IRL I knew someone who was charged with child sexual abuse. He went to prison awaiting trial, but the prosecution dropped the charges before it got there. He was released and went about his life.
Meanwhile his mug shot photo in the local paper was the number one google search result for his name. And then it reached syndication for other news sites as well.
Ideally those news paper articles should be updated to say the prosecution dropped the charges, but the reality is that at where I live, the arrest makes news but the prosecution dropping charges does not.
I think libel laws should be updated, so entities are compelled to correct the record when requested. News media have gotten away with publishing "well we thought it was true at the time" (or "we didn't say it, we said someone else said it") for too long.
Publishing the name of a suspect should generally not be tolerated. Particularly in the case of mass shootings or general terrorism.
Unless the person is a politician or an active danger, no good comes from publishing their name. In the case they are guilty, you are giving notoriety which encourages copycats. In the case they are innocent, you've seriously harmed the reputation of an innocent person.
The only reason I'd make a carve out for politicians is because well connected politicians have a way of wiggling out of responsibility and electing someone that may spend the next two years behind bars is generally worse for the public they'd represent.
One could argue that a newspaper is continuously publishing something on its website. And therefore it has a duty to keep any archives it keeps available to the public updated.
Obviously that might just lead to most publications deleting all their archives...
There was an arrest. The alleged crime was published -- but since it was alleged, the news outlet doesn't have to prove it was true, they were reporting on what was alleged by the police. So libel laws had little to do with it.
It's possible the police "juiced" the story in the media, only then to try to sweep it under the rug when it didn't play out the way they were hoping. Or maybe the police thought it was all true, but the victim recanted when questioned about inconsistencies.
Whatever happened afterwards, it didn't make the papers. There's no conviction, just the arrest and allegations.
I know that there is the saying that goes something like “a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich,” but at least there is an acknowledgment there that being publically accused of a crime can come with a pretty high cost to the accused, and that is worth some process.
I served in a grand jury in NY and it was overall a pretty positive experience. Yes, the standard is lower and at times it can feel like a rubber stamp, but we did refuse to indict in two cases where we decided the DA failed to get us to “more likely than not.”
I knew someone charged with having large amounts of CSAM. He was also named in local media before conviction, although you really had to go looking for it to find it.
More importantly perhaps, he was a scout leader and his scout group were informed, I believe by the police, as early as the investigation began - i.e. before being charged, let alone convicted.
Given the topic of the investigation, as much as I think people not yet convicted should be treated as innocent, I also think the public has a right to protections in cases where there is a plausible threat. In this case regardless of his guilt, there was a plausible threat to children under his care.
The problem is that if you tell a scout group you're telling the parents, and it only takes one to make a stink about it for it to spread. Sadly, although perhaps expectedly, the nuance of plausible threat vs conviction is often lost in times like this.
Were they convicted? It seems irresponsible to let someone strongly suspected of harming children to continue to have close contact with children. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a criminal justice concept. It actually doesn’t apply to civil matters.
Just because charges were dropped doesn't mean they were innocent. It could mean there wasn't enough reliable witness testimony, physical evidence, or the evidence was tainted in a way that the prosecution did not believe they would get a conviction in a court of law.
You get into an argument. The other guy is a cop it turns out. He arrests you for a trumped up charge and makes sure to tell the media. Child sexual abuse is the charge.
This is true, for sure, but there is also the flip side where evidence is wrong, mistaken, planted, framed etc, which comes out during the trial. Where do you balance it?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
Reminds me of a laugh-out-loud closing paragraph in a 2009 NYT article about the clash between Wikipedia & German lawyers over some infamous murderers' right-to-be-forgotten.
Read the whole thing for maximum effect, but for me it beautifully demonstrates the contrast between the USA/Wikipedia/NYT ethos of "the truth is always printable and your speech is by default 'on the record'" and alternate expectations elsewhere.
Worth noting that both Germany’s highest criminal court and the European Court of Human Rights in the end decided that the people in question don’t have a right to get their names expunged from archives (or Wikipedia).
I know Library of Congress has a newspaper database. But does anyone know if newspapers are covered by mandatory deposit in the US? Many European countries archive all national newspapers, printed or digital, so they won't be lost for posterity if deleted by their publisher.
To me it seems unreasonable to require publishers to keep an immutable record. Shouldn't be forced by law to keep up your blog posts. National Libraries and legal deposit were literally made to solve this issue.
