Criminal Records, the Right to be Forgotten, and Inclusive Insurance

I just uploaded an article, “Criminal Records, the Right to be Forgotten, and Inclusive Insurance: Risk, Rehabilitation, and Data Governance in Underwriting“, written with David Schraub,

Criminal history information (CHx) is increasingly used in insurance screening and underwriting, yet it remains under-theorized in the inclusive insurance literature despite its potential to widen protection gaps through quote-gating, opaque third-party data pipelines, and limited avenues for correction. This article argues that criminalhistory underwriting is a joint problem of risk governance and information governance. Criminal justice information is time-sensitive and legally structured, but automated decision systems and vendor supply chains can operationalize it as durable stigma, particularly when records persist across brokers, archives, and derivative products that fail to reflect status changes such as sealing, expungement, or spentness. The article maps where CHx can enter the insurance lifecycle (pre-quote funnels, underwriting/pricing, claims and renewal) and identifies inclusion-relevant failure modes linked to provenance, data quality, update lag, and weak procedural safeguards. It then develops a conceptual framework distinguishing defensible risk relevance from digital punishment, and translates that framework into implementable mechanisms for more inclusive practice: redemption-by-design (time windows and decaying weights), data minimization and purpose limitation grounded in marginal predictive value, auditable vendor governance, and due-process safeguards providing actionable notice, explanation, and rapid correction. The article concludes with a governance standard for regulators and insurers: the key question is not whether CHx is used, but whether any use is demonstrably incremental, time-bounded, contestable, and governable across the data supply chain.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Arthur Charpentier (February 4, 2026). Criminal Records, the Right to be Forgotten, and Inclusive Insurance. Freakonometrics. Retrieved February 13, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15mkm


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