On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 8:21 PM Jeff Zeitlin <xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com> wrote:
On Sat, 25 Jul 2020 12:52:18 -0400, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote to Freelance
Traveller:

>Administrative punishment (vs. a legal proceeding) if I understand
>correctly. It's not something you want to face. I believe it exists so that
>crews can deal with bad choices without having to leave too much of a
>permanent mark in somebody's personnel jacket.

"It's not something you want to face." That depends on circumstance; if
it's a borderline case where one could justify either a severe masting or a
full court-martial, if you're offered the choice - usually "If you take a
masting, I'm going to sentence you to X, vs facing a full court, which will
likely drum you out" - you take the masting.

Yet my statement stands - still not something you want to face (explicitly: You don't want to be in the situation that leads to this (or any more severe) form of discipline). The best course is to steer clear of situations that will produce these types of proceedings...
 
Unless you're _really_
confident that you can get the court-martial board on your side during the
trial. I've been in this position in the NYPD equivalent (see below); I had
a choice of taking a Schedule B penalty of losing five days of leave time
(the maximum the Commanding Officer is allowed to impose as a penalty), or
taking "charges and specifications" and "going to the trial room"
(equivalent to court-martial). I took the Schedule B; it took many years
before I got a promotion that on the basis of pure technical merit I had
deserved almost immediately after the initial six months after my
"discussion". I took the Schedule B _knowing_ that it could end my career
progression, because I knew that I was _not_ going to be able to convince
the Department Advocate's jury that I was more valuable "alive" than
"dead".

Sorry to hear that - sometimes those in power fail to treat discipline as a method of education and of rehabilitation and treat it instead as some sort of forever black mark (which defeats the whole point of rehabilitative justice and 'serving your time' or 'paying for your offense').

I am guessing you'd still agree avoiding (however that might have been possible) any such run ins with the discipline regimes would have been preferable...
 

In the NYPD, we call them "Command Discipline" ('CD'), and there are two
classes: A 'Schedule A' CD will "fall off" your record after six months, so
if you keep your nose clean for that long, it'd be like it never happened;
a 'Schedule B' is permanent. An A can kill a promotion or 'plum' assignment
for _this_ cycle, but will probably fall off by the next cycle; a B can
kill your chances for the plum assignment permanently, and while it cannot
(because of New York State civil service law) bar you from standing for
promotion, it _can_ be used as a deciding factor (adverse) between you and
a candidate who stands at the same score on the qualifying examination.

That seems to me to be adverse to the concept of paying your debt and then being treated reasonably there after.

I do see a merit in knowing someone had an issue/bad decisions/situation come up in the past that was troublesome. But to use that adversely many years after the fact in judgments (vs. using it to follow up during the process of application for promotion to ensure the individual has learned their lesson and would not repeat the offense) seems unjust.

It always seems to me, so called 'justice' systems are usually bi-polar. They espouse wanting to be rehabilitative and to let people account for their actions and then be allowed to once again be treated the same as others, but in practice, once marked, one may never be treated normally again.

If you have a 'justice' system, you should aim for being just and not have elements which are unjust. If all you have is a 'legal' system that makes no particular attempt at justice, you should call it that.

 
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--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Resource
xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com
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