. And I would only hire a murderer if there were exceptional mitigating circumstances.
Some crimes tell you a lot about someone's character, even if they have completed their prison sentence.
On an aside, should employers be able to talk about if someone has a criminal or sexual assault history? Because if we say people should be free of their past, it’s pretty clear that criminal history is a huge job killer for a lot of people.
Put yourself in a companies position, if you hire someone who had a violent past, and they commit a violent crime while at work, or to a coworker or client off the clock, the company will be held liable, no two ways about it, it will come back on the company.
Additionally, there are countless contracts that require you specifically not have anyone with criminal convictions, and require full background checks to be awarded the contracts, even more so if it was a violent felony.
Those are two very serious liabilities to a company, I understand that people deserve a second chance, but do you put your company at risk to give it to them?
I'm really not trying to argue with you. I'm not making any broad sweeping statements like "I WILL NOT HIRE A FELON". Someone could have a criminal record and be a decent person, just as someone without a criminal record could be a terrible person. Hiring good employees is hard enough. It's not just about raw skill or ability or determination, when hiring you have to make a judgement call about that person. Can you work with this person? Is this a good investment on behalf of the business? Like I take someone's employment history into consideration, I don't think criminal history is irrelevant.
I'm 100% sure this negatively impacts the ability for those with records to get jobs. That really, really sucks for them. And like you mentioned, of course that would contribute to recidivism. Who's going to hire a thief to work unsupervised where they could just steal stuff again? That might be an unfair characterization, but I'd like to talk to the candidate about that and see if _I_ believed they were not going to steal my shit. If someone has a litany of drug convictions, I'd probably be hesitant to assume they were totally trustworthy to show up to work every day. But I'd like to talk to them about it. I guess your position is "it's none of your business", and you could be right about that.
I don't have a perspective on the ethics of easier background checks. We run employment checks, the ultimate decision of whether to hire falls to the customer ALWAYS. I've seen plenty of former criminals get hired. It's a workplace culture 'thing'.
The right to be forgotten is alive and well most of the time, 90% of our clients don't observe information further back than a few years. I feel like that is a fair assessment of someone's behavior.
I'd hire a guy who was an ex-con, but not if his criminal history related directly to the thing I'm hiring him to do. I'd hire a guy who robbed a bank 20 years ago to design a bridge or build houses. A guy who screwed over his employer, though? No, not if there were any other candidates available.
>Is it possible that you consider the flaw in the process to be of a different nature? Such as that there should under no circumstances be any interest in a person's criminal history in any hiring process?
Yes. If, as you say, criminal history was not a bar to employment, why ask the question at all if you are going to run a background check anyhow? You contradict yourself by stating that "criminal history was not an bar to employment" but also that "The nature of the roles in question [...] required us to care about the pasts of the candidates." so it's difficult to understand why you are so firm on this point. Anyhow, there are plenty of protected groups of people that a prospective employer can't legally discriminate against, yet the discrimination still happens.
The applicant has to take a calculated risk when deciding whether to answer the question about criminal history honestly. Maybe a better question on the application, rather than asking outright about criminal history and discarding an applicant when you catch them in a lie, is asking about relevant convictions that might have some implications about whether that person has a history of violations in your area of practice, or present a conflict to your customers.
I think unless the crime is directly linked to the job, for instance bank robbery and working in a bank, they should not be allowed to ask you about your criminal history.
They said that it should be up to them, as to whether they hire that person after a background check eg reveals something.
There are very obvious cases where it makes a lot of sense to screen people based on background checks (eg a daycare or school). Further to that point, every business operator is different and has different beliefs. One operator might be ok with hiring a previously convicted rapist. The next business owner might be a woman who was raped in the past and has a very different view on that for good reason.
In my experience (interviewed a lot of people in 40 years in the software business), mostly you see DUIs, marijuana possession, and things like burglary or auto theft, vandalism, trespassing from way back when the candidate was a teenager or young adult. It would matter how far back the incident occurred and if the candidate only had one conviction rather than a pattern of repeated criminal behavior.
I don't think someone should get penalized their whole life for a mistake, but multiple convictions or recent convictions will make anyone wonder about who they are hiring. I've hired candidates who had drug-related convictions but had stayed away from drugs for years. I hired a man who had a fairly old conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm because he had a good explanation (and even though I'm not a fan of carrying guns). I have passed on people who had stolen from their employer or had convictions for violent crimes like assault, robbery, or sex offenses.
An employer has to consider more than giving a candidate with a record a second chance. They also have to consider the safety (real or perceived) of their other employees. If people at a company find out that they're working alongside someone with a history of violent assaults they aren't going to like that.
