Hypothetically speaking
(anyone can answer, but I’m more interested in those with skepticism towards authorities)
Depends on the business I am running, how otherwise qualified they are, what their supposed crime actually was, their side of the story, and general demeanor. I’m going to be honest though, it’s mostly the last one. You can usually tell real fast by how someone acts if they had trouble with the law because they’re an uneducated degenerate or a con man. It’s not impossible to manipulate me, but most criminals are not geniuses. If it really seems like they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they have learned from their mistakes if they admit to it, that’s a different story.
I was friends with a murderer for a long time actually. He got blackout drunk, woke up, some dude was dead. He used to have a drinking problem. Doesn’t remember it, but is positive it was him. Was in jail a long time, used the time to read a lot. He was significantly older than me and would give me and others advice on how to not be an idiot like he was. His words. I doubt the family would forgive him but shit happens. He told me once sometimes he wished he’d gotten the death penalty because it was hard af to turn his life entirely around, but it got better once he had a daughter. I’d still be friends with him if he didn’t become annoying and stubborn over the years. He wasn’t always wrong, just mildly an asshole sometimes.
Family business here that hired a veteran homeless man. He had prior convictions and a drug problem. My dad gave him a job and a place to stay. He worked for 1 week and left without a trace. We found him on the streets one day and he said he didn’t trust himself to not commit another crime and decided to continue living on the street.
Not everyone wants to be helped by us small business owners. Some need more help than just a job and a place to stay.
Ive been to prison so yeah, I would hire them on the spot.
Its hard enough to come back so as long as its legally allowable I’d give anything I could to help.
I hire the person, not their mistakes, which everybody makes. I’ve seen sketchy people who turned out to be great employees, and people from impeccable backgrounds who were scummy, unrepentant criminals. I don’t even ask about criminal records when I hire someone.
I do care about them being MAGA. I won’t have corrupt traitors/ racists/ pedophiles working for me, or around my good, valuable employees. At best, they’ll steal from me, at worst they’ll exploit and molest my employees and customers.
Like most complex things, the answer is: it depends.
In this case, it’s mostly about what the alleged crime is and what the role is. If someone was convicted of sexual assault of a minor and I’m hiring for a daycare, possible licensing issues and laws aside, I’d probably pass on that person. If I’m hiring an auto mechanic and the person was convicted of smoking weed, I’m only going to care that they aren’t operating heavy equipment while intoxicated.The other thing to consider is how much time has passed since the conviction. To use a real, related example, I knew a guy who held a US Government TS/SCI clearance and who had been through a full scope polygraph. For those unfamiliar, this basically means that he had access to highly classified material and he had also been through a multi-hour polygraph. And despite the dubious nature of those, they often winnow out a lot of people. He was also a major drug user in the 1970s and '80s. The list of drugs he didn’t do was probably short than the ones he had done. But, between being honest about it and the amount of time which had passed since he got clean, he had no trouble getting and maintaining that clearance. Who you were then and who you are now can be pretty radically different.
Like any hiring process, it’s going to be a case by case basis. I’m actually involved in interviewing people for my current employer and the selection process hinges on many little things. You can have someone who is great on paper, but they have the personality of a raging walrus and that just kills their chances. You can also have folks who just have an off day, but it kills trust in that individual on the part of the interviewers. Hell, I’ve interviewed folks and immediately thought, “they don’t fit this role, but goddamn I wish they had applied when we were looking for this other role six months ago.” Interviewing people is weird, but I haven’t seen a better solution for selecting a candidate for many roles.
If I ran a small business and my business is not detective work, I wouldn’t be a good judge of whether or not they were innocent.
I would care less about a wrongful conviction and would care more about how open and honest they were. If they made a mistake and learned from it (I’m not saying conviction/incarceration taught them the lesson, who knows what actually taught them) and they were repentant, I would trust them over someone who said they’d never made a mistake.
I’m older, though. At my age, if you don’t have flaws, you either lie, or you haven’t lived. Someone who has flaws but they’ve made them a better person is more interesting to me.
I’d be more likely to hire them if they didn’t claim innocence.
I mean, let’s say the person said something like: “It wasn’t me, they [framed me / they got the wrong person / etc…]”
I mean people do get wrongfully convicted… but who do you believe? The courts, or this person claiming innocence who might actually be telling the truth (but you can’t really verify it)? That’s the crux of this problem.
I think what Nemo is saying is, if there’s 2 people applying for a job. Both ex convicts.
Jim says “I didn’t do it. I was framed”
And Bob says “Yeah I killed her. So what?”
Nemo hires Bob.
Probably not if it was “So what?” but maybe if it was “…and it was the worst mistake of my life.”
I’m just looking for a little self-reflection.
Depends on what it is, I have hired people with past convictions before, though.
Like, trespassing? Okay whatever.
Shoplifting 15 years ago? Okay whatever.
Embezzling money a couple years ago and you’re going to be a cashier? Yeah, no.
