Of 706 reported rape cases, 1 lead to an actual conviction. So you have an under-reported category of crime which is irregularly prosecuted. There's obvious ethical issues with denying jobs to people based on accusation rather than conviction, but in a society with a broken justice system surrounding that, there's ethical dilemmas no matter how you slice it. There's also a serious question about how you rate the ethical utility of someone not being able to get a job in a specific area, versus possible endangerment of someone's life.

You're exactly right. So the question becomes, "Is it better to disqualify applicants based on accusation alone, knowing that you'll disqualify some number of innocent people, or is it better to screen on convictions alone, knowing that you could possibly not screen out some guilty folks you otherwise would?"

Indian law takes infinite years to resolve a case. 1 year to actually frame charges, 10 years in lower court and 10 years in upper courts.

Is it legal to discriminate against employees who've been accused but not convicted of a crime? Well, no.

Is anything else Uber is doing in India legal? No.

So… if they're breaking the law anyway, plus making sure to hide everything they do, including basic contact information, from anyone who might need to contact the company (to the extent that the government themselves had to hire a driver just to get in touch with someone), I feel like denying employment to someone convicted of a violent sexual assault would probably be the least unethical thing going on with Uber in India.

'Is it better to include into the set of Uber drivers, 10 non-rapists and 1 rapists or to exclude 10 non-rapists and 1 rapists.'

Probably the latter.

'Is it better to include, into the set of NYC residents, 5 million non-rapists and 3 rapists than to exclude 5 million non-rapists and 3 rapists.'

Probably the former.

Unfortunately there really is no middle ground. You can't point to an event and say that you're __% certain that the accusation is true. So again it boils down to whether you base the decision off of accusations or convictions alone.

As someone stated elsewhere it's not just an ethical decision, either. Economics should play at least a minor role in the decision-making process.

I would still argue that there is a high amount of under-reporting because people are embarrassed, just want to put it behind them, etc. However, I also feel a large number of the reported cases are skewed due to angry ex-girlfriends, intoxication, etc.

Specifically, in this case if he was not convicted it's not the responsibility of Uber to disclose that information (instead it's the driver). Uber (in the U.S.) cannot even disclose if someone was accused of rape (unless there was a felony conviction), conversely it is the drivers responsibility to share any convictions upfront (though a background check should still be done).

Overall, I believe this has more to do with Uber's business practices. The rape wouldn't have even been an issue if Uber was capable of helping the police or explaining some basic questions.

In other words, if Uber was able to say, "We did a background check, and he wasn't convicted" then there wouldn't have been an issue. However, Uber couldn't even be contacted, and was breaking transportation laws.

They were saying it is a generally under-reported crime. Saying that there was 706 reported cases doesn't change anything.

https://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-r...

Overall, your "feel" about a large number of reported cases being skewed are nothing but a feel. Proves nothing.

It is completely valid to discredit a point with no source. And there's sources that say it is 2% false accusations (like most other crimes) and there's sources that says is 40%. Why are numbers so separate from each other? Because it's a shot in the dark.

It is unfortunate how popular your opinion is among young men: rape really isn't an issue; lots of "angry ex-girlfriends" and "intoxication" skewing those reports (factually incorrect, my friend). Being raped really sucks and is a continuing issue for those who experience it and those around them.

If someone was complaining about being overcharged, everyone would accept it without question and wouldn't say "it's not an issue" for Uber/consumer/whoever. But it seems that being overcharged is a complaint that is legitimate because men believe that it happens without the customer being in the wrong. Rape, on the other hand...

Also, not sure about other countries, in India a woman's statement is enough for a man to be arrested immediately, even if it was a false accusation.

> but being falsely accused of rape is even worse

Wow. Just wow. I'm pretty disgusted by this comment. Hopefully you've just phrased it badly, and can edit it to make it less like you're saying that men get a bum deal in India.

Having seen people report rape in the US, it is certainly not enough for anyone to be arrested immediately. There's the question of evidence, and whether anyone will look at the evidence, and whether the victim can be talked into ignoring it. In 2013 there were about 20,000 untested rape kits in Texas alone -- 20,000 crimes that were reported, where a woman had semen, hair, and other evidence collected through an invasive procedure, that were entirely ignored [1]. And that's only reported rapes. None of my friends who have been sexually assaulted have ever reported it (although these were all assaults by "friends", not strangers). They just wanted it to go away.

