Reforming Convicts

I'm posting this in response to a discussion I saw on DaySide on CNN. It was about how Penn State fired a professor that they had hired. This professor had gone to prison for murder, had been sentenced for a certain period of years but had got off on parole. He then applied and got a job at Penn State. Penn State didn't do background checks so they didn't know they were hiring an ex-prisioner. The question - Does a person who did his time in prison for murder be allowed to teach as a professor?

A lot of people on that show were adamantly stuck on the opinion that "no, a murderer shouldn't be teaching our children". My opinion is, this guy did his time and was paroled. He is out in society now. He got a job as a professor. There is no reason to go against him if he has shown that he can be a professor.Yes, he was a prisioner but if we discriminate against people who have been to prison, and don't allow them to reform their lives, then all those prisioners are not going to have any initiative to do anything with their lifes. They'll just keep on doing crime.
I do believe that if this person wanted to be a professor then maybe he should be assessed in some way to show that he is not mentally ill and there is no reason to suspect that he will go about killing other people. That would be a better alternative than simply denying him the job. My point simply is, that if a society is going to function, then people need to be allowed to reform their lives and society needs to be aware of what impression they are making on the whole of society when they come up with such extreme judgements such as "no a murderer shouldn't be teaching our kids". There is much more to it than that.

Sounds iffy. I *guess* there's no reason to believe a murderer who's shown he can control himself now can teach children. Still, he'd have to show he's completely capable of controlling himself and isn't some wacko pretending not to be a wacko.
Yeah, its iffy, I'd prefer just not taking the risk.

This is a great topic, I think. There are a lot of things that need to be considered though. One thing is, where do you draw the line? Do you allow ex-convicts to teach at highschools? Do you ban them from Elementary Schools also? If there are only adults attending a college, I don't see any harm in allowing them to teach. You can very well encounter the same inmate working at a construction company. What do you allow them to do? You also have to include the reason and cicumstances for the murder. For example, if some pedophile attacked my child, and I had the opportunity, I could murder him. So I think that the act has to be fully evaluated also.