Yeah, I think we’re too hard as a nation on ex-cons. But they’re not heroes because they went through self-imposed hardships (and almost always at the expense of someone innocent). And they’re certainly among the lower rungs of honesty by categorization. Nowhere near the top.
If this sounds harsh, just act their victims.
It's nothing like that. The justice system is a machine that chews people up, and spits out convicts, and it operates with impunity precisely because of ignorant views like yours. Getting arrested or convicted is like winning a shit lottery, and all you need to win is to be around a cop having a bad day. Since very few people are "winners", so the knowledge of the real system is minimized, and the knowledgeable ones are marginalized and ignored because they are, after all, convicts.
People break the law and do so with impunity all day long. In fact, they get paid well to do it. Your typical family law attorney should be arrested, tried and convicted, and they've destroyed countless families, harmed countless children. But they are pillars of the community. So just because someone got punished by these corrupt people doesn't make them evil, it makes them unlucky.
(In fairness I'd estimate that 90% of arrests/convictions/plea deals are straightforward, valid and basically fair, and those convicts often are repeat offenders, low intelligence, struggling with addiction and mental health. They deserve a chance too, but it's the 10% who get swept up for breaking no law, or breaking needlessly punitive laws, that I particularly feel for. You know, the Aaron Swartz's of the world.)
wondering what you know about how many cases are decided by plea bargain rather than trial, where the plea bargain is coerced rather than voluntary?
wondering also what your opinion is of felony drug convictions (for possession)? Technically a crime, but can you name the harm?
But more seriously wondering about your unwillingness to believe that people can change, and unwillingness to allow for redemption or forgiveness.
Which ultimately means you don't believe in justice. If society has decided that a certain crime has a penalty of 5 years in prison, then after 5 years the person has paid their debt to society. They are no longer a criminal, that debt is paid.
From the previous poster.
>wondering also what your opinion is of felony drug convictions (for possession)?
I'd be fine with a project to get people convicted of felony drug or other nonviolent, victimless, crimes hired, and run by someone with such a conviction. This was not that project.
>But more seriously wondering about your unwillingness to believe that people can change,
It's a matter of the odds. People who have committed genuine crimes are greater risks. They can change, but we don't know that they've changed.
>They are no longer a criminal, that debt is paid.
Being rationally distrusted as a risk is a consequence of their crime, not a form of punishment; it's not done because of a desire to inflict suffering on the criminal, but to avoid harm.
>How have you changed your life based on the hurts you have caused others?
I've gone my life without committing a large scale financial fraud or similar act which hurt others to that degree.