The Conundrum of Rehabilitating One-Time Criminals
It may seem a bit scary just how much information the government collects on its citizens. Birth records, death records, driver records, registration records, land ownership records, gun ownership records, licensing records, address records, phone records. All that information serves a purpose — it makes us accountable to our society for the things we own and do — but in the wrong hands it can also be used to hurt and misrepresent us. Of course victims of identity theft have learned exactly that.
But the government is trying to serve the greater good and there are some kinds of records we all need to be aware of, especially when hiring employees or screening people for sensitive information. For example, the government maintains a huge number of criminal records databases. And it’s not really the government because we have many governments who compile these statistics. Local governments and state governments all create and manage criminal records databases. The Federal government does ask these local agencies to report information to them, and so there are national databases of criminal records that statisticians use to study how criminal activity occurs in our society.
If you are an employer you want to be prepared to deal appropriately with employees who have criminal backgrounds. Most people who are convicted of crimes do not repeat their mistakes and they deserve a fair chance to reintegrate into society. But a company that has the resources to bring former convicts into its payrolls has a responsibility to know about their employees’ backgrounds. That is why criminal records searches are so important to business recruiting efforts.
Prospective employees need to be honest about their backgrounds, but companies should not discriminate against job applicants who admit they have been convicted of crimes in the past. An honest answer on a job application deserves a fair consideration. Some very valuable employees might never be hired if they are not given a second chance by society.
We must learn how to be responsible to ourselves — to protect ourselves against unnecessary risk of being victimized by habitual criminals — while at the same being responsible to society at large. Some people find themselves falling into situations where they make bad choices. If they are lucky, society catches them and helps them start over with a better chance of rising above their past. We all have to be part of society when it helps our less fortunate members — we never know when we’ll need to ask a former inmate for help. Wouldn’t it be great to know you can count on someone who knows he or she can count on you?