To top it off, in many locations in the US women still have to pay for their own evidence collection. If you haven't got the $600-$1200 it takes to pay for the exams yourself, you're out of luck on the prosecution front! (Yes, this is sort of illegal, but it's still happening [2].)

So rest easy -- come to the US where a woman's statement will probably be ignored for a long time [3].

[1] http://www.texastribune.org/2013/01/04/clearing-texas-rape-k... [2] http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2014/09/state_leaders_p... [3] http://gawker.com/who-wants-to-remember-bill-cosbys-multiple...

I'm sorry for the state of affairs in the US about the claimed report ratio of the crime - however, a mere statement of anyone, by itself should never lead to an arrest, be it a man or a woman, because in a lot of cases there are ulterior motives in play.

Post some examples of all these men's lives that have been ruined. Let's see whether these examples are, actually, worse than having been raped.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/indore/Woman-sentenc...

If you search online, you'd find that there are many, many cases where an Indian girl elopes/lives with a man on free will, has consensual sex but after a few days, months, or even years files a rape case for various obvious reasons, surprisingly often when forced by parents.

You wouldn't 'like' to believe, but Pune police once said 74% of rape cases reported to them were consentual sex later turned rape. In fact Mumbai police says the main reason of the low conviction rate is false rape cases.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Rape-convicti...

https://www.facebook.com/notes/deepika-narayan-bhardwaj/fals...

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ranchi/Lured-by-comp...

And a lot, lot more, just help yourselves with some Googling.

What are you actually trying to say here? How are these cases skewed?

What were you implying? That there's some easy answer here?

Why would you think I'm implying anything?

Can you give an example of a "convicted" (not accused) elected member from India?

>For example, a small search on Amit Shah and his fake encounters

Amit Shah has not been convicted. The case is ongoing.

>To me all this showdown to ban Uber seems more like an attempt to squeeze a little extra dollars from an American company.

By banning Uber they are trying to squeeze more dollars from it?

Make real killing by hiring a driver that torutured small animals and chronically wet the bed as a child, because although it has no real correlation with adult psychopathy you still save 8Rs/Km

I don't think it would have hurt them to err on the side of caution on this one. It's certainly possible that their background check simply was unable to see this information, but given the pattern Uber seems to be building for themselves here, it would be really hard for me to believe their explanation of what happened anyways.

Throw the other problems away: this is the actual problem at Uber. The fatal flaw Uber continues to make is that they fail to build trust, which brings their activities into question every time something like this happens. At this rate, it's just going to keep getting worse.

I actually can't believe the board hasn't taken any action here. I've never in my life seen a startup more in need of a board intervention.

Erring "on the side of caution" in this case basically means denying someone a job, a livelihood, based on mere allegations that anyone can make. If you strictly enforce this (or even harsher variants, e.g. "no men sitting next to children on planes"), you make it very simple to ruin someone's life.

The notion that women are filing police reports and potentially going to court over something so serious is not really something I would describe as a simple way to ruin someone's life. Nor would Uber rejecting an application due to a sexual assault allegation really qualify to me as a life ruiner.

Law very often fails justice, particularly in sexual assault cases. When laws don't work, it's the job of a company to recognize when and how that failure occurs, and manage that risk. Uber failed to manage that risk, and most disturbingly, I can't even figure out if they care.

A cab driver -- who's capable of locking the doors and taking their passenger to wherever they want -- is in such a trusted position, and there should be a higher standard for those positions.

This doesn't mean they are being prevented from working. They're being prevented from working in this position. They are free to go do something else where other people aren't trusting their lives to them.

That isn't ruining their lives. They are free to go work elsewhere where other people's lives aren't put in their hands.

I'll be more specific. This man was accused of rape and worked as a cab driver, where other people trust their lives to him. Instead, he could work as a truck driver transporting goods.

That isn't ruining his life. Truth is, it would barely change.

Edit: I think the comparison of responsibility is appropriate here.. since a cab driver may have a minor, mentally disabled, or intoxicated individual in their care.

[In any case, this is a side point. Most places don't have severe barriers to becoming a cab driver other than limit supply of licenses. And none of that even applies to Uber since they are ignoring that system.]

