PAT: Please obscure my email address, name is fine.
> On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 13:26:56 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> The truth is we ALL have skeletons in our closet, many we forgot
> about. But maybe that incident back in college will come back to
> haunt you years later.
> For example, maybe you want a job that requires clearance and they
> discover 20 years ago you were arrested for some major drug use. You
> had made a mistake long ago and never again, but now it is held
> against you. Maybe someone in your family did bad.
I always find arguments like this amusing. If the rules for the job
prohibit employment, then it doesn't matter if you "forget" some
college "incident". There is a difference between an "incident" (no
conviction) and a drug conviction.
I work in an industry that has federal regulations prohibiting the
employer from hiring anyone convicted for a crime of dishonesty
(things like theft, embezzlement, etc.). It doesn't matter if I forgot
about some conviction for stealing while in college, it would be
improper for me to be hired for that job. Fortunately, there are no
such convictions in my background.
I'm sure I'd remember if there was.
But if there was, and I got the job, I would be violating the
regulations. It doesn't matter that no one realized it.
Computers and data indexing make the information easier to find but do
not change the underlying issues! If you have to report a conviction
or not get a job because of one (regulations) or not get a security
clearance (again regulations), then you should not!
An employer can not apply these rules against you if it was another
family member who was convicted.
In addition, some convictions cause a loss of rights and can result in
additional charges for attempting to participate. For instance, a
felony conviction causes a federal prohibition on ownership of
firearms. It is illegal to own one, hold one, or even attempt to buy
one! Forgetting about an earlier conviction can result in another
with hard federal time.
- David
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The difficulty with laws like this is
they make no allowance for people who have geuinely changed their
direction in life. If you commit some crime, and you 'do the time',
then *theoretically* at least, you have been forgiven by society, have
you not? The rules and laws you mention make a lie out of the
rehabilitation model, and effectively punish the offender forever.
Ditto on firearm ownership: The federal and various state/local
governments absolutely _despise_ the Second Amendment to the
Constitution, which plainly allows citizens to own firearms. Because
of this hatred and their wish it did not exist, the various
governments try throwing up every roadblock of which they can think.
If you did thus and so, then you cannot own a gun, etc. All of these
'negative' laws on what you cannot own or cannot do once your term has
been finished have the effect of punishing the offender forever, in a
backdoor sense. When you are no longer being punished, your full
rights as a citizen should be returned to you, but that would, in
turn, make mock of the corrections industry, which the governments
really support. PAT]
David B. Horvath, CCP (dhorvath@notchur.biz)