Stuff You Should Know - Criminal Records: No Thanks!

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

And you thought our crime and punishment suite was finished. Not yet it isn't! Not before we cover criminal records. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there. And this is the podcast known as Stuff You Should Know podcast, podcast.

We all three on our group teleconferencing thing here had our cameras on for the first time. Yeah, it was great for about, I don't know, 45 seconds before I turned mine off. Yeah. And then it was like, well, I don't want to just be observed. I'm no goldfish. Then you turn yours off. I like Jerry's long hair though. I know. Jerry just looks like, I just don't quite know how to put it, just like a wealthy middle-aged person who could buy and sell your sorry ass if she wanted to. So we're cussing now? I think so. You said the D word not too long ago, so I feel like I'm allowed at least one.

Well, we'll probably bleep that out for fun. D word, which D word? D-A-M-N. No, I didn't. You did. And I don't remember when, but you said, or no, the P word. I'm sorry, you said the P word. What's the P word? You know, the P word. I mean, I can think of a few bad P words. It was P-I-S-S-E-D, period. That's not a cuss word.

Yes, it is. And you, because you didn't mean it like drunk. You meant it like P O'd. Goodness. You don't even know what a cuss word is and you're in your mid 40s. This has become one of the most juvenile introductions we've come up with so far. And we've said some pretty juvenile stuff over the course of the years, Chuck. But I think it's time to shake it off, get serious, and prepare to re-record an episode. No, not quite. So I hit you. You decided we were going to do this one, this episode on criminal records. And I hit you back and said, hey, we've actually done one. We did an episode back in 2012 called

Why You Probably Have a Criminal Record. And there's going to be some overlap when we were talking about criminal records, but this is definitely different and even more to the point. This is an important enough thing that people don't really think about or know about unless you're suffering from it, that it's worth like restating every 10 years, basically, as long as it's a problem. Yeah. And this is a little more robust. And I know we talked back then, I did not have a criminal record 10 years ago. I'm happy to say I still don't. Oh, that's good.

Have not been arrested in the last 10 years, but that was something I don't remember. I'm sure we talked about it, but I don't remember the first time is that this is sort of getting ahead, but you can have a criminal record if you just get arrested. And they're like, oh, sorry, you didn't do anything after all, but you still have the criminal record. That's precisely right, man. And as a result of that rule, something like one in three Americans have a criminal record. I saw one in three. I also saw one in four. And if it's one in four, that means that as many Americans have a criminal record as have a four year diploma.

Yeah, that was pretty mind boggling. And it's kind of like, okay, well, so what? I have a criminal record. I was arrested once. It's part of my checkered past. I don't like to talk about it, but it's not really stood in my way. Well, I was kind of, I got a little bit of the birth lottery in a lot of ways, and I was able to navigate and make my way through life having a criminal record without it actually proving a problem. That is not necessarily the case for a lot of people, including people who have only been arrested, but haven't, and weren't even convicted of a crime. They just happen to be of a different race or a different sexual orientation or something like that, where having

a criminal record can prove to be a real problem for you, especially if the deck is already stacked against you, almost as if employers are looking for a reason not to hire you. They can legally not hire you because you have a criminal record. There's a lot of problems with it, and we'll get into all of that, but I feel like we need to just generally explain the whole thing first, the whole process and what they are and how they're dealt with. Right. Unless you live under a rock, you know what a criminal record is, right? That's right. A criminal record, like you said, is it's very simple. It's literally just government, like information that the government in the United States keeps about you that says it's data, and it says, I mean, I guess we can go

like what's on the literal criminal record. Like once you get arrested, they've got your name, they've got your date of birth. If you have any known aliases, which I wish I did, but I don't. I'm not nearly cool enough to have aliases. Johnny tight lips. Physical description of me. Yeah, that's a funny physical description, a little known fact that usually includes looks on a scale of 1 to 10. Yeah, mine just says Harry Lof. And they're like, is that his name? They're like, no, that's a description. This should be an alias of yours. H-A-R-R-Y. L-O-A-P-H. I don't think your alias should also describe you though. That's probably a bad alias. Yeah, you want it to be forgettable and make you more forgettable. That's true. That's like rule number

