Hypothetically speaking
(anyone can answer, but I’m more interested in those with skepticism towards authorities)
Depends on the business and the conviction. E.g. if I’m sending cleaners into people’s homes, I probably feel a little wary if you stuck up a liquor store. Maybe don’t make a car thief a valet. That kinda thing.
Some dumb drug/gun charge, etc.? I probably wouldn’t care.
Sex crimes are a no-go across the board for me. Take that shit back to the White House.
Sex crimes can be very much a grey area going as far as to convict the victim. For example people that got convicted of child molestation because they were in a teen in a physical relationship with a partner their own age and got caught by their partner’s parents who ran to the police yelling that “my child is pure, innocent, and would never consent to such things!”
Or the person charged with indecent exposure because they were cooking naked not realizing that someone was taking a short cut through the back yard with a child who liked to peak into windows. If I recall correctly, the person was able to get the conviction overturned because they had a very good lawyer who argued the room was only visible from the land the home was on and the homeowner had clearly marked the area as private property. Even then, it was only an appeals court that listened.
I am not saying that most (or even many) sex crime convictions are not justified, but I would at least let someone explain themselves before I totally cast them off.
I run a small business and: hard no.
“Yeah it was stupid but I was younger then” okay I can look past that “Nah man I didn’t do nothin, actually” maybe so, but I’m not gonna take that chance
Distrust of police is separate from distrust of the legal system, at least in my eyes. Your question is about two different groups - Two applicants walks in and one is exLEO and one is not. Thats different than two applicants walk in and one being a felon/one not.
For criminals, people draw all sorts of lines. Sex crimes, violent crime, robbery, crimes of any kind against children. Different people in different fields will draw different lines. A great example is people who work with money obviously get leery around people charged with theft, embezzlement, or tampering. This is why convicts working trash services is such a “popular” job for the deeper end of the crime spectrum. They dont work with people, children, or money. You can be a sex pest, violent home invader, fraudster, and none of that matters because you sling cans and don’t talk to homeowners. If you can wake up at 4am, and show up not drunk, and can move 60-120 lb trashcan, you have a job. All this to say, it would depend on what my hypothetical small business is doing, and what position applied for, where I’d draw that line with regards to monetary crimes. Violence and sex crimes are harder to justify allowing as customer facing the worse they get, but in accounting? Hardly relevant I’d think unless its egregious or consistent enough to think I’ll be replacing them in 6 months as they caught a repeat case. I worked with a man who was charged with assault over a decade prior for getting in a fight, and nothing else. No issues as a cashier - because it was a fight with a dude over something not a recurring anger issue. Case by case.
As for exLEO, as the question probably wants to ask, people in this thread would probably get leery about why they are looking for new work. Retired and Forced to Quit are very different reasons that HR won’t answer and the person is not obligated to be forthcoming about yet probably what people would want to know. Its also generally a highly prized skillset, honestly. On the professional end, you (generally) have report writing skills, documentation, and hypervigilance skills. While honesty of LEOs is probably the OPs aimed weak point, most customer facing jobs do not have the one thing LEOs perceptually abuse - authorisation to use force. Most customer facing jobs dont allow you to talk back, get in confrontations where you might be the cause, or put hands on people. For these reasons most people who distrust former police will still hire them.
Edit: I guess all this to say, it depends on the crime, and depends on how deeply you distrust former cops. I don’t even trust my regular coworkers/employees to show up on fucking time, and they arent either felons or former cops. I’d be their boss hiring them cuz I need a job done - I’m not interviewing for new BFFs and looking to get chummy about their idiosyncrasies. So for me the only important part I see is “does their history with these institutions show they are so distrustful that I will have to fire them quickly?”
I don’t know if I would believe them. To put it bluntly a fairly large number of people lie. If you never lied and explained that you had a conviction but you were innocent, I’d be significantly more inclined to believe you.
I also don’t know that I would care. Someone that got popped for smoking dope as a teen in the 90s is not a crime I’m worried about. Innocent or not doesn’t matter. Something more violent or problematic to the company is going to be a different story.
If you were honest from the start I’ll give you time to explain, but if you lied on the resume, that gets to the “problematic for the company” bit.
Ive been to prison so yeah, I would hire them on the spot.
Its hard enough to come back so as long as its legally allowable I’d give anything I could to help.
It would matter extremely of what they were convicted of because that is ultimately a risk game.
If the guy was convicted of something related to financial(like fraud, theft etc) or hostility(murder, assault etc) I wouldn’t take the chance, otherwise I wouldn’t really care.
