[lbhnact]

Just want to add support. One of my childhood friends has a felony from when he was an overly-rambunctious teenager that he still gets punished for - including being kicked off AirBnB - for something he stole more than 20 years ago. Despite this, he's a very successful leader in mental health services management.

So many people deserve a chance to redeem themselves from being 'branded', yet are denied the exact opportunities that would allow them to do so. This problem goes back a long, long ways.[1]

Anything you can do to help is great. Best of luck!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branded_Man

[xenadu02]

Unfortunately some states (eg: Texas) don't allow you to expunge a felony no matter how long ago it was. My sister-in-law's HS boyfriend was a criminal jerk and she got caught up and charged as an accessory for something stupid (theft IIRC). She fully admits she was rebelling by going after a bad-boy. She had a public defender who met with her once and told her to take the deal to get probation. Unfortunately the plea was for a felony.

It's been 20 years, she's married to a good guy and has a baby... yet that black mark still comes up on her record.

[jsmthrowaway]

Arizona, too, and you’ll find that’s common in tough-on-crime red states. I can petition to have mine “set aside,” but it sticks. I’m fortunate enough to have a great career in the Valley, but it comes up all the time as the upthread comment pointed out.

We are looking into gubernatorial pardon (Arizona has a decent process) but not holding my breath.

[ryandrake]

This is a pretty common American attitude found in many "non red" states as well: As soon as someone commits a crime--any crime and just once--they become a criminal. It's as if their species permanently changed from human to something else. They're not a human that made a bad decision, they are an "other". Since this new thing they have become is not human, all kinds of inhumane and terrible things can be done to them and justified, including permanent removal of rights, brutalization and rape in prison, permanent loss of employability and access to normal livelihood. All of these things are seen as OK because it's a criminal we're talking about, not an actual person.

[snuxoll]

The US criminal justice system focuses on punishment and not reform, "the box" on employment applications makes this patently obvious as does the removal of voting rights for felons. All of this stems from exactly what you mentioned, once convicted you are a criminal, that label follows you and there's little you can do to get rid of it.

The first step to improving any of this is changing deeply held beliefs by our society, and many days it feels like an impossible task.

[RonanTheGrey]

So much this.

https://blog.codinghorror.com/they-have-to-be-monsters/

[justadeveloper2]

As someone who broke a whole lot of laws in his late teens and got off pretty easy for all of it, I wholeheartedly agree. They could have thrown the book at me but they didn't. Also, it helps if you don't confess to anything and hire a good attorney even if you end up taking a plea.

Let's face it, America sucks in a ton of ways and the biggest crooks are bankers and people in finance--they stole billions and got away with it over and over again. So nothing else quite compares except maybe whatever goes on with the CIA and drugs.

[pm90]

While I agree there are bigger crooks who go unpunished, the solution is not to let the smaller crooks go free, but to also catch the bigger ones. BTW just to be clear, I'm not advocating harsher punishment, just equal punishment.

[jaclaz]

The issue is not with the severity of punishment, it is with the continuity of punishment.

This is from G.K.Chesterton, around 1907, "The Perpetuation of Punishment":

https://books.google.it/books?id=QtWvMclbR9YC&pg=PA504H7CQ#v...

[RBBronson123]

I will surely look into this. Thanks for sharing.