Depends on the business and the conviction. E.g. if I’m sending cleaners into people’s homes, I probably feel a little wary if you stuck up a liquor store. Maybe don’t make a car thief a valet. That kinda thing.
Some dumb drug/gun charge, etc.? I probably wouldn’t care.
Sex crimes are a no-go across the board for me. Take that shit back to the White House.
Sex crimes can be very much a grey area going as far as to convict the victim. For example people that got convicted of child molestation because they were in a teen in a physical relationship with a partner their own age and got caught by their partner’s parents who ran to the police yelling that “my child is pure, innocent, and would never consent to such things!”
Or the person charged with indecent exposure because they were cooking naked not realizing that someone was taking a short cut through the back yard with a child who liked to peak into windows. If I recall correctly, the person was able to get the conviction overturned because they had a very good lawyer who argued the room was only visible from the land the home was on and the homeowner had clearly marked the area as private property. Even then, it was only an appeals court that listened.
I am not saying that most (or even many) sex crime convictions are not justified, but I would at least let someone explain themselves before I totally cast them off.
I don’t know if I would believe them. To put it bluntly a fairly large number of people lie. If you never lied and explained that you had a conviction but you were innocent, I’d be significantly more inclined to believe you.
I also don’t know that I would care. Someone that got popped for smoking dope as a teen in the 90s is not a crime I’m worried about. Innocent or not doesn’t matter. Something more violent or problematic to the company is going to be a different story.
If you were honest from the start I’ll give you time to explain, but if you lied on the resume, that gets to the “problematic for the company” bit.
Distrust of police is separate from distrust of the legal system, at least in my eyes. Your question is about two different groups - Two applicants walks in and one is exLEO and one is not. Thats different than two applicants walk in and one being a felon/one not.
For criminals, people draw all sorts of lines. Sex crimes, violent crime, robbery, crimes of any kind against children. Different people in different fields will draw different lines. A great example is people who work with money obviously get leery around people charged with theft, embezzlement, or tampering. This is why convicts working trash services is such a “popular” job for the deeper end of the crime spectrum. They dont work with people, children, or money. You can be a sex pest, violent home invader, fraudster, and none of that matters because you sling cans and don’t talk to homeowners. If you can wake up at 4am, and show up not drunk, and can move 60-120 lb trashcan, you have a job. All this to say, it would depend on what my hypothetical small business is doing, and what position applied for, where I’d draw that line with regards to monetary crimes. Violence and sex crimes are harder to justify allowing as customer facing the worse they get, but in accounting? Hardly relevant I’d think unless its egregious or consistent enough to think I’ll be replacing them in 6 months as they caught a repeat case. I worked with a man who was charged with assault over a decade prior for getting in a fight, and nothing else. No issues as a cashier - because it was a fight with a dude over something not a recurring anger issue. Case by case.
As for exLEO, as the question probably wants to ask, people in this thread would probably get leery about why they are looking for new work. Retired and Forced to Quit are very different reasons that HR won’t answer and the person is not obligated to be forthcoming about yet probably what people would want to know. Its also generally a highly prized skillset, honestly. On the professional end, you (generally) have report writing skills, documentation, and hypervigilance skills. While honesty of LEOs is probably the OPs aimed weak point, most customer facing jobs do not have the one thing LEOs perceptually abuse - authorisation to use force. Most customer facing jobs dont allow you to talk back, get in confrontations where you might be the cause, or put hands on people. For these reasons most people who distrust former police will still hire them.
Edit: I guess all this to say, it depends on the crime, and depends on how deeply you distrust former cops. I don’t even trust my regular coworkers/employees to show up on fucking time, and they arent either felons or former cops. I’d be their boss hiring them cuz I need a job done - I’m not interviewing for new BFFs and looking to get chummy about their idiosyncrasies. So for me the only important part I see is “does their history with these institutions show they are so distrustful that I will have to fire them quickly?”
It would matter extremely of what they were convicted of because that is ultimately a risk game.
If the guy was convicted of something related to financial(like fraud, theft etc) or hostility(murder, assault etc) I wouldn’t take the chance, otherwise I wouldn’t really care.
Remember, it doesn’t matter whether he did or not. it’s what society as a whole believes he did. If it’s a risk or liability to the company then it’s a no, but if it’s something that’s like a “oh well OK then” such as an old drug issue, IP violation, disorderly conduct etc, it’s whatever. If the public isn’t going to think differently of the company, and the financial stability of the company is not at risk, then go for it.
Although this also is assuming the guy has credentials, that would be worthwhile.
There’s this character in True Detective first season who is a sexual crime exconvict. Of course he is the first suspect of the murder case.
He is a cognitively challenged folk, who got harassed, and sexually abused in prison. They cut his cock off and forced him to eat it. Gets dismissed as a suspect on the same episode.
He went to prison because he masturbated in public, at night in a rural remote area, once. And was unlucky enough to be seen. Not all convicts are made the same.