In order to qualify as a licensed London taxi driver, a trainee must learn the complex and irregular layout of London's ~25,000 streets (Figure 1) within a 6-mile radius of Charing Cross train station, along with the locations of thousands of places of interest. This spatial learning is known as acquiring “the Knowledge” and typically takes between 3 and 4 years, leading to a stringent set of examinations, called “appearances,” which must be passed in order to obtain an operating license from the Public Carriage Office (PCO, the official London taxi-licensing body).

from 'Acquiring “the Knowledge” of London's Layout Drives Structural Brain Changes' - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3268356/

There is NO way that "cab driver" is the only type of position he is capable of doing. And there are plenty of people qualified to drive a cab that are capable of doing it without raping anyone.

OK, we can agree to disagree. Companies (and most other institutions) care much more about publicity and their reputation than about justice; the recent UVA "rape culture" scandal shows that pretty clearly that mob "justice" very often has nothing to do with actual justice.

Congratulations! You've just repeated the argument that lead to the Catholic Church preotecting pedophiles and Jimmy Saville getting a free reign over children, mental health patients, and corpses!

I would say that multiple arrests (even without conviction) may be enough to bar certain types of employment, at an employers discretion, such as ride services where there is an increased risk.

It should be specific to the job. If it's a sexual offense, maybe they shouldn't hire you as a taxi driver / school counselor / other jobs that give you easy access to victims. Just like they shouldn't hire you as a cashier if you're suspected of check fraud.

The other one though, is the context of what job you're hiring someone for; in this case, to be a sort-of taxi driver. That means the person you hire is inevitably going to come in contact with some potentially vulnerable individuals as passengers (and I bet it wouldn't be too hard to make estimates on the probability of any given journey having a single female passenger). If there's a suspicion that the person might exploit that fact, then you shouldn't hire that person as a driver. That's a bit unfair to some potential drivers, but the flipside is that you have ethical obligations to both employees and customers.

For other contexts, the calculus is different. For example, if I was Uber I would not be too worried about a previous conviction for auto theft, since drivers supply their own cars, and if the applicant has not been in trouble for a reasonable length of time then Uber doesn't really have any assets at risk. Likewise, I could perhaps be more open-minded about an arrest without a conviction for assault if I were hiring someone to do server maintenance vs. hiring them as a driver, as the probability of an offense x the number of personal encounters an employee would have in the course of normal duties would be much lower.

Would you marry or co-found a company with someone who was charged with a crime like murder, rape, robbery or fraud; but was let go after serving 7 months in prison because of insufficient evidence which could not meet the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt".

Unfortunately, rape cases are very hard to convict (even in US) because police & prosecutors does not take rape investigations seriously.

They are hard to convict because usually there are no witnesses and it turns into he said / she said. I see a lot of people wishing it were not so, but the legal system has severe punishments and thus a high bar for conviction (or that's how it's supposed to be).

On the other hand, people have sex for pleasure a lot, and sexual activity is strongly linked to emotion, so if you come to the police with a tale of an unwelcome sexual encounter you have to answer all these extra questions about consent and secondary motive to get taken seriously. If a complainant doesn't show obvious signs of physical trauma indicating a violent struggle, then it can often be a problem to get the complaint of rape to be taken seriously and investigated urgently.

Conclusions: individuals are not odds.

The trouble with discrimination is, it works so well.

I agree; the problem is just that the society (and laws) judges different cases of discrimination completely differently, even though the underlying mathematical principles are the same. Don't hire a man because he could be a rapist? OK. Don't hire a woman because she might give birth? Outrageous.

>even though the underlying mathematical principles are the same. Don't hire a man because he could be a rapist? OK. Don't hire a woman because she might give birth? Outrageous.

Yeah, one is not hiring someone who forces and hurts people for his sexual pleasure, the other is not hiring someone giving birth, something we celebrate, and helps human society continue existing.

I don't even know what "the underlying mathematical principles are the same" is supposed to mean, when the ethical differences are so vast. That there might be same chance of him being a rapist to her giving birth? How is that even relevant?

That's how I understood it too.

I was pointing to the inhumanity of treating people as mere means to an end ("not effective") especially in the case of pregnant women (which translates to women should either not get pregnant because its bad for business or be unemployable when they consider to do so).

You say it's just a "statistical argument". That's what I responded to, too: that's it's not OK - at least to me - to do mere statistical arguments when moral judgements are involved. Or rather, it's ok to do them as science, but this is not that, this is how actual managers and employers think and treat employees.

Really, ask yourself how you'd feel if a prospective employer or business partner said 'Joe, what assurance can you give me that you're not going to knock your wife up and go all googly-eyed over some squalling infant a year from now? Can you commit to tying a knot in it?'