A group of scholars at the University of Arizona sought to find how felony convictions affect those looking to re-enter the workforce. Their study shows that the convictions aren’t the only hurdle for getting a job. The U.S. Department of Justice projects that 9 percent of all men will serve time in federal or state prison. With the median time served being just over two years, most formerly incarcerated people will eventually be back on the job market. Tamar Kugler is an associate professor in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. She said the ability to find a job is critical, not only for those who’ve been to prison, but also for society. "We want those people to be productive members of society, to be able to get a legit job, stay out of prison, earn enough money so they rehabilitate their lives." But she said convicted felons can have a hard time finding work once they are released. "Those people usually have lower education so it’s harder for them to find a job. And they have also experienced an erosion of skills from the fact that they have been out of the job market." She notes that people who have served time also have a lack of ties to legitimate employers. According to the Brookings Institution, in the first full calendar year following their release, almost half of those previously incarcerated have no reported earnings and the median earnings of those that do are just above $10,000 a year. Kugler, along with Barry Goldman at the University of Arizona and Dylan Cooper at California State University, Channel Islands, cited research that shows that blacks and other minorities are more frequently denied jobs because of racial discrimination, but they wanted to test whether blacks with felony convictions were penalized more than whites with identical felony convictions, work experiences, and skills during the hiring process. Dr. Kugler says: "We find that black applicants pay a much bigger price in terms of their desirability to get hired for a job than white applicants. The reduction that the white applicants suffer from having a felony conviction is not nearly as big as that that you see for black applicants." Findings like these aren’t purely academic. Clyde Hardin, a tattoo artist in Tucson, served two stints in prison. When he was released, he had help finding a job. "My, now, wife got me my first job. I did commercial cleaning in buildings, banks, overnight and that paid my fees, fines, restitution and then when I wasn’t doing that, I would just hustle my butt off with tattooing." But working overnights hindered Hardin’s ability to tattoo, a passion he developed in prison that he hoped to turn into a career. So, he began to look for a different job: "Probably in a four-month span over 100 applications. Legitimately. I’m talking Craigslist jobs, jobs listings, newspaper, door-to-door," he said. And when he would land an interview, things often went downhill quickly. "I would get to the interview process and as soon as I started explaining my record or why I was incarcerated, you would see the momentum swing of he’s a potential future hire to I would never hire this guy." Findings like these aren’t purely academic. Clyde Hardin, a tattoo artist in Tucson, served two stints in prison. When he was released, he had help finding a job. "My, now, wife got me my first job. I did commercial cleaning in buildings, banks, overnight and that paid my fees, fines, restitution and then when I wasn’t doing that, I would just hustle my butt off with tattooing." But working overnights hindered Hardin’s ability to tattoo, a passion he developed in prison that he hoped to turn into a career. So, he began to look for a different job: "Probably in a four-month span over 100 applications. Legitimately. I’m talking Craigslist jobs, jobs listings, newspaper, door-to-door," he said. And when he would land an interview, things often went downhill quickly.
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CEO Isabelle Day of Quality Ingredients of Burnsville was having difficulty filling jobs last year when she read a Star Tribune column about hiring former inmates.
Starting pay is $15 an hour and can reach $40,000 a year, and employees get annual bonuses, health care and a retirement plan.
Day and her plant manager work through Twin Cities Rise, the nonprofit trainer that puts ex-inmates and other low-income folks through a rigorous curriculum of personal empowerment, training and soft-skill development before placing them in internships, at temp agencies or in full-time jobs.
“These are great people who have made mistakes,” Day said. “In many cases, these people are stronger than somebody walking off the street to apply. The work is tough. We see a sincerity and great communication skills. They tend to be respectful, thoughtful and mature.”
As the job market gets tighter, employers are slowly turning to nonprofits such as Rise, Emerge, Building Better Futures, Summit Academy, Genesys Works, Goodwill Easter Seals and others that help former felons build skills and land decent jobs.
“We are safer when these guys have jobs and housing,” said CEO Dan Pfarr of 180 Degrees. “We are their step from prison to the civilian world.”