one of aliases. Right. Current address, the type of crime you committed, allegedly. Outstanding arrest warrants, dates and arrest of your conviction, fingerprint data, and oh, that mugshot. I know it's weird to feel like I wanted a mugshot at one point in my life, but it's a weird thing in this country because mugshots are kind of one of two things. It's either really embarrassing or it's kind of like this weird badge of honor. I'm not sure how that happened, but... Yeah, but I mean, that's how you might view it from society standpoint. Exactly, from a privileged point of view. Right, yeah. Well, I mean, but from society in general, that's a stigma. And there's entire businesses, basically like patent trolls, but with mugshots that just accumulate these things,

because they're a matter of public record, and publish them online, and you have to pay them to take them down. Yeah. Which is a problem, but it does go to show like, yeah, it is. It's a social stigma to have a mugshot of you, and even beyond the social stigma, it can be really problematic and prevent you from getting a lot of normal things in life. Well, and I was kind of kidding when I said, I don't know how that happened in America, but I do know how that happened, and that's the internet, when they started just publishing like, oh, look at Nick Nolte, and look how awful this person looks on their worst night. Poor Nick Nolte. So that's how it became a cultural sort of badge of honor, was probably the wrong thing to say, but something to be shared. Well,

it's kind of like owning it, where if everybody's going to judge you, you might as well own it and be like, yeah, I've got a mugshot. What are you going to do about it? Square? You got a mugshot? Well, that makes you square if you don't. Yeah. My favorite ones are when the celebrity is super smiley. They're like, I defy you too. I'm not going to look like Nick Nolte here. Yes. Those are funny enough. We're fine, but the ones where the person like really actually committed a terrible crime and they're still smiling, those are enraging. Well, those are disturbing. Yeah. Yeah. But poor Nick Nolte. You know, Rift Tracks, the fine people who basically made the second iteration of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and now carried on and make perhaps an

even better version of that as Rift Tracks. Yeah, stuff you should know listeners. Yeah, I think so. Friends of the show. They perennially, especially Mike Nelson, picks on Nick Nolte every chance they get. Right. Kind of painting a sketch of him as a really unsavory and grizzled and in terrible person, but it's hilarious. But also, it's like, what did Nick Nolte ever do? And I genuinely don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure what that mugshot's even from, aside from probably drugs. But I know the one you're talking about. He's wearing like a Hawaiian shirt that's like ruffled and rumpled and like the collar sticking up on one side. It's not a good... It's got the Einstein here. Yeah. It's not a good picture for sure. But here's the good news. In the United States,

and by the way, this doesn't include traffic violation. So if you've talked about having speeding tickets still on your record, quote unquote, it's not your criminal record. That's something different, which we'll get to. It depends though. If it was a really big... It was a crime committed with your car, like DUI, vehicular homicide, hit and run. Right. Those would be on there. But yeah, speeding ticket or something. I think even like a suspended license due to points or something like that, that's on a different database. But yeah, it wouldn't be your criminal record. Right. But if you do have a criminal record, you can... And you've heard this on TV shows plenty of times. I want to have that expunged. You can have your record expunged

sometimes. This means... All it means is it's not active anymore. It's not like they just... They take your file and they burn it with a torchlighter and they say, have a great life. The government still has all that data. That record is still there, but it's just... And it varies from state to state, like how you go about it. But that just means that your record is now sealed. And you have... If you want to do this, you go... The best place to start is where you got pinched to begin with. And they will help you from that point forward. You may have to hire an attorney, but you may not. Well, so yeah, even if you don't hire an attorney, if you do it yourself, there's a lot of court fees and court costs associated with it. It's a really long, hard,

difficult process, which makes sense in a lot of cases. But in other cases, you're like, this is unjust. We need to make this easier. Right. But I actually saw... I think the reason is because different states call different things expunging or sealing. But I saw in a lot of cases, those are two different things. And in the case of expunction... Isn't that a terrible word? It's pretty bad. They actually do destroy the case. Oh, really? Yeah. Like, it's gone. Like, it's like it didn't happen. Like, the crime happened. But as far as you're concerned, that your case file is destroyed. So you're not in the database anymore at that point? No. No. It's gone. But then sealing is more like what you described, where they actually keep the

records. They might destroy the things like the evidence that they gathered from you, like DNA evidence and all that stuff might be destroyed. But the record, your criminal record associated with the case itself, that will remain. But it's just really hard to get to. And usually, you need a court order and a judge will have to weigh the benefits or the pros and the cons of unsealing it for whatever it is. And usually, it's like... I mean, anybody who's watched Enough Law and Order knows this. If they have you on a crime and they suspect that you've committed this crime before, they'll go to the judge and ask to unseal that criminal record to just kind of find out, oh, this guy's a repeat offender or whatever.