I also think about the office episode where they get an exconvict to quit because he found the paper sales environment to be too hostile with his personal history. He was convicted of financial fraud with the cushiest and most pampered convicted life.
the public indecency one is rough. I don’t know if I would hire that individual.
The issue in that situation isn’t the fact that he was caught for it, but the fact that he was willing to do it in public in the first place, so the risk factor there would be will this individual potentially try to do the same at my establishment? I think I would hire them if I was in a non-public style buisness such as office work, but if I was in a very public buisness like retail I would pass.
As for the last example with the fraud. In this case, it sounds like the person did do it. But if the person had not done it but was convicted of it, I would need some pretty compelling evidence saying the other direction. Because having someone who’s known to be a fraudster, managing anything with a company is not a good idea.
The second one is funny because it made everyone in the office realize that living conditions in a posh prison were way better than their life in Dunder-Mifflin. The guy was pretty nice, but Michael had to do it all about his race and eventually made everything so uncomfortable that the guy quit because of the hostile work conditions. They only realized he was exconvict because the government gave them a financial incentive for hiring him.
The first one is harsh because the dude was very obviously mentally challenged. He needed a good family environment and mental health care, not two FBI thugs harassing him.
I run a small business and: hard no.
“Yeah it was stupid but I was younger then” okay I can look past that “Nah man I didn’t do nothin, actually” maybe so, but I’m not gonna take that chance
Depends on the conviction. If it was something that was settled in front of a judge with police as the primary witnesses, I probably wouldn’t care. If it was a serious crime decided by a jury, I’d give that a lot more weight.
Jurys are just people who aren’t firmiliar with the court system. I’m not firmiliar with the court system, but one thing I do know is that it’s NOT legal for the prosecution to claim a defendant confessed to police interigation, unless he actually did confess. HOWEVER what they don’t tell you is that it IS legal to police to interigate you until you confess to anything. Some interigations, in one room, can go on for 70 hours. Imagine being in one room, being asked over and over if you did the crime. You know you didn’t, but you’ve been in this same interigation chamber for almost a week. No windows. No clocks. No toilet. No food. No water. Just waiting for a confession.
I know thats legal, but most other people don’t. So I give zero credibility to “he confessed”. The first question I’d ask is “how long was he held in custody?”
Because another thing they do, is they might interigate you for 8-12 hours. Then put you in a holding cell. Then interigate you again for 8-12 hours the next day. Then back to the holding cell. With no limits in place on how long you’re held.
Most people just hear “he confessed”, and thats it. Case closed. I’ve even heard of times that a crime happened in the 70s, guy was interigated, claimed innocence, then confessed, served decades in jail, and then DNA testing technologies improved. Then they find out the DNA wasn’t a match. He didn’t do it.
Another thing they do is say “You can confess and serve 2 years, OR we can stack the deck, and you’ll get a lifetime sentence.” And now people confess to things they didn’t do just to get the lighter sentence.
So, just for people reading this, it’s actually not legal to interrogate people that long. Cops rely on you not knowing your rights. The best thing you can do is demand a lawyer and shut the fuck up
Generally, they must get a warrant to arrest you; or put you in front of a judge for a probable cause hearing (ostensibly within 48 hours of arrest.).
Once you ask for a lawyer, the interrogation is supposed to end until one is provided. If they keep asking questions, keep asking for a lawyer and say nothing else. And remember, cops are allowed to lie about things.
So ask for a lawyer and shut the fuck up.
actually not legal to interrogate people that long
Japanese Legal System have joined the chat
(Also South Korea and China… 👀)
Meh, I don’t have much more faith in juries as the trials I’ve seen are more performance acts than accounting of events. Think about how salespeople can convince so many people to buy X product even if it’s total garbage and now imagine that sales person becomes a prosecutor.
One famous example of this showmanship was the prosecutor from Making a Murderer who convinced two separate juries to convict two separate people of a single murder claiming two completely different sets of facts in each trial. That woman definitely wasn’t murdered twice but she would have had to have been based on his arguments.
I’ve also witnessed this personally with a cop lying on the stand, the prosecutor misrepresenting things, and ‘expert witnesses’ telling the jury whatever the prosecution paid them to say and they typically eat this shit up. How much effort do you expect them to put in when they’re pulled from their life to sit in some uncomfortable room listening to terrible stuff for $12 a day? Most people default to whatever the authority figure tells them to do/think.
One of the best ways to reduce crime, imho, is too keep a parolee from going back to a life of crime.
Likely I would hire them, depending on what crime they were convicted for. I’m not going to hire anyone convicted of a sex crime if I have women working for me, for example.
Also, depends on what evidence was used to convict. Fingerprints are unique but part of a fingerprint is not. Bite-mark identification is a joke. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable especially when months or years can pass between being charged and the trial. AI facial recognition is famously unreliable when people of colour are involved.
