Comment by jampekka

3 days ago

If you are interested, you can go to the court to watch the proceedings or get the documents.

OK. How am I then not allowed to post here what happened in the court?

  • IANAL, but in general, doxxing people is just a really mean thing to do.

    Convicted criminal? Sure, write a story. In the most hopeful case, the sentence they serve will help reintegrate them with society - even then, it's good to know who you're dealing with.

    Proven innocent? Lawful or not, you're now carrying the weight of possibly ruining someone's life even further. Sleep on that.

    • In the UK, a story is legally considered libellous if it's written in a way that could harm its subject, even if the facts are true. That means it would be a tort against the convicted criminal to name them if it wouldn't be in the public interest to do so.

      1 reply →

    • > Convicted criminal? Sure, write a story. In the most hopeful case, the sentence they serve will help reintegrate them with society - even then, it's good to know who you're dealing with.

      Even this is somewhat problematic. There seems to be a widespread idea that "criminality" is somehow an integral feature of some (un)people for whom almost anything goes, their lives being ruined is of no concern (not saying you imply these), and it's crucial to know who have this feature.

      Something like this was actually a phrenologically motivated "scientific" view in the 19th century most famously by Lombroso's phrenological and eugenical "theory", but other "biological theories of criminality" are still around. It's not that such views are necessarily widely held, but it was the backdrop of the development of much of criminal policy.

      The distorted view of crime and the tragedies it causes for both "innocent" and "criminal" is really sad.

      Note: I'm not really arguing against you rollcat here or attributing this thinking to you. Just something tangentially related.