The local newspaper here recently shut down. They had close to 100 years of archives, went to the dump. They tried to give them to the library, to the local university, to anyone. No takers.
Again I don't know the scope of US mandatory deposit. But in the countries such as the UK, the Scandinavian countries, or Germany tall issues of such a newspaper would already be in the archive of the national library, in two copies.
The US has a very weak legal deposit scheme compared to e.g. the UK. IIRC, legal deposit is only required where the author applies for copyright registration, so it’s extremely unlikely that a newspaper would be subject to the legal deposit scheme.
I wish newspapers were more concerned about being an objective system of record rather than trying to push social goals by helping rewrite history. They should post follow-ups for those wrongly convicted or after the fact caveats but completely memory holeing news stories strikes me as deeply disturbing
I would like them to refrain from naming people until/unless they are actually convicted.
Heck, I would probably go a step further and update defamation laws to make publishing allegations (legal or otherwise) considered equivalent to making allegations. Far too many lives have been ruined by media “just reporting on allegations”
Ideally we would live in a society that simply didn't give weight to arrests or accusations, only convictions. (Exceptions may be made for outstanding cases, such as a preponderance of evidence or accusers that appears only after the statute of limitations is up.)
I used to work with someone who was arrested for having a beer in his possession when he was 20 years old. The circumstances were pretty colorful, and so it made the local news. He had since worked his way into management at the company we worked for. One day he mentioned that the article about his arrest finally fell off the Google index after more than a decade, and he was relieved about that. One of his reports in the room immediately jumped on Google and used their tool for re-indexing sites to get the article back in the results for his boss, and then he proudly announced how he "solved that problem!"
Of all the career-limiting moves I've witnessed in my lifetime, that one was pretty near the top.
I'm honestly surprised that after 20 years of the Internet "never forgetting" things like this, we haven't gotten a lot better about forgiving them instead.
Much has been written about Gen Z having a tiny appetite for risky behavior, and the causes are attributed to all sorts of stuff. But my entirely unscientific bet is that there is a real chilling effect to growing up as the first generation that had entirely digital “permanent records” and zero tolerance policies for their entire lives. Very little room for error when, regardless of whether you learned anything from it or not, your mistake is recorded forever and searchable by anybody. And because the rest of society didn’t grow up with that level of retention, they’ll still judge you for it being documented.
I also think search engines sometimes remove results based on subject requests - at least I've seen such notices in Google search results, that some hits were removed due to 'right to be forgotten' policies.
Unpopular opinion (it seems): I think it is OK to some extent. Not for serious crimes (violence, murder etc.) but there's an awful lot of 'lesser crimes' reported with full names where I think subjects might deserve a clean slate or where people have some right to privacy. In the extreme case, everything court-related and all infractions could be public and subject to auto-generated news, and forever searchable: traffic fines, civil cases, neighbor complaints (either way) etc. All parts of an immutable record for everyone to look up by name. I personally think that is a violation of privacy, so it has to be balanced. Maybe the best balance is not to write the names to begin with.
In Denmark where I'm from, court cases are almost always public and the subject names are read aloud as well; however the names are not listed on the court lists or in the publicly accessible version of the verdicts. In order for the media to learn the name, a journalist has to physically go and see the trial. This already prevents automation and ensures prioritization by the media. Furthermore, most news media have a policy of only writing the subject's name after a guilty verdict has been found and even then only if the verdict was of some severity (unless it is a public person). I just checked on media outlet and their policy was to only write the name in case of a custodial sentence of at least 24 months. If it weren't for such policies, even relatively small cases would be reported with full name and be searchable forever.
rebuttals are never read by anyone. there are numerous examples of this like in our modern age a completely bogus story will “go viral” and will be shared / read by millions and millions while a retraction will go completely unnoticed.
even more serious, bogus scientific studies like the one that started the whole “vaccines cause autism” while fully disputed cannot be undone with a retraction/rebuttal
Readit News
Meanwhile his mug shot photo in the local paper was the number one google search result for his name. And then it reached syndication for other news sites as well.
Ideally those news paper articles should be updated to say the prosecution dropped the charges, but the reality is that at where I live, the arrest makes news but the prosecution dropping charges does not.