Remember, it doesn’t matter whether he did or not. it’s what society as a whole believes he did. If it’s a risk or liability to the company then it’s a no, but if it’s something that’s like a “oh well OK then” such as an old drug issue, IP violation, disorderly conduct etc, it’s whatever. If the public isn’t going to think differently of the company, and the financial stability of the company is not at risk, then go for it.
Although this also is assuming the guy has credentials, that would be worthwhile.
There’s this character in True Detective first season who is a sexual crime exconvict. Of course he is the first suspect of the murder case.
He is a cognitively challenged folk, who got harassed, and sexually abused in prison. They cut his cock off and forced him to eat it. Gets dismissed as a suspect on the same episode.
He went to prison because he masturbated in public, at night in a rural remote area, once. And was unlucky enough to be seen. Not all convicts are made the same.
I also think about the office episode where they get an exconvict to quit because he found the paper sales environment to be too hostile with his personal history. He was convicted of financial fraud with the cushiest and most pampered convicted life.
the public indecency one is rough. I don’t know if I would hire that individual.
The issue in that situation isn’t the fact that he was caught for it, but the fact that he was willing to do it in public in the first place, so the risk factor there would be will this individual potentially try to do the same at my establishment? I think I would hire them if I was in a non-public style buisness such as office work, but if I was in a very public buisness like retail I would pass.
As for the last example with the fraud. In this case, it sounds like the person did do it. But if the person had not done it but was convicted of it, I would need some pretty compelling evidence saying the other direction. Because having someone who’s known to be a fraudster, managing anything with a company is not a good idea.
The second one is funny because it made everyone in the office realize that living conditions in a posh prison were way better than their life in Dunder-Mifflin. The guy was pretty nice, but Michael had to do it all about his race and eventually made everything so uncomfortable that the guy quit because of the hostile work conditions. They only realized he was exconvict because the government gave them a financial incentive for hiring him.
The first one is harsh because the dude was very obviously mentally challenged. He needed a good family environment and mental health care, not two FBI thugs harassing him.
Family business here that hired a veteran homeless man. He had prior convictions and a drug problem. My dad gave him a job and a place to stay. He worked for 1 week and left without a trace. We found him on the streets one day and he said he didn’t trust himself to not commit another crime and decided to continue living on the street.
Not everyone wants to be helped by us small business owners. Some need more help than just a job and a place to stay.
Depends what the charge was and what business i was running. Id want to hear their story and see their track record after prison. I believe in giving them a second chance but id be watching them until i trust them
Like most complex things, the answer is: it depends.
In this case, it’s mostly about what the alleged crime is and what the role is. If someone was convicted of sexual assault of a minor and I’m hiring for a daycare, possible licensing issues and laws aside, I’d probably pass on that person. If I’m hiring an auto mechanic and the person was convicted of smoking weed, I’m only going to care that they aren’t operating heavy equipment while intoxicated.The other thing to consider is how much time has passed since the conviction. To use a real, related example, I knew a guy who held a US Government TS/SCI clearance and who had been through a full scope polygraph. For those unfamiliar, this basically means that he had access to highly classified material and he had also been through a multi-hour polygraph. And despite the dubious nature of those, they often winnow out a lot of people. He was also a major drug user in the 1970s and '80s. The list of drugs he didn’t do was probably short than the ones he had done. But, between being honest about it and the amount of time which had passed since he got clean, he had no trouble getting and maintaining that clearance. Who you were then and who you are now can be pretty radically different.
Like any hiring process, it’s going to be a case by case basis. I’m actually involved in interviewing people for my current employer and the selection process hinges on many little things. You can have someone who is great on paper, but they have the personality of a raging walrus and that just kills their chances. You can also have folks who just have an off day, but it kills trust in that individual on the part of the interviewers. Hell, I’ve interviewed folks and immediately thought, “they don’t fit this role, but goddamn I wish they had applied when we were looking for this other role six months ago.” Interviewing people is weird, but I haven’t seen a better solution for selecting a candidate for many roles.
One of the best ways to reduce crime, imho, is too keep a parolee from going back to a life of crime.
Likely I would hire them, depending on what crime they were convicted for. I’m not going to hire anyone convicted of a sex crime if I have women working for me, for example.
Also, depends on what evidence was used to convict. Fingerprints are unique but part of a fingerprint is not. Bite-mark identification is a joke. Eyewitness testimony is unreliable especially when months or years can pass between being charged and the trial. AI facial recognition is famously unreliable when people of colour are involved.