The Minneapolis nonprofit serves men on parole as they move from prison to community with short-term housing and counseling. It links them to training and organizations connected to employers. It has to happen quickly. Most parolees get only 60 to 90 days to get housing and find a job, with expenses covered by the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
The transition from prison to work, and civilian society, is not easy, particularly if you have been locked up 10 or 15 years and never operated a cellphone or computer. It also takes the right mind-set and a willingness to beat the odds.
Close to 60 percent of Minnesota inmates are back in prison within two years.
Minnesota has a lower-than-average incarceration rate but one of the highest rates of people on probation, which can end up being a “back door” to prison re-entry.
More than half of those returning to prison are on parole violations, according to the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Pfarr and Richard Coffey, 180 Degrees program director, said the violations often are for noncriminal acts, such as being late or taking a different route than prescribed to training or jobs.
“These guys, and we deal with about 300 a year, get a case manager and we work with them on a plan. Some of them have some training. I’m impressed with many of them. Life for them can be daunting,” Pfarr said.
Low jobless rate’s upside
The good news is that the low unemployment rate is prompting employers to warm to hiring former inmates.
Tony Bulmer, a former prisoner, has moved up over six months from a laborer position to a $20 supervisory position at Gregory Foods in Eagan. He’s also moving from a 180 Degrees residence to his own room in September.
“I’m taking this opportunity to the fullest,” said Bulmer, 31, also a trained diesel mechanic.
Bulmer grew up working in a family-owned bakery and likes machinery, which has helped in his new role.
“If I can see how it works, I can figure out how to do it,” he said.
A groundbreaking report last year by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) provides a road map into the “successes of corporate policies giving formerly incarcerated Americans a fair chance at re-entry.”
It’s been embraced by large employers including Google, Total Wine, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, Koch Industries, Walmart and other companies.
Locally, Quality Ingredients, Target, Bremer Bank and numerous small businesses are on board.
And Rise and its national partner, Root & Rebound, which advocates for former inmates, have received great response from local employers for their “Minnesota Employers’ Fair Chance Hiring Guide.”
The guide takes employers through legal compliance and risk minimization, background checks, the rewards of hiring a second-chance worker, best practices for “onboarding” former inmates and strategies for helping them integrate into the workforce.
As the Minnesota prison system and number of prisoners and parolees generally ballooned over the last 30 years, in part because of mandatory sentences for drug and other nonviolent offenses, the state has spent disproportionately less on education, training and employment services.
Louis King, CEO of Summit Academy, which works with low-income people to earn high school-equivalency degrees, and train for entry-level posts in building trades, IT and health care, has said the best social-welfare program is gaining skills, and showing up for a living-wage job.CEO Isabelle Day of Quality Ingredients of Burnsville was having difficulty filling jobs last year when she read a Star Tribune column about hiring former inmates.
“Turnover was high and we were using [costly] temporary agencies for labor,” she recalled.
Today, six of the 60 factory workers on the floor of Quality Ingredients are ex-offenders.
Starting pay is $15 an hour and can reach $40,000 a year, and employees get annual bonuses, health care and a retirement plan.
Day and her plant manager work through Twin Cities Rise, the nonprofit trainer that puts ex-inmates and other low-income folks through a rigorous curriculum of personal empowerment, training and soft-skill development before placing them in internships, at temp agencies or in full-time jobs.
“These are great people who have made mistakes,” Day said. “In many cases, these people are stronger than somebody walking off the street to apply. The work is tough. We see a sincerity and great communication skills. They tend to be respectful, thoughtful and mature.”
As the job market gets tighter, employers are slowly turning to nonprofits such as Rise, Emerge, Building Better Futures, Summit Academy, Genesys Works, Goodwill Easter Seals and others that help former felons build skills and land decent jobs.
“We are safer when these guys have jobs and housing,” said CEO Dan Pfarr of 180 Degrees. “We are their step from prison to the civilian world.”
The Minneapolis nonprofit serves men on parole as they move from prison to community with short-term housing and counseling. It links them to training and organizations connected to employers. It has to happen quickly. Most parolees get only 60 to 90 days to get housing and find a job, with expenses covered by the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
The transition from prison to work, and civilian society, is not easy, particularly if you have been locked up 10 or 15 years and never operated a cellphone or computer. It also takes the right mind-set and a willingness to beat the odds.
