Making the Job Fit the Crime

Wizbang blog hammers Deval Patrick for a proposal reported in the Boston Globe, but which has not yet been made public by our remarkably secretive new administration. The proposal would restrict access to CORI data (Criminal Offender Record Information) by Massachusetts employers. Under the Governor’s proposal, employers will only be allowed to see CORI information that is “relevant” to the context of their potential employment.

Nanny State will prescribe which CORI information is relevant to you, Mr. Employer. Of course if you are sued on account of your employee’s misconduct, Nanny State will probably not help you out, but instead will be asking why you weren’t’ more careful about who you hired.

Wizbang notes that even the stalwartly liberal Globe seems to search desperately for the merits of this proposal, not to mention the Massachusetts district attorneys (very few of whom are Republican).

It boils down to a policy of helping Massachusetts ex-cons obtain employment through state-sponsored deception. Maintaining unfiltered access to information and providing financial incentives to employers who hire ex-cons would be an honest way to pursue the same policy. But such incentives would result in lost state revenue, so in the end perhaps it's just cheaper to decieve.

"There is a lot of talk about how this affects people's ability to enter back into society," said [Plymouth County DA Timothy] Cruz. "There should be reentry programs. But why should we change someone's history to get them a job?"

Maybe because it doesn't require much state revenue to hide a criminal record.