Yeah. And as far as whether or not they will either expunge or seal to begin with, they're going to consider, obviously, sort of the no-brainer stuff, like what it was you did, whether you were convicted, how long it's been, what you've been like since then. Mm-hmm. Your looks on a scale of one to ten. The hairy loaf? No, thank you. No expungement. Expunishment? Expungement. Expunction. I'm serious. Like, you can't help but kind of like drag up a little bit of phlegm from the back of your throat when you say that word. All right. I think we should take a break because I'm thoroughly grossed out right now.

I'm going to go check my privilege and then we'll talk about a juvie juvenile criminal record right after this. Well, now when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously,

I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India,

it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars. If you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the

iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So you're talking about juvie records that are coming up now. We're coming up on criminal records for kids. I think, by the way, I think we should do a whole episode. I kind of thought crime and punishment, our series was over. No, never. But now there's this. And I think we should do one on the juvenile. I think we should do one on juvie. It'll be over, Chuck, when we do an episode that's actually about the Dostoevsky book. When we do that, that will be the final seal on that. I need to get started now. We will seal the crime and punishment suite with that one. But we were talking about juvenile criminal records, not juvie itself.

But you were saying you want to do an episode on that? I think so, for sure. Sure. I'm down with that. But at least in the United States, and I assume in plenty of other countries as well, that share similar sentiments about crime and punishment and justice. If you're a kid, the crimes you commit, especially nonviolent crimes, especially if you've only committed, say, one crime, that's typically treated differently than if an adult commits a crime. And one of the major ways that it's treated differently, well, one of the first ways it's treated differently is it's tried in a different court, the juvenile court. And one of the things that seems to be pretty much agreed upon across the board is you shouldn't have this criminal

record follow you around for the rest of your life because of some mistake you made as a kid. And as a result, I don't know if it's automatic, but I think it's at least so common. You could almost call it automatic that a juvenile's records will be sealed when they turn 18. As long as they've kept their nose clean. There's a lot of qualifiers with that, and that's a big one, that it needs to have been, number one, a small enough crime or a nonviolent crime so that it makes sense to basically protect you from society's judgment rather than protect society from you. I don't know if we really said one of the big reasons criminal records exist or are searchable, say in the case of a job search or a landlord or

something like that, is to basically saying you're not really trustworthy. You gave up the base trust that everyone has walking around when you committed a crime. We need to let other people know that you're not trustworthy in that sense. So your criminal records can be accessed like that. This is the opposite of that. This is saying you screwed up once as a kid and we don't want to just ruin the rest of your life because of that. So we're going to just make it like you're not even like you never even had a criminal record. It's not going to be searchable. It's not going to pop up. And you can legally say when your record is sealed or expunged in particular that you don't have a criminal history from that point on.

Right. And we should point out that this all means that you're a juvenile who was tried as a juvenile. In the United States as someone under 18, you can still be tried as an adult. And this is obviously something they do when it's much more serious crimes, definitely serious, serious felonies, sometimes the more serious misdemeanors. But in this case, it's just this as far as your criminal record goes and expungement and sealing and everything. This is just the same as you were an adult as is with the case with registering as a sex offender. If you are a minor who is a convicted sex offender, you have to be on that sex offender registry just like an adult would be. And that is on your criminal record. And you, you know, maybe at some point we should do one on

the sex. I know we've talked about it a couple of times, but we should probably do a full episode on the sex offender registry. I mean, it's just, it needs to be discussed because it makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways. And then there's a lot of problems with it that ruin people's lives. It needs, yeah, we definitely need to do one on that. I agree. Yeah. Because that's one where that database is open to the public. You can, you can go online and you can search your neighborhood or search specific people or addresses. And, you know, it's so parents and the public at large can track the whereabouts of registered sex offenders. Like you said, many, many times that is a great thing to happen. But I know in a recent episode, we talked about the fact that I think

if you get arrested for public urination, you have to register. Is that right? Yeah. Another big one that can be really, really life ruining is consensual sex with a minor when you're like one year over the line. Like if the line is 17 and you're 17 and she's 16 or vice versa, that can, yeah, you can end up on the sex register, sex offender registry for life. And that's a, like, again, it's like needed and necessary. The sex crimes are just treated differently. And I think rightfully so. I think most people agree, like these are special kinds of things. And one of the reasons why they're treated differently is because sex offenders have been shown to have the highest recidivism rates of any criminal. I think you threw an extra

