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    MamaMiaItsaMeaHamilton Nolan
    8/19/14 3:14pm

    Question for those In The Know: Do criminal databases generally get cleaned out of people verified as deceased? I wonder because that 80 million number may not be an accurate reflection of the percentage of the current live populace that have been arrested if the periodical sweeping out isn't being done.

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      CatdogWhispererMamaMiaItsaMea
      8/19/14 3:17pm

      I would be shocked if they updated them regularly. Great point.

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      asdf0a78dasdMamaMiaItsaMea
      8/19/14 3:23pm

      Criminal databases record much more than just convictions, they also include arrests, they include juvenile records, they include things like driving on a suspended license/no license/no insurance.

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    CheeseSandwichHamilton Nolan
    8/19/14 3:11pm

    Even non-arrests records can trouble you. When I was in my second year of college, the roommate I was assigned to a dorm with was arrested for child pornography. Because we both lived in the same dorm room and the police had no idea whose computer the images were on both of our names were on the search warrant.

    So if you just do a simple background check on me, my name comes up with that search warrant. I cant get my name off it or get it taken off the records. As some one who teaches I find this troubling.

    Edit: So the problem is, if some one does a quick check on me and sees that I had a search warrant issued for child pornography, I doubt they'd really be interested in setting up an interview.

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      asdf0a78dasdCheeseSandwich
      8/19/14 3:25pm

      There are two records, one for law enforcement, and one released to the public - the one for law enforcement is never expunged - ever.

      However, the problem is that this is all public record - a judge somewhere signed that search warrant, it was executed, etc, etc. Tough too, because there's the local police records, the court records, the state records, the federal records, the jail records (if you got booked), so on and so forth... It's not like there's one central database for all this stuff.

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      CheeseSandwichasdf0a78dasd
      8/19/14 3:39pm

      I wasn't booked. It was kind of funny, I was taking a nap on a Friday in anticipation of heading out on the town. Theres a knock on my door.

      "Come in," says I. Then like 3 police officers and 2 students helpers(?) come in and start ransacking the dorm. Now this is like a 12 by 15 foot dorm room. Tiny. I'm sitting in my bed freaking out because I thought this was in response to one of two things. 1) All my music on my PC. (this was 2001) or 2) The precious beer in the fridge. I was underage at the time by 3 months and was sure I was boned.

      Then I read the search warrant and I was like Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

      Sometimes I still look up my roommate on the sex offender website.

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    LadyologyHamilton Nolan
    8/19/14 3:10pm

    Anyone who is interested in the sociology behind this subject and the consequences thereof, please refer to a fantastic academic work by Harvard professor of African American studies, William Julius Wilson entitled "The Truly Disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy." He coined the term "marriageable men" and first explored the sociological effects of incarcerating an enormous proportion of men of color.

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      DoctorNineLadyology
      8/19/14 3:30pm

      Absolutely. Brilliant guy. This is my favorite of his books though:

      "When Work Disappears"

      http://www.umsl.edu/~marinap/DOCUM…

      Check out everything that he has done:

      Past President of the American Sociological Association, Wilson has received 41 honorary degrees, including honorary doctorates from Princeton University, Columbia University, theUniversity of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Bard College, Dartmouth College, and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. A MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1987 to 1992, Wilson has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Philosophical Society, the Institute of Medicine, and the British Academy. In June 1996 he was selected by Time magazine as one of America's 25 Most Influential People. He is a recipient of the 1998 National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States, and was awarded the Talcott Parsons Prize in the Social Sciences by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.

      Dude is a monster.

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      wegwe32Ladyology
      8/19/14 3:30pm

      Unfortunately, you'll be reading sociology which is a complete farce.

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    destor23Hamilton Nolan
    8/19/14 3:13pm

    Why don't we have some mechanism for people to purge records if they are not convicted? Makes no sense.

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      Salmonfighterrrdestor23
      8/19/14 3:16pm

      We have mechanisms for expunging minor convictions, but it is basically impossible for the average person to navigate. That's a feature, not a flaw.

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      destor23Salmonfighterrr
      8/19/14 3:37pm

      But even then, can somebody arrested and never charged do anything to get their mug shot, finger prints, etc. out of the system?

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    wellheytherepartnerHamilton Nolan
    8/19/14 3:10pm

    Don't forget about the war on skateboarding. 'Cause that's why I spent a night in jail in my 20s.

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      Búho se Pierdewellheytherepartner
      8/19/14 3:19pm

      A night in jail for that? Where was this?

