I'm OK with violent offenders being effectively banned forever from transporting people alone in a car. In this case, the driver was "facing 17 additional...charges" including "weapons possession, arson, armed robbery, burglary, vehicle theft".
If it was your one friend who got drunk and in a bar fight and charged with assault when he was 20, maybe you'd think differently :)
Even if you restrict your view to felons, in california, for example, there are plenty of assault charges that are easily classifiable into "stupid thing you did once and did not cause long-term harm" but still felonies.
At some point, what folks are really saying is "i'm okay assuming this person is a bad person likely to do something bad". This is, for better or for worse, at this point, pretty unrelated to whether they have a criminal record or not.
> it is a good precaution
Do you have any evidence as to its efficacy?
The widespread abuse of children actually happens though.
Sexual offender registers aim to prevent the loophole widely used by abusers of getting a new job in a different town. (In the case of priests and nuns that move was arranged by their employer).
They also stop some familial abuse. Someone who sexually abused their nieces/nephews would not be able to adopt and would be under greater scrutiny from child protective social services when they move to a new area.
Based on what evidence?
Let's say that something bad happens and they assault a client or whatever.
Client finds out they have priors. Asks you if you think you made a wise choise, or if you'd change something in your hiring process.
What would your answer be?
Without that data, i can't really say anything at all.
Every piece of research i've ever seen basically says "intuition is wrong here, they don't actually assault people at a higher rate".
IE people who repeatedly are arrested for dealing drugs are not likely to have a higher rate of assaulting people while driving ubers.
But, again, i'm data driven on this, if we have data/research, and the scientific consensus is that they are worse, and significantly worse, than yeah, maybe it's worth doing something.
From what i know, most of this is driven by gut feelings and politics, and not actual data.
And another one a bit more provocative :D
You alleged above that your parent commenter would think differently if the driver was a friend of theirs.
If the passenger/client was a friend of yours and you knew the driver had priors, would you advise them against getting into the car or not?
...doesn't have a felony record, even if he was convicted, because simple assault is a misdemeanor charge. The cases really aren't parallel.
(The rest of this comment seemed general enough to promote to top level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11780434)
And you know what? If I'm sending my kid on something like Shuddle,
http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/15/shuddle-ride-sharing-serv...
I don't want the driver to have ever been in a bar fight ever.
And for what it's worth, I do have a friend who got in a fist fight in a grocery store parking lot in college. It's certainly not damnation and I think he paid his debt, but I also think that incident accurately reflects on his character. He's a good guy most of the time, but I don't want him driving my grandmother around.