D in there. Recidivism. No, I nailed it. Is that right? It's a bonehead word admittedly, but I think I nailed it. Recidivism. No, recidivism. I'm pretty sure I, man, this is deletrious to my self-confidence. You've made that joke before the same, uh, raising your zone of joke. Sure. It's recidivism. There's only one, there's only one D. Well, we, you have to make that joke every time you say that word. Of course. It just comes in so infrequently in that movie. So good. But the, but the point is, is that sex offenders have a reoccurrence. They, they commit crimes. There you go. Um, they're more likely to recommit sexual offenses than the average criminal is.

A reoccurrence. Shut up. You got me on that one. It's true. And also I've noticed, I've been saying like shut up lately and I am sorry. I don't know where it's coming from, but no, you don't mean it. That is, I'm not supposed to say the S word. I know. And you know, I won't do it anyway. So what? No, it's a, it's futile. It's futile. Uh, so as far as storing these things, you know, in the old days, it was exactly like you probably think it was, which is these things were kept at local police stations. And that was kind of the end of it. Maybe they would share things between counties, which meant probably somebody driving over and looking in their file cabinet and then saying, thanks a lot. And then shutting that,

putting the file back and shutting that file cabinet and leaving again. But these days, of course, this is all going to be done on databases, but it's still really kind of, I don't want to say willy nilly cause I feel like that's a little too critical. But it, there's, it's definitely not some national really codified thing where this happens, then this, then this, uh, the, you know, that first database is at the state and local level. And then if you're convicted, you, you may have that uploaded into a larger state repository, or you may not. And then that state repository may be linked to the national crime information centers, uh, interstate identification index or the triple I, but it may be not. You, you like,

it's, it's hard to tell unless you really do all this investigating about your own criminal record, criminal record, where it lies. Yeah. It's, there is a federal database. Like you're saying that does exist, but it's just not compulsory among the states or among the localities to submit it to that. And some people are like, this is ridiculous. This is the dumbest thing ever. Like every crime committed, every, maybe arrest every made, certainly every conviction ever made in any locality in any state on, on the federal level should all go into the interstate identification index, um, which is by the way, uh, open or available for searching only to law enforcement and like the courts, like it's not no one else, no private background check company could get

their hands on it, that kind of thing. So it's right. But on the state level, you can, right? Yes. Like if you're a state, if you're a cop and like, you know, um, Atlanta, you could go on to the III and, um, and search it. But you know, like, uh, if, if I were an employer and I hired a company to conduct a background check, they couldn't gain access to that. No, no, no. I meant on the state level, like if you're convicted on the state level, a regular citizen can search public records, like that's viewable by anyone. Right. Now that's correct. That is true. Um, when there's really no distinction between the criminal record you would have in that state repository and that criminal, that same criminal record that state repository uploads to the interstate identification.

Yeah. That's a good point. The, the, so yeah, you could, you could conceivably have that same criminal record checked. It's just that particular data. It makes you wonder what they got in there that isn't, that isn't elsewhere, or they just don't want to give out the password to any Schmo, you know, I don't, I don't know. But the, um, the, the, the whole thing starts in the responsibility for keeping the record begins at the local level and that local law enforcement agency, or if a state trooper arrested you, the state, or if the FBI arrested you, the feds, whoever arrested you or whatever court convicted you, I should say and or, cause you can have multiple criminal records from different, you know, from the, the cops and from the court. Um, they're,

they're responsible for maintaining, creating and maintaining that. And then they're also the ones that upload it or don't upload it depending on the, the state laws. Right. Uh, and you know, we mentioned the traffic stuff earlier, that is on the national driver register. If you have that DUI or a suspended license, I think a failure to help someone at the scene of an accident is a pretty serious offense. Yeah. Uh, any kind of fatal accident or even lying perjury about driving or operating a motor vehicle, all of that stuff can be on the national driver register. And that can be accessed by an employer if your job, like if you want to go drive for a UPS or something, and they're, they're for sure going to probably look into that stuff. Yeah. But,

but that kind of, again, that kind of stuff's not going to come up on a criminal background check. And the average employer for a non-driving job is not going to bother to, to look into the national driver database from what I could tell. Right. Um, but an employer might ask you that, it's actually very frequent. Um, I think something, I saw like 80 something percent of employers ask for, or do background searches on potential applicants and something like 73% of employers in the United States have like a stated background check policy. Um, so it happens a lot. Um, and employers are, or prospective employers are one of the few groups that you can say, yes, you may access my criminal background records. Like I couldn't give you permission,

