Category: Finance & Banking

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European employment discrimination based on criminal record II – discretionary bars

To the American eye, Europe seems unconcerned about  criminal record-based employment discrimination (CBED). (The U.K. is an exception.) Is this because European employers do not discriminate against job applicants or employees with criminal convictions?  If so, is that because European countries prohibit CBED, prevent employers from obtaining individual criminal history information, and/or provide potent remedies to people with convictions who are discriminated against?  Or, perhaps European employers believe that CBED is immoral or irrational because past criminal convictions have no value in predicting future conduct on or off the job?  Still another hypothesis is that, while Europeans believe that prior convictions are predictive of future dishonesty, dangerousness and unreliability, they also believe that CBED should be prohibited  in order to further more important goals like rehabilitation and social harmony.  Finally, perhaps employers in Europe do discriminate, but such discrimination has not been revealed through empirical research.  While there is no body of research on European CBED comparable to the employer surveys and field studies done in the U.S., there are some generalizations that can be made.

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European employment discrimination based on criminal record I – mandatory bars

There is no body of research on European criminal record-based employment discrimination (CBED) comparable to the employer surveys and field studies done in the United States. While European concern for informational privacy keeps criminal records out of the public domain, European countries do not prohibit employment discrimination based on criminal record. In fact, as in the United States, European countries make certain criminal records disqualifying for a vast range of public sector and some private sector employments. This posting provides background on European, and especially Spanish, mandatory CBED. Our next posting provides background and discussion on discretionary CBED by private employers.

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States “rethinking” collateral consequences? Vera Institute jumps the gun

The Vera Institute has published a new report that claims states are “rethinking” collateral consequences through enactment of laws intended to mitigate their impact.  The report (Relief in Sight? States Rethink the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction, 2009-2014) includes an excellent introduction to the issues, helpfully categorizes different types of relief measures, and makes a number of useful recommendations for future reform. However, the report seems unduly sanguine in suggesting that wholesale dismantling of the regime of collateral penalties is just around the corner, or that reforms of the past five years augur a sea change in public attitudes.  Of greater practical concern, the report has methodological shortcomings that limit its usefulness as a research and advocacy tool.

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The need to eliminate barriers to diversifying police departments

The shootings and beatings of unarmed black men, boys, women and girls by police officers are sickeningly repetitive.  Also repetitive are the calls in response to diversify police departments by hiring officers who better reflect the communities and neighborhoods they would patrol.  These issues have surfaced starkly in Ferguson, Missouri, where three out of 53 officers are black. There, efforts to diversify the police department have been non-existent. Similarly in Cleveland, where twelve-year old Tamir Rice was killed by an officer while playing in a park, black residents make up 53 percent of the population but black officers comprise only 27 percent of the police force. In Baltimore, the racial composition of the police force more closely approximates the city’s population.  Nevertheless, the city has paid $5.7 million since 2011 in court judgments and settlements of police brutality claims.   In 2013, 70 percent of Baltimore’s police officers lived outside the city.   Thus, racial diversity alone is not a solution.

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Appeals court finds federal firearms law constitutionally flawed

In a major victory for Second Amendment advocates, the Sixth Circuit court of appeals has sustained an as-applied constitutional challenge to the federal firearms dispossession law, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g).  While the particular provision of that law at issue in Tyler v. Hillsdale County Sheriffs Department is § 922(g)(4), the subsection prohibiting firearms possession by anyone “who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution,” the court’s broad holding and analytical approach will be of considerable interest to those watching developments under the felon-in-possession subsection of the law, § 922(g)(1).

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