# McCoy offers the defendant a gift: six years **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 3, 2012, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117 "2012-07-03T17:31:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/41 "2012-07-03T21:33:10Z")
I deal with Megan’s Law convicted sex offenders all the time. They have to check in with me. Most of them have jobs, all of them have places to live and they seem to have no trouble surviving. And these are people you can look up on the Internet. Not your run of the mill thief. Ok none of them are going to become mayor or university president but there really wasn’t much danger of that before their conviction. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/42 "2012-07-03T21:37:23Z")
**Loach** , Okay. That’s interesting. Who hires them? Do they have trouble finding places to live? The TV cliche is that they all live under bridges because it’s illegal for them to live anywhere else. ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/43 "2012-07-03T22:12:12Z")
Hey Mods, Why is greenslime1951 allowed to represent patently untrue statements as fact in General Questions? ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/44 "2012-07-03T22:23:39Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > **Loach** , > Okay. That’s interesting. Who hires them? Do they have trouble finding places to live? The TV cliche is that they all live under bridges because it’s illegal for them to live anywhere else. It varies from person to person. Some have decent jobs, some menial minimum wage jobs. Probably our creepiest, highest tiered sex offender owns his own house and has a good job as a truck mechanic for the local cable company. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/45 "2012-07-03T22:26:27Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > The thing is, while I can articulate the problem, I find it difficult to think of a fair solution. > ? The only way would be to make criminal records non accessible to the general public. In France, you can’t get access to criminal records except in specific circumstances (the most common being applying for a public job). I’m told that employers “often” ask a copy of the part of your criminal record you can access yourself (it’s an “edited” version where only long sentences are mentioned) but I’ve no clue how common this really is and whether or not it’s lawful for the employer to make such a request. Also, sentences shorter than ten years are eventually deleted from this record abstract, after a variable duration depending on the category of crime and lenght of sentence (after 10 years at worst). ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/46 "2012-07-03T22:28:59Z")
Oh, and for the record, it would be 110% alright with me if they gave each newly released felon $5000 in cash, a case of cold Stroh’s longnecks and a pre-paid 3-day pass to the goddam Moonlight Bunny Ranch, but in General Questions, I thought the rule required us to deal in facts, not mush-brained nonsense and oversimplified generalities. (Seriously, I think that with the way the system is set up in most states, the paroled felon _IS_ being set up to fail, but as bad as things are for them, that doesn’t mean they can never get a friggin’ library card again.) ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/47 "2012-07-03T22:37:48Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > Hey Mods, > > Why is greenslime1951 allowed to represent patently untrue statements as fact in General Questions? Maybe they haven’t seen it. Did you report the post? ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/48 "2012-07-03T22:51:24Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > , but as bad as things are for them, that doesn’t mean they can never get a friggin’ library card again.) Man, I sure am glad we cleared up that travesty of mis information… ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/49 "2012-07-03T23:21:54Z")
The original post was that a felony conviction was equivalent to a death sentence, regardless of duration. After release the felon would have no choice but to continue a life of crime because they wouldn’t be able to get a job, a place to live, a phone, a library card, a credit card, or a passport. None of those things are true. Convicted felons can get jobs, they can rent apartments, they can get credit cards, they can get passports (it might be hard for them to get visas though), they can get library cards, they can get phones. Does a convicted felon have a tough future in store? Yes, but that’s not the same as a literal death sentence. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/50 "2012-07-03T23:43:08Z")
Moved from General Questions to Great Debates. **samclem** , Moderator ---
**Author:** ![greenslime1951](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e9bcb4/32.png) [@greenslime1951](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/greenslime1951)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/51 "2012-07-03T23:51:47Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > Moved from General Questions to Great Debates. > > **samclem** , Moderator Thank you for doing so, as a couple of board denizens were apparently getting really, really, really upset that I had been “allowed to post” things that they didn’t regard as factual. I would HATE to be the cause of anyone’s cardiac event. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2012, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/52 "2012-07-03T23:53:49Z")
OP: Here’s a place to start. Go find out what the unemployment rate is for convicted felons who are out of prison. Might be a little challenging, but you need to bring some data to the table here, not just a feeling you have. ---
**Author:** ![greenslime1951](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e9bcb4/32.png) [@greenslime1951](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/greenslime1951)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/53 "2012-07-04T00:08:36Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > OP: Here’s a place to start. Go find out what the unemployment rate is for convicted felons who are out of prison. Might be a little challenging, but you need to bring some data to the table here, not just a feeling you have. Short of an individual poll, such data would be impossible to gather as recently-released felons aren’t counted as part of the “unemployed” in the first place. Even if they were, how could you separate them out of the larger population? I think that released felons have difficulty in finding employment is more than “just a feeling (I) have.” Sort of like “chihuahuas bark a lot” or “a lot of people get sunburned on the Fourth of July”; a reasonable assertion that doesn’t have “hard data” to absolutely PROVE it. In any event, you are completely missing my point, which was that the effect of a prison sentence continues long after its nominal end, i.e., release, and that judges and prosecutors need to take that into account. I don’t think you can deny that it’s harder to get a job when you’re a convicted felon; how MUCH harder is really beside the point, as long as the difference is significant. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/54 "2012-07-04T00:22:06Z")
> [@Confused dart cum](#): > > I notice no one has challenged the OP on the passport question. Is this just because of the often-quoted (at least over here in Europe) and shocking statistic that most Americans don’t have passports so it is a minor claim compared to his other ones, or is it because felons really cannot get passports in America? And if the latter… WTF?! I think the passport problem is really a visa problem. Granted it’s been decades since I applied for/used a passport so when I say I don’t recall any questions about criminal convictions it could be either faulty memory or maybe things have changed, but seriously, why would the government object to a felon _leaving_ the country? Having a passport really is optional for most Americans. You can live your whole life here and never need one. > [@](#): > > Is there an American equivilant to the [Rehabilitation of Offenders](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_Offenders_Act_1974) act in the UK whereby for all but really serious offences (basically murder or rape - the actual threshold is two and a half years of imprisonment; I’m aware you can get that in Texas for crossing the road while being black but over here you really have to have done quite a lot to get such a big sentence) after a few years your sentence is “spent” and you can legally claim when asked to have had no conviction? No. For many purposes, they only ask for convictions in either the prior 5 years or the prior 10, or some other number of years. For certain positions there is no time limit, you have to 'fess up to any conviction no matter how far back. Getting a conviction wiped from your record requires a lengthy court procedure here, if it’s possible at all. It really is a mark of Cain. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/55 "2012-07-04T00:50:59Z")
> [@greenslime1951](#): > > Being unfamiliar with your idiot cousin and his case(s), I can’t say whether you are telling the truth or not Quite so - statements based on “what my unidentified relative told me” are simply not verifiable and should not be accepted as proof. Which leads to: [QUOTE=greenslime1951] My brother works as a new accounts supervisor in a bank, and this is what he has told me. [/QUOTE] Therefore we should not accept this statement as proof about the difficulty for convicted felons to get credit cards. ---
**Author:** ![MyFactCheckBounced](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@MyFactCheckBounced](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFactCheckBounced)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/56 "2012-07-04T01:35:59Z")
> [@grude](#): > > It probably differs by state, Texas is quite harsh when it comes to what indigent means. They can also decide to take civil action against you to recover the cost, even if you qualified. Texas doesn’t like poor people.😉 Which is odd, given the prodigious rate at which they seem to _produce_ them. In any event, now that I’m here, I would like to publicly thank Jack McCoy for giving me the phrase “…but not all of them commit **murder.** ” I use it out of context as often as possible when someone is going over the limit on my personal whinemeter… “A lot of people dropped their toast butter-side down and then couldn’t get Comcast to marathon their favorite show… but not all of them commit **murder.** ” ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/57 "2012-07-04T02:06:38Z")
> [@greenslime1951](#): > > Short of an individual poll, such data would be impossible to gather as recently-released felons aren’t counted as part of the “unemployed” in the first place. Even if they were, how could you separate them out of the larger population? > > I think that released felons have difficulty in finding employment is more than “just a feeling (I) have.” Sort of like “chihuahuas bark a lot” or “a lot of people get sunburned on the Fourth of July”; a reasonable assertion that doesn’t have “hard data” to absolutely PROVE it. > > In any event, you are completely missing my point, which was that the effect of a prison sentence continues long after its nominal end, i.e., release, and that judges and prosecutors need to take that into account. I don’t think you can deny that it’s harder to get a job when you’re a convicted felon; how MUCH harder is really beside the point, as long as the difference is significant. No, I’m not missing your point at all. I’m suggesting that, as interesting as your point may be, talking about a solution is ludicrous without some metric about how bad the problem is in the first place. And if the data is not available, then we don’t really have any way of knowing how big or bad the problem is. I’m certainly not going to buy into a policy solution for a problem that hasn’t been measured. Maybe some academic needs to take this on as PhD thesis or something. Still, crying foul because the data doesn’t exist isn’t going to cut it in this forum. If you claim the problem exists, it is incumbent on you to quantify it. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/58 "2012-07-04T02:35:35Z")
I’d go to prison happily, if I could walk out twenty-five. ---
**Author:** ![MrDurden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ed655f/32.png) [@MrDurden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDurden)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/59 "2012-07-04T02:37:13Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > This is just not true. > > I have an idiot cousin who has been arrested on a few different minor crimes, including a DUI. > > He was assigned a public defender and didn’t have to pay a cent for his representation, despite getting a $1500 monthly check from the VA for a “disability” (which I am convinced he scammed to qualify for, although with a back injury I guess I can’t be sure) so before you jump in and start laying down blanket statements about public defenders and no felons ever getting credit cards, you need to provide some mollyfocking proof. I am also familiar with two states, one of which Salt Lake is in that take income and assets into account when assigning a public defender. And you are expected to pay a fair share. I would parrot Greenslime in wondering what state has scott free public defenders to someone with a regular income and assets. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2012, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117/60 "2012-07-04T04:14:09Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > I deal with Megan’s Law convicted sex offenders all the time. They have to check in with me. Most of them have jobs, all of them have places to live and they seem to have no trouble surviving. And these are people you can look up on the Internet. Not your run of the mill thief. Ok none of them are going to become mayor or university president but there really wasn’t much danger of that before their conviction. ``` I deal with all kinds of offenders, not just sex offenders. Most have a place to live, either of their own or with a spouse or family members. Some have jobs,bank accounts and debit and credit cards and more than one has started his own business. Is it harder for them to get jobs, apartments , etc? It's difficult to tell- for the most part, the ones who have to live at the shelter and can't even get a job at Burger King were in *exactly that situation* before the felony conviction. It's hard to say that the felony conviction is what's keeping a person from getting a job when he never had one before the conviction. ``` [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mccoy-offers-the-defendant-a-gift-six-years/627117.md?page=4)