Chuck, and you go off and access my criminal record or vice versa. I know, I've asked. I know. And I've given you permission, but when you went to the sheriff's office, they were like, beat it, loaf. I was like, how did they know my alias? They've been watching me. Yeah, that is true. Uh, but you also, as an employer, have to have permission, uh, for them to go through a firm or a credit agency or something. They can't just do that on their own. You can say, um, no, don't go look up my criminal record, but you're probably not going to get that job. Uh, if you are getting interviewed and you do have a criminal record or arrest for something, uh, it's, you know, it's best to own up to that in the moment and don't try and fool them because they can probably

find out. And, uh, you know, you probably have a good excuse or a good reason. Um, if you're trying to put your life back together and it was something when you were younger or maybe a really minor offense, it's just best to be honest about all that stuff because it will probably come out in the end one way or another. Right. Um, yeah, especially if they're, if they end up doing the background check, I think there's like two boxes, like have you ever been arrested, which is way different from have you ever been convicted? Yeah. Which is, you know, what I've always seen is have you ever been convicted of a crime, but apparently on some job applications, they ask if you've ever been arrested. So if you say no and you have been, but then you give them

the, um, the, um, authority to do your background check and it comes back and you lied on your application, they're just going to turn you down. I saw, even if you say yes and they, they come back with a, um, you know, with and find out that you have a criminal record, um, I think something like 50% of employers said like, that would be it. Like they would just move on to the next candidate. But that's really high. But that also means that 50% of employers would not say that that disqualifies you. So if you're truthful and honest and especially, especially if you have an explanation for what, what, you know, what the crime was, then, you know, you're, there's a really good chance that among that 50% of employers, you're going to move on and, and like that will be sorted and

you'll just continue on an application process or even possibly get the job. So I don't, I didn't see anywhere that said, you know, you should totally just lie on the application. They'll never find out. Nothing like that. Like everything I saw is like what you said, you should just be upfront and honest about it and have a good, have an explanation at the ready to not just like, yeah, I know. But anyway, you were asking me, you know, what my greatest fault is. And I would say perfectionism and working too much. Yeah. And that arrest. Like you mentioned earlier, you can be discriminated against because of the job, because you're not, you are no longer what's called being in a protected class. You can be discriminated against, you can be refused that job, you can be

refused public housing. Many, many things can say, and agencies can say no, no, thank you, because of your arrest record. I think if you have a felony drug use convention, convention, conviction. It's a heck of a convention. I know, man. Hunter S. Thompson. Yeah, exactly. That means that they cannot, in most cases, discriminate against you because of that conviction. So they've made a little bit of headway. And we may have talked about that in our drug courts episode, but I can't remember. Yeah, but we did. So there are a couple of things that like, that we'll talk about. I guess that reformers are basically saying like, we need to, we need to do something about this. But one of the first kind of band-aids that the federal government came

up with to help people who have a criminal record get a job despite having a criminal record, is something called Fidelity Bonding, which I didn't even know existed, did you? I had heard of that because of the film industry. And I don't know that they called it Fidelity Bonding, but it's sort of like back when Robert Downey Jr. was having all his troubles years ago. Yeah, that was Fidelity Bonding. Yeah, these insurance or these movie companies would have to put up these really big insurance bonds to ensure that, you know, they're spending a ton of money on this movie. You can't have Robert Downey Jr. And, you know, he's turned everything around, which is a testament to him and his wife's help. But yeah, that they're like,

he's got to show up to work and it's a real risk hiring him in this state or any, you know, this, this goes across the board. It's not just movie stars, but yeah, you can put up a and pay for a Fidelity Bond to kind of cut their risk. Yeah, so I saw that here that you can, but it looks like it's pretty common that the federal government will actually issue them free of charge to the, to the worker where the federal government is basically saying, give this person a chance. If they, if they steal your whole stockroom, if they rob you, if, if, if you suffer a loss because you hired them, we will compensate you. That's what that, that Fidelity Bond says, which I think is really cool. You know, it's like a good,