Unless the person is a politician or an active danger, no good comes from publishing their name. In the case they are guilty, you are giving notoriety which encourages copycats. In the case they are innocent, you've seriously harmed the reputation of an innocent person.
The only reason I'd make a carve out for politicians is because well connected politicians have a way of wiggling out of responsibility and electing someone that may spend the next two years behind bars is generally worse for the public they'd represent.
Obviously that might just lead to most publications deleting all their archives...
It's possible the police "juiced" the story in the media, only then to try to sweep it under the rug when it didn't play out the way they were hoping. Or maybe the police thought it was all true, but the victim recanted when questioned about inconsistencies.
Whatever happened afterwards, it didn't make the papers. There's no conviction, just the arrest and allegations.
I served in a grand jury in NY and it was overall a pretty positive experience. Yes, the standard is lower and at times it can feel like a rubber stamp, but we did refuse to indict in two cases where we decided the DA failed to get us to “more likely than not.”
But it's more of a cultural thing people just mind their own business.
Of course, this is not limited to the Netherlands, but it's the point of the discussion: how to prevent more abuse, more of whatever crime.
More importantly perhaps, he was a scout leader and his scout group were informed, I believe by the police, as early as the investigation began - i.e. before being charged, let alone convicted.
Given the topic of the investigation, as much as I think people not yet convicted should be treated as innocent, I also think the public has a right to protections in cases where there is a plausible threat. In this case regardless of his guilt, there was a plausible threat to children under his care.
The problem is that if you tell a scout group you're telling the parents, and it only takes one to make a stink about it for it to spread. Sadly, although perhaps expectedly, the nuance of plausible threat vs conviction is often lost in times like this.
You get into an argument. The other guy is a cop it turns out. He arrests you for a trumped up charge and makes sure to tell the media. Child sexual abuse is the charge.
Now what?
They cannot do this, their reputation is at stake. I've seen very few newspapers who recognised they made a failure.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
But there are many more people and organizations there that benefit from fewer prisoners.
For most purposes, a country is not a singular thing.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Dead Comment
In the example in the article, a kid vandalized a tombstone in a graveyard, and can’t find a job years later.
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...
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.
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.
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
Dead Comment
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Where is the enslavement?
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...
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.
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.
Dead Comment
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/us/13wiki.html
Read the whole thing for maximum effect, but for me it beautifully demonstrates the contrast between the USA/Wikipedia/NYT ethos of "the truth is always printable and your speech is by default 'on the record'" and alternate expectations elsewhere.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Sedlmayr#Murder
It was well worth the read!
To me it seems unreasonable to require publishers to keep an immutable record. Shouldn't be forced by law to keep up your blog posts. National Libraries and legal deposit were literally made to solve this issue.
Dead Comment
Heck, I would probably go a step further and update defamation laws to make publishing allegations (legal or otherwise) considered equivalent to making allegations. Far too many lives have been ruined by media “just reporting on allegations”
number or views/shares on the follow-up for wrong conviction: 17
Of all the career-limiting moves I've witnessed in my lifetime, that one was pretty near the top.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
Unpopular opinion (it seems): I think it is OK to some extent. Not for serious crimes (violence, murder etc.) but there's an awful lot of 'lesser crimes' reported with full names where I think subjects might deserve a clean slate or where people have some right to privacy. In the extreme case, everything court-related and all infractions could be public and subject to auto-generated news, and forever searchable: traffic fines, civil cases, neighbor complaints (either way) etc. All parts of an immutable record for everyone to look up by name. I personally think that is a violation of privacy, so it has to be balanced. Maybe the best balance is not to write the names to begin with.
In Denmark where I'm from, court cases are almost always public and the subject names are read aloud as well; however the names are not listed on the court lists or in the publicly accessible version of the verdicts. In order for the media to learn the name, a journalist has to physically go and see the trial. This already prevents automation and ensures prioritization by the media. Furthermore, most news media have a policy of only writing the subject's name after a guilty verdict has been found and even then only if the verdict was of some severity (unless it is a public person). I just checked on media outlet and their policy was to only write the name in case of a custodial sentence of at least 24 months. If it weren't for such policies, even relatively small cases would be reported with full name and be searchable forever.
So instead of deleting the record of my arrest, I could add some kind of comment explaining that I was not convicted in the end.
even more serious, bogus scientific studies like the one that started the whole “vaccines cause autism” while fully disputed cannot be undone with a retraction/rebuttal