Post in gay basing by the Minnesota dept of Transportation employees

Aug 07 18:53 UTC

> From my understanding the guys had their 35W construction vests on when they
did it! Yes i am glad they got them -
> i guess construction companies don't care about hiring people with criminal
records (and i get that not all people with
> criminal records would be of concern) but maybe the community that they go to
work in should be concerned with workers
> coming to their communities with records of violent crimes?

Having been asked the same question as the victim was and having been
subjected to a violent attack by three men when I refused to answer
them on the grounds that it was none of their business, I certainly
find the crime these men committed to be abhorrent.

However, I'm kind of concerned about the direction that "don't care
about hiring people with criminal records" is taking.

The last thing we want is for ex-cons to not be able to find work.
Its possible that there was something about this guy that should have
flagged him as unsuitable for a construction job, but if there was,
his probation officer should have been on it.

I'm going on a lot of speculation here, but my guess would be, if
there was a failing, it would be in the justice system.

What crime had this guy committed?  Was his sentence appropriate?  Was
it punitive or reformative?  If it wasn't reformative, isn't it a bit
overly optimistic by "the system" to assume that he won't re-offend?
If his prior was a violent crime, did he have to go through anger
management and did his probation involve not drinking?  Was his
probation being properly managed? Etc.

I don't really have good answers for any of this, but I do know that
once we've decided a criminal offender is ready to be released back
into society, we need for them to be able to find work.

If they haven't been fully released (eg: probation), then our justice
system needs to be responsible for imposing the limits on what jobs
they can work or taking appropriate steps to provide the necessary
oversight for their conditional release.

This also came up in another thread when someone expressed the desire
to not have ex-cons at a community building function - We should
desperately want ex-cons to be involved in positive community building
efforts.  Unless, of course, we want to decide to start shipping our
criminals to Australia or take a "hang-em-all" approach to things.
(yikes).

- phædrus