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Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

Of course you are okay with it, because it's out-of-sight, out of mind.

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.

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You misunderstand. I'm very happy to create a complicated hierarchy of evil and give different penalties for different crimes. (I.e., send "violent" to "sufficiently violent".) I wasn't trying to say "all people who've every committed something that could be called violent should be banned from interacting with humans". I was just refuting the simplistic parent comment "are people with criminal records simply unhireable?", as if the fact that we clearly want to allow some reformed criminals to have some jobs means we can't permanently ban some other types of criminals from some other types of jobs.

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.

> your one friend who got drunk and in a bar fight and charged with assault when he was 20

...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)

Disagree. it's the same reason people who are categorized as sex offenders arent allowed around kids. It's not that they can't work but really it makes sense to prevent a violent offender to be the driver of a taxi.

It might be the same reason, but that isn't a good reason. The sex offender registry is a product of some politicians pandering to a maternal instinct. It's not grounded in evidence or ethics, and it's not effective.

it is a good precaution. There are many many examples where safety is regarded over ethics.

> it's not effective

> it is a good precaution

Do you have any evidence as to its efficacy?

It's not a good precaution; if it was, we would apply it more broadly than just to sexual offenses. Sexual abuse, especially with regards to children, is our generation's red scare, and that is the one and only reason why the registry exists.

It does apply broadly. There are certain professions where you can't work if you have a certain kind of criminal record. this isn't new news

> is our generation's red scare

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.

That doesn't make those examples a good reason to do this.

"it is a good precaution."

Based on what evidence?

Legit question: Let's say that we'd do what you suggest and we'd allow them to drive, unsupervised, random people back and forth.

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?

Sure. My answer depends on data that shows that this rate of assault/etc is likely higher for these people, and how much higher.

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.

Fair answer.

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?

"We screen using all available research on driver safety. What you are asking us to do will actually make you less safe. It is also deeply unethical."

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