"We’re sorry, you deserved so much better."

[ChrisGwinn]

It's more than that. I''m not able to do his contributions to computing justice. He was like Einstein.

Yes. You get like a week of Theory of Computation before Turing blows your mind and you have to change the way you think about formal systems forever.

[Isgrimnur]

Bring on the royal pardon:

Mathematician Alan Turing, who helped Britain win the Second World War by cracking Nazi Germany's "unbreakable" Enigma code, was granted a rare royal pardon on Tuesday for a criminal conviction for homosexuality that led to his suicide.
...
Justice Minister Chris Grayling said the pardon from Queen Elizabeth would come into effect immediately and was a fitting tribute to "an exceptional man with a brilliant mind."
...
"His later life was overshadowed by his conviction for homosexual activity, a sentence we would now consider unjust and discriminatory and which has now been repealed," he said.
..
Only four royal pardons had been granted since the end of the Second World War, a spokeswoman for Grayling said.
...
In May 2012, a private member's bill was put before the House of Lords in the British Parliament to grant Turing a statutory pardon and in July it gained government support.

[Isgrimnur]

Alan Turing law

Thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted under outdated gross indecency laws are to be posthumously pardoned, the Government has announced, in a “momentous” victory for campaigners.

Announcing what has been dubbed as the ‘Alan Turing law’ justice minister Sam Gyimah said the Government would seek to implement the change through an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill. It will effectively act as an apology to those convicted for consensual same-sex relationships before homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967.
...
It comes after decades of campaigning from the LGBT community and after the family of the enigma codebreaker Alan Turing delivered a petition to Downing Street before the 2015 general election. Public pressure led to the major political parties pledging to introduce the ‘Alan Turing law’ – in memory to the man Winston Churchill described as making “the single biggest contribution to the allied victory” in World War II.

Speaking to The Independent today, Rachel Barnes, the great niece of Mr Turing, who has long campaigned on the issue, hailed the decision as “absolutely tremendous”.
...
In another step, the Government is also announcing that it will introduce a new statutory pardon for the living in cases where offences have been successfully deleted through the disregard process.
...
However, anyone living who has been convicted of the now abolished offences can currently apply through the Home Office to have their names cleared through the disregard process. This removes any mention of an offence from criminal record checks.

[Isgrimnur]

Complexities

On Thursday, Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said in a statement that the government will pass an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill that will posthumously pardon around 40,000 gay and bisexual men convicted over same-sex relationships before the law was changed decades ago. The amendment, dubbed “Turing’s Law” after the scientist Alan Turing, who was posthumously pardoned in 2013, is due to be passed sometime in the last week of October.

But Gyimah stated that the government would not support a private members’ bill— an amendment introduced by members of parliament who are not cabinet ministers— that sought to automatically pardon thousands of gay men who were still alive and had past convictions before homosexuality was decriminalized. To cries of “shame” in the House of Commons, Gyimah filibustered the bill on Friday afternoon.
...
John Nicholson, an MP with the Scottish Nationalist Party, put forward a bill that that would give a pardon to living men convicted in the past of having gay sex. But the Conservative government said on Friday that they would block the bill because it could lead to people claiming they had been cleared of sexual offenses that are still regarded as crimes, such as having sex with a minor or non-consensual sexual activity. “I understand and support the intentions behind Mr Nicolson’s Bill,” Minister Gyimah said in a statement. “However I worry that he has not fully thought through the consequences. A blanket pardon, without the detailed investigations carried out by the Home Office under the disregard process, could see people guilty of an offense which is still a crime today claiming to be pardoned”

“That is simply not true” Sara Ogilvie, a policy officer for the human rights advocacy group Liberty, tells TIME. “The bill debated today had a clear statement that if the thing you were committed for was still an offense you would not be pardoned for it.”

[GreenGoo]

So they are forgiving dead people for the crime of being gay once upon a time, but live, previously convicted people are still guilty of being gay, despite gay no longer being a crime?

Am I reading that?

Holy freakin' hell the kind of mental gymnastics involved in being a part of that must be impressive.

[Isgrimnur]

Pardoning the dead is paperwork. Actually dealing with living people is hard.

[Blackhawk]

They probably aren't messing with the dead peoples' actual records. They're pardoned, but nobody is doing a background check on them anyway, so why go through every case over a period of decades (centuries?) The living people require actual revisions.

