great moral system you have there
In one comment you managed to violate a whole bunch of the HN commenting guidelines.
please, show me your good faith interpretation and i will take back my comment
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disclosure_and_Barring_Service
Yes
Why are we protecting criminals, just because they are minors? Protect victims, not criminals.
Unfortunately reputational damage is part of the punishment (I have a criminal record), but maybe it's moronic to create a class of people who can avoid meaningful punishment for crimes?
This - nearly all drug deliveries in my town are done by 15 years olds on overpowered electric bikes. Same with most shoplifting. The real criminals just recruit the schoolchildren to do the work because they know schoolchildren rarely get punishment.
At a certain point, we say someone is an adult and fully responsible for their actions, because “that’s who they are”.
It’s not entirely nuanced—and in the US, at least, we charge children as adults all the time—but it’s understandable.
At a certain point, poorly thought out "protections", turn into a system that protects organized crime, because criminals aren't as stupid as lawmakers, and exploit the system.
There is a big difference between making a mistake as a kid that lands you in trouble, and working as a underling for organized crime to commit robberies, drug deals, and violent crime, and not having to face responsibility for their actions.
The legal system has so many loopholes for youth, for certain groups, that the law is no longer fair, and that is its own problem, contributing to the decline of public trust.
Have you ever considered that these children are victims of organized crime? That they aren't capable of understanding the consequences of what they're doing and that they're being manipulated by adult criminals?
The problem here isn't the lack of long term consequences for kids.
12 year olds know it’s not right to sell crack.
The problem is the gap between lack of legal opportunities for youth and the allure of easy money, status and power from being a criminal. Doesn’t help that the media makes it look so fun and cool to be a gangster.
Just because exceptions are exploitable, doesn't mean we should just scrap all the exceptions. Why not improve the wording and try to work around the exceptions?
The problem that is happening in most Western countries is that criminal organizations take advantage of the fact that minors get reduced sentenced and that their criminal records are usually kept sealed (unless tried as an adult). Whether it be having them steal cars, partake in organized shoplifting operations, muggings, gang activity, drug dealing, etc...
Your reasoning for why this information shouldn't be public record seems to boil down to the fact that you don't agree with other peoples judgement of someone's past crimes. You'd like to see more forgiveness, and you don't think others will show the same forgiveness, so you want to take away all the access to information because of that. To me that seems like a view from a point of moral superiority.
I'd rather people get access to this information and be able to use their own brains to determine whether they want that person working there. If you were involved in shoplifting at 17 years old, and turn 18, I think it would be very fair for a store owner to be able to use that information to judge you when making a hiring decision. To me it doesn't make sense that you turn a magical age of 18 and suddenly your past poor decisions vanish into a void.
Protect victims and criminals. Protect victims from the harm done to them by criminals, but also protect criminals from excessive, or, as one might say, cruel and unusual punishment. Just because someone has a criminal record doesn't mean that anything that is done to them is fair game. Society can, and should, decide on an appropriate extent of punishment, and not exceed that.