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      wellheytherepartnerBúho se Pierde
      8/19/14 3:31pm

      Defiant criminal trespass. Some sketchy gentleman drove into the parking lot where I was skating at 10:30 PM and claimed to own the property, but refused to tell me his name. I said, "I'll make you a deal. You tell me your name and I'll go." He said, "No. You want me to call the cops?" I said, "Fine. Call the cops. Maybe they can tell me if you have the authority to ask me to leave." He called them.

      In short, they arrested me without hearing my side of the story. As a skateboarder, you have lots and lots of interaction with police; I expected the big city cops to be like the college and suburban cops that I had always dealt with in the past. I was wrong. Fingerprinted, mugshot, shoelaces. I was as polite as can be and the officers were too after they arrested me, giving my paternal lectures like, "You seem like a smart kid. Learn to walk away." They let me stop at my apartment on the way to the station to get my ID (otherwise I would have been in for much longer). I hired a lawyer and eventually got the charges dismissed.

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    toothpetardHamilton Nolan
    8/19/14 3:14pm

    An essential part of freedominess is obedience.

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      Falsoman el Garabaterotoothpetard
      8/19/14 3:46pm

      Which is closer to the truth for what many people think than I would like to. There's this idea among so many people that there's this abuse of freedom that deserves to be punished by legal means. Like being promiscuous, choosing the wrong religion, or being too in the nose about something (think gay parades).

      I believe this is what people use to rationalize their biases, like how these gay guy got beaten because he was being agressively gay, or that woman was raped because she dressed like a slut, or that black guy got shot for "thuggish" behavior.

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    CheeseSandwichHamilton Nolan
    8/19/14 3:16pm

    Also worth noting is the rise in private prison systems and the incentive to keep those filled. Theres already been a few scandals of judges getting kick backs to keep those thing filled.

    And of course, America doesn't have a rehabilitative justice system. Our return to jail rates for offenders is astronomically high. For a country that continually screams about being founded on Christian principals you'd think we'd attempt to do a better job at forgiving those in jail and building a prison system that actually rehabilitates people instead of locking them in over crowded, gang invested violent hell holes.

    But then of course see the first paragraph, financial incentive to keep prisons filled. It's the circle of of the justice system.

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      kiracHamilton Nolan
      8/19/14 3:24pm

      In my state, all charges, including misdemeanor ones, remain on your criminal record even when dismissed with prejudice. This means if you get wrongfully arrested by an asshole cop and the prosecutor recognizes the charges are bullshit by dismissing with prejudice, you are still screwed when job hunting or leasing apartments.

      There is a process to expunge dismissed with prejudice charges, but it is fairly complicated for non-lawyers. This means most people don't do it because they don't have the skills or money to clear their record. Additionally, if the charge is just dismissed, you can never expunge it from your record because technically the prosecutor could reopen the case at any time.

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        grasshoppergrasshopperHamilton Nolan
        8/19/14 3:22pm

        What is the rationale for arresting so many people you are not going to charge? Do cops get Brownie points for arrests even if no charges are laid? It seems like it would just be a bunch of paperwork that your typical doughnut muncher would rather not do...

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          cordialcorkingfeegrasshoppergrasshopper
          8/19/14 5:59pm

          my frame of reference is, of course, very narrow and limited both geographically and socially but I do know quite a few police officers in my (large, urban, southern) municipality and they do avoid making arrests if at all possible. It's like you said... the paperwork and just the process of booking someone is a huge pain in the ass. Maybe the cops I know happen to be nice, or maybe they are an outlier, but they definitely don't go out of their way to harass and arrest people.

          I also think more people should take advantage of the ride along system. It keeps cops honest and gives people a window into how law enforcement works.

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          isgkgrasshoppergrasshopper
          8/19/14 6:00pm

          I'm guessing a good portion of them are being drunk and disorderly, where the cops need to get drunk dumbasses off the street because they are yelling at someone else, put them into a holding cell for the night to let them sleep it off and then send them on their way. Really that's about all the cops have as options if you are doing something stupid in public, before I think they had leeway with driving you somewhere else, etc but because of the CYA mentality anymore because someone got mugged, or was in an accident afterwards and sued the city for millions now everything has to be documented somewhere. Couple that with making everything electronic and being able to actually monitor the effectiveness of the police with lovely charts and stats, individual officers need to justify their existence in a never ending battle of statistical analysis. "What you didn't arrest a single person today? So I guess in a town of a million not a single crime occurred ehhh?"

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