From the article:

> "The people who are on the list are not guilty until they've been prosecuted and taken to court, and the system makes that very clear", Simon says - and under the Data Protection Act "if anyone misuses that data there are very significant fines".

Probably someone will follow you around the shop or ask you if they can help you instead of you not being let in into the shop. Those are already pretty common tactics.

Those tactics also don't feel nice though (I experienced them first hand, when I was in a foreign country and was a bit nervous in shops - not because I was shoplifting but because I wasn't sure wether I would be understood by the cashier).

So, they are put on a list and discriminated against _after_ paying for the original crime, on the belief that they are incapable of reforming.

Personally, I'm not comfortable with that concept.

The stats are not in the favor of your argument:

"Property offenders were the most likely to be rearrested, with 82.1 percent of released property offenders arrested for a new crime compared with 76.9 percent of drug offenders, 73.6 percent of public order offenders and 71.3 percent of violent offenders."

http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/pages/welco...

The stats don't matter, IMHO. It could be 99% of them who re-offend; to segregate and discriminate against them after they have paid for their crime is a strike against the basic human rights of those people.

Previous conviction record is not one of so-called protected characteristics (gender/race/religion/etc), it is completely legal to discriminate based on that.

Basic human rights include a lot of things, but the list of those does not include a right to be trusted despite your prior actions, and it does not include a right to be served in particular location - those are privileges or interpersonal relationships that may be granted or withheld as the others believe is best for them.

> it is completely legal to discriminate based on that.

Unless you're breaking the rehabilitation of offenders law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_Offenders_Ac...

Yes, most jurisdictions have some kind of expiry for criminal record.

However, for good reasons, this doesn't happen automagically at the end of a prison sentence, it requires much more time than that and many thieves (the profession having a high rate of re-offending) spend most of their out-of-prison lives without this expiry/rehabilitation occurring.

No it isn't. If 81% of them are re-arrested (which means much more than 81% commit the crime again), a little inconvenience and suspicion is fully justified.

As long as there are adequate safeguards for incorrect data (as should be provided by the DPA in the UK), I don't see any problem with this.

It's no different to companies choosing not to do business with people based on credit history, financial standing, etc.

Imagine, for a moment, that I shoplift as a teenager as a drunken dare. I'm caught, and pay the fines and a bit of community service.

Or, perhaps I'm just suspected of shoplifting because one of my friends did shoplift while I was with them, and I'm added to the list. The doubt is reasonable enough that it wouldn't get me convicted, but it's enough for this system to add me and keep me in it.

For the rest of my life, I would be treated as a criminal by shopowners, even if I never commit another crime.

It's down to the retailer if they want you on their property, and that's how it should be.

If they opt for a stricter system (which would cover the edge cases you describe) that loses them some genuine custom, that's their loss.

The target is of course persistent offenders, not the kind you mention.

Any list like that sure sounds like slander/libel. If you are treated as a criminal by a shop-owner because someone else is making claims about your reputation, this is the exact type of situation that slander/libel laws were created for.

Also, I could be badly mistaken, but isn't slander strongly enforced in the UK? Wasn't there a scandal involving forced apologies?

The article makes no reference to how the positive result may be used. For all we know it might only be used to allow shop associates to further monitor certain individuals.

Although I'm sure some local corner shop will try and "ban" a positive result and make the headlines. That's inevitable. But for the larger shops, I doubt they will make it known that they know.

We're talking here about thieves that hadn't been caught by the Police.

Maybe the way to handle it could be that if you're a thief and had a change of heart, report to the local Police station and agree to serve your time in exchange for getting your face removed from the database.

The database only has convicted thieves in their Database, so in theory they've already served their time for their crime. The problems is that they are then put on an apparently un-auditable list maintained by a private company, and discriminated against.

> The database only has convicted thieves in their Database,

From this article:

> and other potential offenders

And from this article about a different system:

> Police forces are already using face-recognition to identify people, much as they might with DNA or fingerprints.

> A national police database contains up to 18 million "custody suite" photos - hundreds of thousands could be of innocent people.

Many of those people will be those arrested for an offence, but not cautioned or tried. (To be clear here: they really didn't do the crime, not just they weren't convicted of a crime).

Thanks for the clarification. Not a point in favor of the system, though.

Wait we are talking about, data that could be easily manipulated because "I don't like him" ?

Is it in the interest of grocery stores to exclude customes without a good reason?

You're missing the largest issue. If the customer is just a dick and did nothing illegal the store owner out of spite might put him or her into the database to be flagged in every other store.

Hopefully the significant fines would keep this at bay. In all honesty kicking the store off the system would be the best way to stop it.

I see your point and you're right, this is a potential problem - mostly because networking this system would make consequences explode out of proportion. Maybe some appeal system could resolve that?

As a side note: I support the right of store owner to punish dick customers. I believe society needs to have stronger mechanisms to penalize douchy behaviour.

> As a side note: I support the right of store owner to punish dick customers. I believe society needs to have stronger mechanisms to penalize douchy behaviour.

I agree with this, but I don't believe that a store ought to be able to farm out this punishment to every other retailer that subscribes to this system.

If a customer is being a dick, bar him from your establishment; don't subscribe them to be discriminated against and harassed everywhere else.

I totally agree with you. Banning a bad customer from your store is one thing, banning them from all other (subscribed) stores as well is way too much.

No, but their idea of a good reason might be "they're middle-eastern", "they're black", "they're old", "they're young".

Nope. Fuck them anyway, and fuck any twins of said thieves. Fuck them doppelgangers, and any person resembling them. And any false positives, for that matter.

I, for one, welcome our precog overlords.

So, no, you don't believe in someone being able to reform. The rest was not really necessary.

Let's say that 90% people of thieves successfully reform and become honest people.

Assuming that 1% or less of general population are thieves, it still would mean that a previously known thief has a 10% chance of being 'unreformed', and that they are a 10 times bigger risk than the average person; and it's not prohibited to use that information to safeguard yourself.

If a "reformed thief" is in my store, I would love to know about it and provide him a friendly escort. All the way to checkout.

He's of course welcome to never come back again. Seems like a fair trade off. Not my job to feel bad for criminals, it's my job to put food on the table legally.

The history of people who enter your store is none of your business. Or are you really suggesting that you support segregation?

There are a bunch of characteristics based on which we shouldn't discriminate people, and in the first world it is illegal to do so.

Your reputation is not like that, everybody should treat you according to your reputation, wether it's good or bad.

In the UK, we have the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act to give convicted criminals the ability to reform and reenter society.

Everything in my building is my business. That's why it's called... a business.

A business does not get a free pass to act however they want in many parts of the first world. The classic examples are discrimination based on religion, disability, or race.