I don't know. There's just something I didn't know it existed and it made me think the world's a slightly nicer place than I realized it was before I realized there was federal bonding. Yeah, or Fidelity Bonding or any kind of bonding. Coupling is what you're thinking of. Okay. So there's a, there's a kind of a push among legal, legal types to standardize criminal records. And if you take all of the information on a criminal record together, it's called criminal history record information. That's like what all the details are. If you're a researcher, that's what you would refer to it as. Everybody else calls them criminal records or rap sheets or whatever. But there's a push to people,

among certain people to say, hey, we need to standardize this. It needs to be compulsory to report crimes to the, to the federal database that, you know, law enforcement can search. We just need to make this a better, more robust thing. And there is another group, there's a whole other camp that says, these are really ruining people's lives unjustly and we need to take another look at this. And they don't necessarily disagree with the people who say this needs to be standardized in compulsory, but they do say we need to, there's, it's being left to hang far too long. And I say we take our last break and then come back and talk about the pros and the cons of criminal records. What about you? Let's do it. Well, now when you're on the road,

driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck. It's stuff you should know. All right. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesha Chikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and

pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So, you know, if you're a fine-upstanding citizen out there and you've never been arrested,

you might think, well, there's no downside at all to keeping these robust records. Anytime you think there's no downside to something, you should stop right there and just reflect on it a little further. Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't matter what it is. There's a downside to sugar cookies with icing. There's a downside to teddy bears. Somewhere there's a downside. That's my new motto, Chuck. I just came up with a new motto. Somewhere there's a downside. What's the teddy bear downside? I haven't researched them enough. Probably choking hazards from the eyeballs. All right. Good point. Yeah, thank you. I just came up with that off the top of my head. I'll come up with 10 more things if you give me a few minutes.

So, some of the pros of keeping good track of criminal records is you have a robust dataset. And it's not just like, look how many bad people there are in the world because I think we've hopefully already gotten across that doesn't necessarily mean you're a bad person. Yeah. But you can use this data for recidivism research. It's a really valuable source of data instead of having to go to all these different agencies. It is nice to be able to go to one place, kind of a one-stop shop to find out if some of these programs are effective to keep people from recommitting crimes or going back into the criminal justice system. Yeah, that's a really important thing to know and to have like actual data on, you know?

Oh, absolutely. Another thing and it's not just recidivism, but redemption. There are people that do research on redemption and it's not just like, I mean, that's sort of a broad word to call it, but that's really what it is. These researchers, Alfred Bloemstein and Kiminori Nakamura have done a lot of research trying to find out basically like, if you're trying to get a job, where is the reasonable point in your life after you haven't done something, like done something wrong again, that it's null and void and that an employer shouldn't even have to ask you anymore, basically. When are you fully rehabilitated as far as the law enforcement goes? Yeah, like what's the point where criminal stops being a criminal when they stop committing

crime? How long after that? And they actually studied something like 88,000 criminal records from New York State. Yeah, first timers. Yeah, and then followed them for 25 years. So this is a really robust study. And what they found was that there actually is a point, a quantifiable point, where somebody stops being a criminal. And they found that if you committed a serious offense, as your first offense, typically it was about eight years where you were no more likely to be arrested than the average citizen, which is a really good decision. If you kept your nose clean the whole time. Yes, exactly. That's the key. Because every time you commit another crime, you're like, oh, it's still a criminal, still a criminal, right? But if you commit, like say,

just one crime, that's the easiest way to do it. But ostensibly, it would work for people who commit multiple crimes and then stop, which is something called desistence. It's where criminal stops committing crimes. At some point, if you care about rehabilitation and re-interaction in society, you have to say, okay, you're no longer a criminal. And these two researchers, Bloemstein and Nakamura, quantified it eight years for a serious offense with no other offenses in between, and then three years for a less serious crime. I didn't see what they were. It takes about three years before that person who was once a criminal is now statistically no more likely to be arrested for a crime than the average person who has never committed one before. And I think that's fantastic.