Close to 60 percent of Minnesota inmates are back in prison within two years.
Minnesota has a lower-than-average incarceration rate but one of the highest rates of people on probation, which can end up being a “back door” to prison re-entry.
More than half of those returning to prison are on parole violations, according to the Minnesota Department of Commerce. Pfarr and Richard Coffey, 180 Degrees program director, said the violations often are for noncriminal acts, such as being late or taking a different route than prescribed to training or jobs.
“These guys, and we deal with about 300 a year, get a case manager and we work with them on a plan. Some of them have some training. I’m impressed with many of them. Life for them can be daunting,” Pfarr said.
Low jobless rate’s upside
The good news is that the low unemployment rate is prompting employers to warm to hiring former inmates.
Tony Bulmer, a former prisoner, has moved up over six months from a laborer position to a $20 supervisory position at Gregory Foods in Eagan. He’s also moving from a 180 Degrees residence to his own room in September.
“I’m taking this opportunity to the fullest,” said Bulmer, 31, also a trained diesel mechanic.
Bulmer grew up working in a family-owned bakery and likes machinery, which has helped in his new role.
“If I can see how it works, I can figure out how to do it,” he said.
A groundbreaking report last year by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) provides a road map into the “successes of corporate policies giving formerly incarcerated Americans a fair chance at re-entry.”
It’s been embraced by large employers including Google, Total Wine, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, Koch Industries, Walmart and other companies.
Locally, Quality Ingredients, Target, Bremer Bank and numerous small businesses are on board.
And Rise and its national partner, Root & Rebound, which advocates for former inmates, have received great response from local employers for their “Minnesota Employers’ Fair Chance Hiring Guide.”
The guide takes employers through legal compliance and risk minimization, background checks, the rewards of hiring a second-chance worker, best practices for “onboarding” former inmates and strategies for helping them integrate into the workforce.
As the Minnesota prison system and number of prisoners and parolees generally ballooned over the last 30 years, in part because of mandatory sentences for drug and other nonviolent offenses, the state has spent disproportionately less on education, training and employment services.
Louis King, CEO of Summit Academy, which works with low-income people to earn high school-equivalency degrees, and train for entry-level posts in building trades, IT and health care, has said the best social-welfare program is gaining skills, and showing up for a living-wage job.
companies hire felons | | Companies that hire ex-offenders | Employers that hire ex-offenders | employers that hire felons | | jobs for ex-offenders | jobs that hire felons | places that hire felons | felon friendly jobs | felon friendly employers | how to get a job with criminal record | second chance jobs for felons | temp agencies that hire felons | high paying jobs for felons | felon friendly
Jobs for Felons: Educated Felon is Looking for Good Job
Hello,
I came across your blog on jailtojob.com and read an entry from 2015 that
pretty much reflects what's currently going on in my long time
boyfriend's life. He recently got his second felony for a drug
conviction in 2016. He previously was out of trouble for 10
years, and was actually on his way to obtain his certificate of
rehabilitation. Unfortunately, that's no longer on the table now
that he has his recent conviction on his record. He's currently
serving his probation, but is due for a review in court next week
to see if he can get off early (keeping our fingers
crossed).
I'm sure as you well know, it is extremely difficult for an
ex
felon to find gainful employment. It's incredibly
discouraging, even for me. I try to be positive and be some sort
of resource for him, but he has a very self-defeating attitude
right now and I just want to help him. Yes, I recognize that he
has made it much more difficult for himself to find a job with a
good salary and benefits, but I'm more of an optimist and I try
my best to believe that something will come along, if he puts in
the work.
He is educated (he has his BA from Cal State Northridge in
Psychology) and has work experience in the respite health field.
He now believes that is no longer an option for him, once they do
a background check he'll be denied. He is very well spoken, and
is like a chameleon- he is able to integrate himself pretty
effortlessly into anything he puts his mind to...he just needs
that opportunity to prove it. He needs someone who is
willing to give him a chance to provide for himself, his family
and start preparing for his future.
