[jsty]

> Would it be reasonable for any company to hire Holden? If not, is there any chance for Holden to productively rejoin society?

> I am concerned, however, that a judgment like this will have a chilling effect on the hiring of certain groups of people.

My personal viewpoint on this is that - depending on the range of offences committed - there's some professions / occupations that should get closed off for a good while. You don't want your fraud-convicted individual working in finance or accounts, nor someone convicted of theft, assault, etc. working in people's homes, particularly potentially vulnerable individuals.

The latter case seems to be what Charter is accused of here. It's commendable to hire those that have served their time - to help them rehabilitate and repay any debts to society - but you need to ensure they're not put in a position where they might be tempted to offend again.

[janlin1999]

> My personal viewpoint on this is that - depending on the range of offences committed - there's some professions / occupations that should get closed off for a good while.

I agree, but I also think this is also a judgment call (e.g. how long is a "good while?"). Should a company be vulnerable to a billion dollar liability because of a judgment call that didn't work out? Hiring anyone is a judgment call. Going down this path, for example, one could imagine a world in which society pressures companies to screen for mental health, and to not hire people who have such issues (e.g. "Who knows? they might go and kill someone!").

> You don't want your fraud-convicted individual working in finance or accounts, nor someone convicted of theft, assault, etc. working in people's homes, particularly potentially vulnerable individuals.

Keep in mind that Holden's criminal background check came back clean (in particular, no legal record of assault), and verifying employment might have turned up "forgery, falsifying documents and harassment of fellow employees." Even believing the former employers (since these charges were not proven in court), I personally would not have expected someone like that to have murdered someone else. Hence, from the limited information that I know of the case right now, Charter seems to me to have made a reasonable decision to hire Holden (not one that I would have made myself, but within some realm of reasonableness).

[SilasX]

This. It's fine to hire him, but not for a job that puts him alone with customers in their home. A call center job, for example, would have been fine.

[janlin1999]

Given that Holden was apparently previously fired for forgery (and did not have any felony on record), it seems more likely that Holden would have committed forgery in a call center job than murder as a technician.

Jumping from forgery to murder seems like a big jump to me.

Additionally, going back to an earlier counter-factual, suppose that Holden actually did murder someone before and finished his sentence and now further suppose that Charter agrees with you that it would only be ok to hire Holden for a call center job. Suppose that Holden then murdered a supervisor that he was angry with... don't you think that people would have expected Charter to have been held liable for the second murder?

You could imagine imposing additional restrictions (e.g. "only virtual call center jobs where he would work remotely"), but at some point, the restrictions would be sufficiently outside of Charter's normal workflow that it wouldn't be worth hiring Holden... leading to a chilling effect of hiring former felons.