The thing is, in this case, criminal records are a paradox. You need to have criminal records to study them to figure out when the criminal record is no longer needed and is in fact actually harmful to the person. It's not serving any benefits for society. A person is no longer a criminal. Now it's actively harming this person who's no longer a criminal by keeping them from getting jobs. Yes. And I think the last part of that quantification for that study is the most important part, which is after a certain time, they're just like everybody else. Like someone who's never been arrested before, they are no more likely to commit a crime than you are just because they did it one time eight years ago or three years ago. Yeah. And that is not the way that society,

at least as far as in practice goes, is set up. It's now the way it is now generally, although the minds are changing as we'll see. If once you're a criminal, you're a criminal. That's it. You're a criminal for life. And these research like this is saying like that's just not true. And this is really unjust after a certain period of time. Yeah. Obviously the cons, we've kind of dabbled in that through most of this episode. Couldn't help ourselves. You know, we have a mass incarceration problem in this country. And we're not saying like, oh, just don't police and let people do what they want. It's no big deal. But that's different than mass incarceration. When one, like you said at the beginning, one in three adults has been arrested by the age

of 23 in this country. Yeah. And not only that, but if you include jail along with prison, the number of people behind bars in the U.S. And I think this is pretty accurate right now is about 2.2 million. Yeah. That was the latest I could find. I think it was in an article from 2021. So it's pretty accurate. And it's just, did you say it's quintupled since 1980? No, but that's a pretty staggering number. You should see a graph of it. It just shoots up starting in like starting around the 1980s. Crazy enough. Can't quite put my finger on why that would have happened. But it just goes through the roof, right? And of course, this is no surprise. I suspect even the people who don't want critical race theory taught in

schools, but if you are of color or if you are LGBTQ, if you are transgender, although I said T in there, didn't I? If you have a mental illness, you're way more at risk of being incarcerated than somebody who doesn't check those same boxes. And in America, black men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. And Hispanic men are two and a half times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. And so it kind of starts to become clear, especially when you realize that having a criminal record is a big driver of poverty that disproportionately affecting communities of color and other minorities, which makes it so much easier for society at large to just ignore this problem. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the obstacles in your way, it's not just getting

a job, it's building credit, it's getting housing, any kind of public assistance, education, getting back together with your family. It really creates sort of a wall around you and the rest of the world, even if you were trying to get back into society and be a good citizen, and you want that job. I think more than 60% of people who were formerly incarcerated are unemployed a year after being released. And that's like an open invitation to recidivism. Totally. I mean, you got to make ends meet somehow. Yeah, I mean, not trying to excuse saying, oh, well, you should just go out and commit crimes then. If you can't get a job, we're not saying that at all. But it's certainly a barrier if

you can't get a job and you're trying to reintegrate into society and 60% of them a year later can't get those jobs. And then if you do get a job, those who do have the jobs, you're getting 40% less pay annually. And, you know, I guess over the years, you can build that back up and it's good that they get that one job at least. But there's an imbalance here in this country as far as trying to genuinely rehabilitate people. And that doesn't just mean, well, you got out of jail or you got out of prison, and we feel like you're a pretty good person now. And you're on your own. Good luck getting a job or getting housing or anything like that. Right. And even if you're the kind of person who's like, I only vote on the economy. That's all I care about.

There's actually something here for you too to be interested in making criminal records less of a lifetime stigma. They found that there was a Center for Economic Policy and Research Study from 2016. They looked at 2014 just to confuse things a little bit. And they said that the people who are shut out of legitimate work due to having a criminal record represents an overall reduction in the American workforce by 0.9 to 1% of the workforce, which is something like 1.7 to 1.9 million people. And they concluded that that means that the gross domestic product lost out that year, just in that year, on between $78 and $87 billion, just because these people have been shut out of work, just because they had a criminal record, in some cases for an arrest that they

weren't even convicted for. And that that is a big problem. And it's also a problem for employers too, in that if you just go by criminal records, because you're legally allowed to, if you just say, you got a criminal record, we're not going to hire you, some companies even advertise that. Like, basically, if you have a criminal record, you need not apply. They're saying that in some cases, or that sets the company up to go hire a less qualified and possibly less competent candidate who doesn't have a criminal record. So the whole point, the whole push to all this is like, okay, there's nobody, including me, who's saying we should do away with criminal records. There are indeed very bad people out there in the world. They do exist. But there's also,

in this dragnet that we create to catch as many people as, of those bad people as possible, other people who aren't necessarily bad, or maybe even were bad once and aren't bad anymore, get caught up in that. And that there are things we can do without doing away with the criminal record system. And one of the big ones seems to be like putting a finite time on that. Like, after you've kept your nose clean next number of years, like maybe these things should just get sealed automatically. That's a really big one. Another one is looking at employers and being like, we don't really know if you should be asking about this for some professions. Like, some professions, it doesn't really matter. Like, if you're Starbucks, does it matter that this