Do you have any advice? A direction we can go into that will help
him find a job that he will find rewarding, and gainful? I am
aware of the Federal Bonding program and have that to bring to
the table, but he is very discouraged, depressed and going
through some type of learned helplessness. I just want to find
something for him to be successful at. Anything I suggest, he
seems to retort with a reason why it won't work out. His
probation officer is no help, and is hardly familiar with his
case. He hasn't offered any assistance or resources and
when I ask my boyfriend to inquire about it with his PO, he
shrugs it off and says things like, "i'm just a speck in his
caseload". He also doesn't want to bring any unwanted attention
to himself, so as to not cause any problems.
I'm at a loss. I myself am working a salary job, but it certainly
isn't enough and I know he will only be happy once he's offered a
position that will grant him the ability to provide a comfortable
life for himself and his family. I don't want him believing that
he is only destined for a minimum wage job for the rest of his
life....
Anything helps,
Jessica
Jobs for Felons: Educated Felon is Looking for Good
Job
Hello Jessica,
It
seems that your boyfriend has dug himself a bit of a
hole. All is not lost. One thing I might try is the
local community college. Community colleges are always
looking for adjunct instructors to teach freshman
classes. Adjunct instructors are used on an as-needed
basis but it is a great way t0 get
a start in the professional world.
Another thing to try is contact your local councilperson.
Council members in touch with a lot of things and people in the
community. They may know of open positions in the
area, Remember council members are politicians and every
person is a potential vote.
Another
option is to apply for temporary employment. Working for
a temporary agency is a great way to quickly get a job.
Often temporary assignments turn into permanent jobs.
Some agencies have clients that require professional
employees. The key to felons applying to temporary agencies is to
apply to smaller, privately owned agencies rather that large
national companies. Sometimes larger companies have
guidelines that prohibit the hiring of felons. Smaller
agencies are free to hire anyone they choose so your boyfriend
may have better luck with them.
Frequent readers of my blog know that everyone I speak to who
is looking for a job I direct to the local One-stop Career
Center. Each
state has a network of centers that offer a variety of free
services that can assist you in finding employment. In
addition, these centers offer a wide array of services that can
help a felon get jobs. Some services available
are:
Counselors for One-on-one Assistance
Workshops
(Resume Writing, Interviewing Skills, and related
topics.)
Computers with internet access and word processing
Lists of thousands of job listings
Printers, fax machines, phones, and copiers for job search
use
Each center has counselors there that help clients in their
job searches.
You can find the nearest location of the One Stop Career
Center in your local phone book or on the web at:
Jobs for Felons: The Facts
about Companies that Hire Ex offenders and Felons (2018)
Jobs for Felons: Five
Places Felons Can Find Jobs - Get a Job Quickly!
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that hire ex-offenders | Employers
that hire ex-offenders | employers
that hire felons | Jobs for felons | jobs for
ex-offenders | jobs that hire felons | places
that hire felons | felon friendly jobs | felon friendly
employers | how to get a job with criminal record | second
chance jobs for felons | temp agencies
that hire felons | high paying jobs for
felons
About one in three of the more than 300 employees at
Oregon-based Dave's Killer Bread has a criminal
background. - Courtesy,
Dave's Killer Bread
By Jacob Lewin - Marketplace
A major effort is under way in this country to reform the way we
sentence drug criminals. Thousands of felons are getting early release according to the
U.S. Sentencing Commission, and that will continue for
years to come.
The question is, will there be jobs for them?
If you visit the bakery at Dave's Killer Bread outside Portland,
you'll find pumps sucking two-thousand pounds of ingredients into
mixing bowls. You'll also find that a third of the
company's 300 employees have a criminal past, including plant
manager Ronnie Elrod.
“We're just so happy to have a job that typically we've got an
attitude of gratitude rather than a sense of entitlement.
And we also know that opportunities are going to be hard to come
by for us so we have to take those opportunities that come along
and we really have to make good on them,” Elrod
said.
And Harvard sociologist Devah Pager believes that's true.