[GreenGoo]

Pardoning the dead is paperwork. Actually dealing with living people is hard.

Pardoning living people is also just paperwork in most cases.

What background check is required to pardon people for the crime of being gay, blackhawk?

[Blackhawk]

What background check is required to pardon people for the crime of being gay, blackhawk?

That isn't even remotely what I meant. I meant that pardoning the dead is mostly symbolic. It is an important symbol, but I doubt they go into the records of each deceased person with a conviction and clear it. Their record is pretty much irrelevant because nobody is doing a background check on the dead.

The living require reviewing each case and adjusting the contents of the file. Automatically clearing them (which is sounds like what the private bill did) brought concerns that it could bypass the review process altogether and risk clearing climes that had homosexual elements, but were still crimes.

I don't know enough about the bill (I haven't read it myself) to know if that is a legitimate concern or not. If they look at a different alternative for clearing them, I don't have a big problem with it. If they just wave it off because 'law is hard, ' then yeah, that's an issue.

/edit - I misremembered some details from when I first read the article. Adjusted.

[GreenGoo]

The living require reviewing each case and adjusting the contents of the file. Automatically clearing them (which is sounds like what the private bill did) brought concerns that it could bypass the review process altogether and risk clearing climes that had homosexual elements, but were still crimes.

I don't see why. People convicted of the specific crime that is no longer a crime have that crime pardoned. I don't see why it would require any nuanced review of records. Unless they have separate versions of crimes just for homosexuals. Armed robbery versus armed robbery while gay, or something.

I guess that's possible.

[Blackhawk]

The living require reviewing each case and adjusting the contents of the file. Automatically clearing them (which is sounds like what the private bill did) brought concerns that it could bypass the review process altogether and risk clearing climes that had homosexual elements, but were still crimes.

I don't see why. People convicted of the specific crime that is no longer a crime have that crime pardoned. I don't see why it would require any nuanced review of records. Unless they have separate versions of crimes just for homosexuals. Armed robbery versus armed robbery while gay, or something.

I guess that's possible.

It could* be a problem if the definition crossed over into crimes like homosexual rape. They'd need to check each conviction to see if the actual crime was just 'being gay' or was part of something else.

*I still have not read the bill and don't know their laws. This is just my interpretation of what they're saying.

[Max Peck]

For those interested, the documentation (proposed bill, explanatory notes, briefing papers) related to the private member's bill that failed to pass can be found here.

As I vaguely understand it (I don't lawspeak), the private member's bill would have granted a blanket automatic pardon without a requirement for someone to request it, while the government approach is that individuals will need to request a pardon through the "disregard process" laid out in the appropriate act. The government's justification for this seems to that they didn't want to risk pardoning anyone who had committed an act that is still a crime, but this seems to be lacking in substance given that the private member's bill appeared to impose conditions to prevent that outcome.

[killbot737]

I think removing all the text that contains the word "homosexual" would make plain most of the laws that need to be dropped or merged into existing laws.

For example, I copied this from the Alexis/Plexus/Consensus law library: "person had GAY!!!!ZOMG non-consensual sexual relations with another person".

[GreenGoo]

The living require reviewing each case and adjusting the contents of the file. Automatically clearing them (which is sounds like what the private bill did) brought concerns that it could bypass the review process altogether and risk clearing climes that had homosexual elements, but were still crimes.

I don't see why. People convicted of the specific crime that is no longer a crime have that crime pardoned. I don't see why it would require any nuanced review of records. Unless they have separate versions of crimes just for homosexuals. Armed robbery versus armed robbery while gay, or something.

I guess that's possible.

It could* be a problem if the definition crossed over into crimes like homosexual rape.

That's what I said.

As a separate comment, the idea wouldn't be to search the criminal database for homosexuals and then see what crimes they committed. Search for convictions of the crimes that are no longer crimes. I assume you can pardon a criminal with multiple convictions of one of those convictions, and if so...there's no vetting. You pardon the not-crimes and leave the crimes alone.

And if Max thinks I'm going to read foreign legislation to better understand what's going on, he's dreaming.

[Blackhawk]

As a separate comment, the idea wouldn't be to search the criminal database for homosexuals and then see what crimes they committed. Search for convictions of the crimes that are no longer crimes.

The crimes in question were de-crimed between 1967 and 1982. There may not be a database to search. Does the UK have up-to-date databases on living criminals for crimes committed in 1943? (I honestly don't know the answer to that.)