Sometimes a person can get their criminal record sealed or expunged, maybe worth it to discuss with a lawyer.
Except criminal background checks don't just aim at murderers and rapists. Felonies are often a drug-related, and often in states with stricter laws. And no, it's not your business if a job candidate got caught with a joint or even something worse years ago, on his own leisure time, or got a DUI in college a decade ago. Why should that continue to be allowed to be your business, if you hire (for instance) a programmer? Finally, what about time served? A person should be punished forever?
So then would you agree that when it comes to people that should have been released, you don't need to know what their past crimes were? At least when they're not specifically relevant to the job?
If your criminal record is truly relevant to the job, then the employer should do the responsible thing and get a proper background check done. Which are factual and non-biased. Such things shouldn't be left up to google page ranking algorithms and media that tends toward sensationalisation. It's lazy and unprofessional.
> Why would they hire mark over a similar employee with a clean record?
Is it useful to have people with a history of low level crime habitually unemployable. Don't we want to reduce crime.
> Mark needs to be given the opportunity to demonstrate to an employer hes no longer a cookie monster.
Mark is innocent of further crimes until he is convicted and the employer would need to have reasonable cause to discriminate against him. We have parole and other such mechanisms where official bodies can decide how long a person needs to speed demonstrating they are no longer a criminal, and make sure the relevant people are aware of this. Why leave it up to some random employer armed with google.
> He would do this by taking a lower than average pay,
Why does he deserve lower pay. This is just enabling employers to take advantage of vulnerable people.
> and giving the employer the option to terminate his employment at any time without cause.
The employer has the right to terminate at any time for mark committing a criminal act. He doesn't need this. Plus this is europe and workers have rights
To be clear, when I hire I don't care about past non-violent, non-fraud and non-work related convictions.
I am just saying that I think there is a reasonable discussion to be had around businesses discriminating based on conviction (or outstanding warrants). I find it highly offensive to my democratic principles for the government to encourage businesses to pursue those tending to their charges or warrants prior to (potential) conviction.
It should be up to the employer. If one company thinks that a past conviction is irrelevant while other companies think a past conviction is disqualifying, then the former may get the employee at a better rate, the company will thrive depending on whether they were right, they'll have more resources to hire ex-cons, and other companies will follow suit.
A blanket law that forces all companies to hire employees without considering information they think is important is really inefficient. Just recently, governments and people were complaining that rideshare companies weren't being exclusive enough! If you think new laws will find the optimal policy for all companies, you are incorrect!
It's also overreaching. Freedom of association is important. The owner of a Jewish deli shouldn't be compelled to hire a formerly convicted neo-Nazi.
> You can’t just ask businesses to stop doing background checks and employ convicted felons and hope they will not embezzle funds from their new employer. The risk is too high.
No, you can't.
The problem is that the criminal history prevents employment for life, not just for the few years while someone is getting back on their feet after jail.
For example, when I was in college, my fraternity paid our cook cash. He (the cook) always seemed to have side-hustles or was picking up odd cooking jobs.
After I got to know him for a few years, he told me that he was convicted approximately 20 years prior for cocaine distribution. He implied that he had a lot when he was caught. Then he told me he couldn't get a normal job because of his record.
My point is that, after a certain period of time with no recidivism, (maybe 5 years,) the criminal record should not be a barrier to general employment.
Sure that's part of it if it's actually adequate, but people and businesses have a right to know if you have a criminal record and make risk-assessments based on that.
Jail time doesn't reverse your wrongdoing on society and the way it's currently setup - it's not really a redeeming process. Why should a business hire you over someone as qualified with no record?
We're basically talking about felonies anyway. Misdemeanors are generally irrelevant for most jobs and you can get those expunged from your record.
A crime completely unrelated to my business may be very relevant to someone I already employ. I have a small business where people are working in relatively close quarters. I don’t want to put a rapist, stalker or some other kind of predator in there with the young woman I just hired. If there was ever a problem that would be on my conscience.
There are all sorts of others I don’t want to deal with either. This is a place where the people I bring in will be around my family, my employees and my customers. I have a responsibility to look out for each of them.
All that said, I wouldn’t hesitate to hire someone with a criminal background if the crime is irrelevant or I assess the risk is low. I don’t care if someone got busted with weed or that they got a DUI 10 years ago. I don’t care if it’s a one time crime related to a very specific set of circumstances that’s unlikely to ever repeat. Or a bar fight, drag racing or dozens of other dumb lapses in judgment that can result in serious charges. But I do care that I’m able to make an informed decision.
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