person had an arrest, you know, 10 years ago? Exactly. Should they really be denied a job? And so there's some laws that are called ban the box laws that people have been thinking of. Yeah, those boxes is like you were kind of talking about earlier when you fill out applications for jobs. There's always that little box that says, have you been convicted of a crime? It's also called fair chance legislation in some states. And it's basically what we've been talking about is, you know, maybe you should at least have a limit on what you can ask in that initial interview. Maybe you should have a time limit on how far back into somebody's past you can dig. Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe in the application process, at least

there is a place spelled out where you may be allowed to ask that if it's the kind of job that you should ask that. Yeah, because there definitely are jobs like that, like ones that work with vulnerable populations like the elderly or... And they cut those out of this legislation, you know. You can't get a job working with kids or something like you said in a nursing home or something like that. Right, agreed. But I mean, you know, there's like, if you need to be a barber or something like that, like, do you have to have a clean record? And you don't necessarily. And actually, barber's one of the problem professions because you need a license to be a barber, which we're going to do short stuff about that. Somebody wrote in once to tell us, like, we should look into that.

But in any profession, almost any profession that requires a license, and there's a lot of them, and barber's one of them, that licensing board will almost always say, if you have a criminal record, you don't qualify. So you can't get that job. Despite being born wanting to be a barber, if someone mistakes, you're out. Can't do it. By cutting heads, I mean, you know. That's different, different kind of cutting heads in that case. Exactly. You got anything else? I got nothing else. It's a good one, Chuck. I like this one. We'll redo it in 10 more years unless there's been some real reform. Yeah, we got a chance to soapbox it a little bit. I know. It's always fun. Yeah, it is. Well, if you want to know more about criminal records and

criminal record reform, in particular, to start reading about it on the internet, or turn to two other of your friends, because there's a really good chance that one of them has a criminal record, and they might tell you that things have been kind of hard because of it, and you can read their story. And since I said you can hear their story, it's time for listener mail. This is, I'm going to call this MRI follow-up from a professional. Nice. It's always good to hear from the pros that say we did a decent job. I know. It's never a great job, but I'll take decent. I'll take decent too when we're explaining things like MRIs. Let me see here. Hey guys, big fan, longtime listener. Listen on a daily basis. I'm an MRI radiographer or radiographic

technologist in your country, and I work with MRIs every day. I wanted to commend you on the accuracy overall. The MRI physics can be confusing if not near impossible to understand, especially to someone who doesn't have experience in the field. I myself went to university for three years to become a radiographer. You gave a really good summary of the physics involved, so hats off. A couple of things to add. It's true that a lower power magnet can produce decent images comparable to a higher strength magnet, but you usually do so with a trade-off of an extended scan time. What takes me 10 minutes on my three Tesla machine might take 20 and a 1.5, and as you rightly said, you have to stay completely still because if you don't,

it'll be blurry, and then you have to repeat the scans. I drive a three Tesla machine, which is the highest strength magnet widely available for clinical use. Seven Tesla MRI machines have been approved by the FDA for clinical use, and 10 Tesla machines you're referring to are for research purposes only and have some interesting effects such as being able to levitate a frog or causing the mercury and dental fillings to leach out. Oh my god. Man. Then Russell here in Sydney, Australia goes on to say, point out that I got a CT scan for the diverticuli search, not an MRI, so that makes sense. I was not an MRI. So have you had an MRI then? I have, and again, it was years ago, and I want to say it was my back, which is now fine,

but I think it was the back deal. I'm glad your back is fine. It's been fine. Good. I mean, I knew it was. Do you even complain about it, but I'm just saying I'm glad that your back is fine. I appreciate it. Like I'm glad that you have a nice beard. You know what I'm saying? That was a brief time where I had some back issues, but it was pretty brief. It was a few months, I think. Got you. Well, is that it? That's it. That's from, do they say that is from Russell in Sydney. Russell, you can use my name in Sydney. That's awesome. Thanks, Russell. You can use my name in Sydney. That's a great name. Very odd one, but good. I really feel like we need to put more cadavers into 10 Tesla MRIs and watch the mercury come out,

because that must be amazing. If you want to get in touch with us. Yeah, me too. If you want to get in touch with us like Russell did, we love hearing from experts who say we did a so-so job. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas

are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.