[GreenGoo]

Who knows. I assume if they can find the budget for it the paper records have been converted to digital. It's hard to imagine a modern justice system where their criminal records are partly digital and partly paper.

[Blackhawk]

There are just a too many unknowns. I'll just say this: If they're working on an alternative, fine. If they're doing this as a way to avoid taking care of people, screw 'em.

[Max Peck]

Either approach requires that someone process records in order to determine whether or not specific convictions can be disregarded/pardoned. It appears to me that the private member's bill took a proactive approach (all records would be examined and pardons issued as appropriate) whereas the the government's approach is reactive (only records pertaining to individuals who request a pardon would be examined). In other words, they're going to exert the minimum effort necessary to portray themselves as doing "the right thing."

[Blackhawk]

Goddammit, you're making me read stuff.

Existing law:

The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 introduced a new “disregard scheme” for men with historic convictions for certain gay sex offences (buggery and gross indecency). Such men can apply to the Home Secretary to have their convictions disregarded. The Home Secretary must be satisfied that the following conditions have been met:

the other person involved in the conduct constituting the offence consented to it and was aged 16 or over; and

any such conduct now would not be an offence under section 71 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (sexual activity in a public lavatory).

The aim of these two conditions is to ensure that the only convictions disregarded are those for behaviour that is no longer criminal under present day law.

If an application for a disregard is successful, the applicant is treated for all purposes in law as if he had not committed the offence or been convicted for it.

tl;dr - you can currently apply to have convictions 'disregarded' on a case-by-case basis after review. Only living folks can do this. Is not a pardon. The new bill being approved will apply this to the dead retroactively and automatically.

The denied bill:

The Bill seeks to do two separate things:

grant pardons to anyone (alive or deceased) convicted or cautioned for certain historic gay sex offences; and

extend the disregard scheme by enabling relatives of deceased men to apply on their behalf and by adding section 32 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (solicitation by men) to the list of offences for which a disregard can be sought.

On 19 October 2016 the Government tabled new clauses to the Policing and Crime Bill 2015-16 to 2016-17. The new clauses make provision for people – deceased and alive – to be pardoned for certain historic gay sex offences. Under the new clauses pardons for living men would not be automatic but would be tied to the disregard process under the 2012 Act.

tl;dr - the new bill wants pardons rather than 'disregards', and wants them granted automatically, although it specifies that anyone who wants the actual benefits (get it cleared from the record as opposed to just a symbolic pardon - no clue) has to go through the existing disregard process. It also contains some of the same effects of the approved bill (disregards for the dead while the current one does more.)

I'm not digging into it any further than that (and am probably missing all sorts of stuff as it is), but some quick checking into the affected statutes gives an example of why someone might object. The lightest crime a gay man might have been convicted of was buggery. That was the same crime that they prosecuted bestiality under. Automatically pardoning buggery might also pardon people convicted of bestiality.

As it stands (or will in a few weeks), anyone convicted of a non-existent gay sex crime who is dead will have it pardoned, while anyone who is still alive can apply to have it 'disregarded' such that it no longer affects their lives in any way.

/edit - correction, the new bill also ups the disregards to pardons, but requires they all go through the existing process rather than granting them automatically.

Thanks for making me read crap. Now I have a headache and am adding powdered wigs to my Amazon wishlist.

[Max Peck]

Thanks for making me read crap. Now I have a headache and am adding powdered wigs to my Amazon wishlist.

You'll need robes too. And a monocle, maybe, or pince-nez spectacles.

[GreenGoo]

Thanks for making me read crap. Now I have a headache and am adding powdered wigs to my Amazon wishlist.

You'll need robes too. And a monocle, maybe, or pince-nez spectacles.

But you're not allowed to look through them. You must tilt your head forward and look over them with disdain at all times.

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

Alan Turing, a founding father of computer science and artificial intelligence, was revealed Monday as the face of Britain’s new 50-pound bank note.
...
Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, said that “as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as war hero, Alan Turing’s contributions were far-ranging and pathbreaking.” He called Turing “a giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.”
...
The new note, expected to enter circulation at the end of 2021, will include an image of Turing, ticker tape of his birth date in binary code, and a table and formulas from a 1936 paper that introduced the concept of how computers could operate.

It will also include a quote from Turing, given to the Times of London newspaper in 1949: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”

[LawBeefaroni]

Ironically, it was the last new note before crypto rendered paper currency obsolete.