She is studying the job performance of ex-cons
in the military. “Those with serious criminal pasts perform just
as well if not better than their counterparts with no criminal
records. At least with appropriate kinds of screening,
individuals with serious criminal records can perform very well
in the workplace,” she said.
Another of Pager's studies shows that a criminal record seriously reduces the chances
of getting a job. “I hired groups of young men to pose as job
applicants and sent them all over the city applying for jobs and
half the time they reported having a felony conviction and simply
by checking that box, their chances of receiving a
call-back or job offer were cut in half,” Pager
said.
Dave's Killer Bread has hired so many ex-convicts because, well
because of Dave...Dave Dahl, that is. After serving 15 years for
drug crimes, Dahl returned to his family's bakery and in 2005
created his namesake bread. “It was based on the epiphany I had
in prison which was that I could turn my own life around and
eventually the feeling was that we could help others to do the
same thing if they were willing to do most of the work
themselves,” Dahl said.
The company uses its hiring practices as a selling point, with
Dahl's picture on every package, even though a judge put him on
conditional release after he rammed into some police cars two
years ago.
This year Dave's Killer Bread was sold to Flowers Foods for $275
million.
Jobs for Felons: The Facts about Companies that Hire Ex offenders and Felons (2018)
companies hire felons | companies that hire felons | Companies
that hire ex-offenders | Employers that hire ex-offenders |
employers that hire felons | Jobs for felons | jobs for
ex-offenders | jobs that hire felons | places that hire felons |
felon friendly jobs | felon friendly employers | how to get a job
with criminal record | second chance jobs for felons
| temp agencies that hire felons | high
paying jobs for felons
Oregon company makes a point of hiring ex-convicts
There is one big difference between the second annual Second Chance Job Fair and a ‘regular’ employment expo. Here, everyone looking for work had been to jail.
As job fairs go, this one didn’t look much different from any other. Men and women of various ages wandered from booth to booth in business attire, filling out applications and handing out resumes. A photographer was set up on one side of the room, taking professional pictures the job seekers could use on their LinkedIn pages.
However, there was one big difference between this, the second annual Second Chance Job Fair, and a “regular” employment expo. Here, everyone looking for work had been to jail.
Twenty-three employers had been invited by the organizers, M.A.D.E. Transitional Services, a Rockland County-based reentry organization; only a handful showed up. Unibody Fitness, a Brooklyn personal training business run by ex-offenders, had a table set up, and a representative from People Ready, the temp agency, was on hand. Tarik Greene, M.A.D.E.’s co-founder and deputy executive director, said Shake Shack came last year, but didn’t make it this time.
A volunteer sat at a card table offering resume advice.
“There are too many people saying, ‘I’ll take anything,’” she said. “It tells me they haven’t had an opportunity to think expansively; how will they tell their own story?”
If that story happened to involve joining the military, they’d be in luck. Along the far wall, two U.S. Army recruiters sat quietly, handing out brochures to the smattering of job seekers who slowed down long enough to take one. Unlike most employers, who are normally solicited by M.A.D.E., Greene said the Army in fact reached out to them this year and asked to attend.
“You can have one non-violent felony as an adult,” one of the recruiters, Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Boswell, told The Daily Beast. “Some of the best and most capable candidates we get require a waiver.”
The current pool of qualified applicants from which the Army can recruit is the shallowest in over a decade, with just a quarter of all 17 to 24 year-olds eligible to join and only one in eight willing to. Stretched thinner than it’s been in years, with a mandate to grow by 8.500 soldiers under the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, the Army is granting so-called “moral waivers” to people it would likely turn away under normal conditions, including convicted felons.
Recruitment standards in the U.S. military are “elastic, to put it mildly, depending on need,” according to retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich, who graduated from, and later taught at, West Point.
“When recruits are hard to come by, standards previously considered sacrosanct get waived,” Bacevich told The Daily Beast. “Offering waivers to convicted felons suggests that the services—probably the army in particular—are struggling to meet their quotas of warm and willing bodies. As to whether military service offers a way to turn your life around, there's no easy answer. For some, sure. For others, it's probably a dumb idea for the individual and for the service.”
