Some people claim that a person’s private information should not be made public under any circumstances, even if that person is a criminal. However, there is a more persuasive argument that a need to protect society from harm outweighs the importance of protecting the violent offenders’ personal information.
On the one hand, it is necessary to safeguard criminal’s information in order to protect innocent people from being victimized. Nowadays, the leakage of personal data is so prevalent that it is really easy to dig up someone’s personal information via internet. Therefore, if criminal’s personal information becomes available to the public, his or her innocent family members might suffer the consequences. For instance, there was a case in South Korea when a murderer’s name and his photo were publicized. After that, people even searched for his family members’ information and his family pleaded that they have the right not to be penalized for the faults of other family members. It is evident in this case that making criminal’s personal information public might harm even the innocent people.
Nevertheless, there is a more important reason to publicize the information, which is to protect the community. People should have the right to know if their neighbors were the perpetrators of serious crimes. Moreover, companies would also want to know their employees’ criminal records to make sure that they are not hiring someone who might impose danger on other employees. The need for the public to know criminal’s personal information is heightened by the result from a recent study which revealed that someone who has committed a violent crime is likely to repeat the same crime. Therefore, it is important for people to know who the criminals are so they can protect themselves.
To sum up, although it is important to safeguard innocent people, providing the criminal’s information to the public to protect the community is more crucial for the greater good.