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0 pointsKranar4y ago0 comments

I don't look at people's usernames when replying. Everything I stated can be verified:

https://www.findlaw.com/traffic/traffic-tickets/arrest-warra...

I never disputed or argued anything about whether having a criminal record impedes ones ability to get a job. I replied to someone who was shocked that 70 million Americans have a criminal record and want to point out that it does not mean that 70 million Americans are criminals, or have been convicted of a crime. The vast majority of those records are strictly for arrests, most of which did not result in a conviction and could be the result of something as benign as having an unpaid parking ticket, which is a verifiable fact.

OP's reply is that parking tickets rarely result in arrest warrants or jail time. I could not find data for the U.S. as a whole, but at least in Texas over 1 million arrest warrants were issued in 2018 alone just over unpaid traffic tickets to the point that the legislature had to step in to request judges stop putting people in jail over it:

https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/04/texas-aske...

You can find similar articles about other states (this seems to be a mostly state by state).

For further information about how the 70 million people have criminal records gives a misleading impression, there's the following Politifact article as well:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/aug/18/andrew-cuo...

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4 comments · 2 top-level

giaour4y ago· 2 in thread

I don't think the linked Politifact article supports your point:

> The FBI considers anyone who has been arrested on a felony charge to have a criminal record, even if the arrest did not lead to a conviction. The FBI only counts those with a misdemeanor if a state agency asks the bureau to keep it on file.

> So by the FBI’s standard, 73.5 million people in the United States had a criminal record as of June 30[, 2017].

The arrest warrants you mention from Texas would only count if failure to pay a parking ticket is a felony in TX

KranarOP4y ago

Then you fail to understand what is a fairly basic point, which is that most people misinterpret the meaning of a criminal record and think that 70 million people in the U.S. were at some point criminals, when in fact a criminal record can be issued simply for an arrest (even if you turn out to be innocent), as well as benign matters such as an unpaid parking ticket.

The FBI might not keep track of unpaid parking tickets in Texas as part of their own criminal record database, but Texas does keep unpaid parking tickets on record for their own criminal background check:

https://texas.staterecords.org/criminal.php

As that site points out, any arrest or warrant for arrest even for a misdemeanor will be recorded in a criminal background check.

Different government agencies have different standards for what goes into a criminal record so that there is no such thing as one single unambiguous definition for what a criminal record is. Consequently most people, including hiring managers, or people on Hacker News shocked that 70 million people have such a record, may misinterpret what a criminal record means, what the implications of one are and how serious having one is.

There is no harm in pointing out to people that a criminal record, in and of itself, does not mean that someone is guilty of a criminal offense or even that they're guilty of something serious. It could be something benign like an unpaid parking ticket or someone was arrested who turned out to be entirely innocent.

giaour4y ago

The 70 million number (the one you were specifically nitpicking) comes from the FBI database, not from a union of state level databases. So that's 70 million people who have been convicted of or arrested on a felony charge, or had a state explicitly ask the FBI to retain a record of their misdemeanor arrest, per your source.

OP was clear in this thread that "criminal record" wasn't synonymous with "has been to prison." This point was also explained to me explicitly during all the pre-employment background checks I have had.

soco4y ago

Still, one American out of three has been once arrested??? From my entire circle I only know of one person which almost got arrested, but true I'm not in the USA...

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