In practice, hardly anybody spends more than 21 years in US prisons. The average murderer serves less than 20 years in most states. The problem is that we don’t worry about whether they’re rehabilitated, we worry about whether we have space for them.
I’m all for that sort of system (probably). My point is just that once someone has done the time they were sentenced to, they should be released, regardless of how successfully they’ve been “rehabilitated.”
If you were of a religious persuasion, what would you do if he went to your place of worship?
Or you could go all proactive when they move next door, and shoot the motherfuckers before they have a chance of harming you.
But that would inexorably put you on a register.
The Shellback Reformed Baptist Independent First Church of the Revelation would shun him: as soon as he entered all would turn their backs and ignore him until he slunk away in abject shame. Only thus can he gain the true knowledge of God’s Undying Hate.
No crime deserves New York.
All this talk of lists and registries is just over complicating things.
Whenever you’re convicted of a crime, the conviction gets tattooed on your forehead. Not just felonies, either. The OP may be concerned about arsonists moving in next door, but I’m more concerned about speeders. Ten thousand people a year are killed by speeding drivers, more than three times the number of deaths attributed to arson. I think I have a right to know if my neighbor’s got a leadfoot or not, and if this knowledge saves just one person from being hit by a speeding car, isn’t that worth it?
[sub]Answer: No[/sub]
So, everyone who’s ever convicted of a felony–ah, to heck with it, let’s make it misdemeanors, too!–gets put on a permanent registry. You look up your new neighbor just because…what? You don’t like their looks? They didn’t greet you as effusively as you think they should? The heathen bums slept in on Sunday?
Well, now you found out their heinous crime of murder, rape, peeing in public, or even shoplifting from 20 odd years ago.
What, exactly, are you going to do with that information?
Registries don’t have a damn thing to do with protecting the public. If anything, rather, they’re set up to get the public enraged at particular people who have supposedly proven they’ve turned their lives around.
Correction: Whenever you’re arrested, it’s “tattoed on your forehead”, so to speak. The FBI check (of course, for crimes reported to the FBI) will still list the arrest, the crime for which arrested, and if acquitted, that you were acquitted (or not convicted/charges dropped/etc.). The damn thing will remain on the background check until the Second Coming.
There’s a thread over in The BBQ Pit where a couple of posters are basically demanding someone’s hide over a false allegation of criminal behavior. What do you think Joe Average HR Mgr is going to think when he sees the background check for the guy who was arrested but charges dropped/acquitted?
Again: This crud doesn’t have a thing to do with protecting the public. It’s all about shaming.
I believe this will depend on the state; in Missouri an acquittal or nolle prosequi is not an open record.
Closed records can still sink your boat, though, since they’re accessible if you apply for certain jobs.
Edit; point being that while it can still look like a black mark in some instances, you won’t be pursued by villagers wielding pitchforks because you neighbor did a background check on your and found an arrest for something where the charges were dropped or you were found not guilty.
If it’s reported to the FBI, then federal law keeps the report on the background check. They care f-all about state law.
And what would you like to bet that a dropped charge or acquittal, say for an arrest for child molestation, doesn’t carry a stigma?
Ah, but you can’t get the FBI record without fingerprints. And I’m not handing out pre-filled print cards to MY neighbors :dubious:
You can also get stigmatized for stuff that isn’t against the law at all. People can have opinions in a free society, so that’s not really the problem here. And it makes sense for law enforcement to have records of criminal charges and convictions. It doesn’t make sense for the government to tell your neighbors about any and all crimes you’ve committed because it doesn’t actually make anyone safer and arguably makes things worse because it makes it harder for people to rejoin society and live productive lives.
As another poster noted above, some jobs require background checks. For example, the job I have now required me to request my FBI check and include that check with my visa application.
And that’s the real purpose of the registries.