The vagaries of the job market have a notable impact on the use of moral waivers, said Kate Germano, who commanded the Marine Corps’ 4th Recruit Battalion at Parris Island before retiring as a Lt. Colonel in 2016.
“It’s becoming harder for all of the services to make their recruiting goals; this is what happens anytime conditions favor the kids just graduating high school or college,” Germano told The Daily Beast. “But if we just open the floodgates without looking at the whole person because we’re worried about the economy being strong and not making mission, that’s when things become problematic.”
“The United States Army does not actively seek individuals who require conduct waivers,” Army spokesperson Lt. Nina Hill told The Daily Beast in a statement. “We seek individuals who have the ability to meet all of our cognitive, physical and moral qualifications and can successfully complete a term of service. A small percent of new recruits meet the requirements to join the Army with a conduct waiver. We only consider conduct waivers for individuals who are otherwise fully qualified and have met prescribed waiting periods that prove rehabilitation has occurred. If an individual requests a conduct waiver for a past offense, factors such as the nature of offense, how long ago the offense occurred, and the overall number of infractions, are critical in determining suitability for service. All new recruits must meet Department of Defense accessions standards.”
Moral waivers are given out on a case-by-case basis, and as Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark Milley said last year, “considering a waiver is not the same as granting a waiver.”
Still, between 2003 and 2006, the military allowed 4,230 convicted felons to enlist by granting them moral waivers. In 2006 and 2007, waivers were given to three applicants with manslaughter convictions; 11 who had been convicted of arson; 142 who had been convicted on burglary charges; seven with convictions for sex crimes; three with convictions for making terrorist threats, including bomb threats; and one with a conviction for kidnapping. In 2008, the Army issued 372 waivers for felony convictions, down from 511 the year before. In 2009, the Army granted 220 waivers for “Major Misconduct (Conviction),” seven in 2010, and none between 2011-2014.
One in three American adults—70 million people—have a criminal conviction. 650,000 people are released from prison in the United States each year, and three in four of them are unable to find a job during the first year they’re out.
“I don’t know how many ex-prisoners would want to do it, but the military can be a good place to get your life together,” said Brian DiMarco, a NYC wine and liquor importer who spent three years “finding himself” in the Navy after high school. “It can be a little bit like trading one form of prison for another, but at least the military gives you free healthcare for life.”
Peter Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who served as executive officer to General David Petraeus in Iraq and now teaches military history at Ohio State, isn’t particularly keen on moral waivers but is pragmatic about their existence.
“In general it’s better if the military does not grant moral waivers because we know that on average, people who have had offenses in their past don’t do as well with discipline in the military,” Mansoor told The Daily Beast. “That being said, for those that do join having received a moral waiver, some of them do turn their lives around and it’s a great thing for those people. I’m just not sure that we want to devise military policy on that basis, though.”
When she was on recruiting duty, Kate Germano’s team analyzed situation data and found a high correlation between people with felony waivers and those who didn’t complete basic training. Yet, there are still some good candidates in there. It’s just a matter of identifying them, she explained.
“I’m still in touch today with people I took a chance on, so it does work,” said Germano. “But if we’re not looking at both the whole person and the systems we have in place to make sure they’re committed, that’s how you end up with those horror stories.”
Plenty of recruits given moral waivers turn out to be model soldiers. But there are a fair number of horror stories, and they’re not hard to find. In 2005, the Army accepted recruit Steven Dale Green under a moral waiver for three past convictions (underage alcohol possession, drug possession, and fighting). The following year, while deployed to Iraq, Green and four other soldiers gang-raped 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, murdered her and her family, then burned the bodies. A year after that, Washington Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis joined the service despite being arrested on a gun charge in 2004.
The successes, on the other hand, get far less attention.
Nasser Hempel spent 11 years behind bars for his role in a 1991 armed robbery outside a Houston nightclub. Shortly after he was released in 2002, Hempel took a trip to South Padre Island with some friends for Spring Break. The Army had an obstacle course set up, and Hempel decided to give it a try.
“I was working for Viacom at the time, hanging their billboards, so I did a lot of climbing on a daily basis,” Hempel told The Daily Beast. “Me being a little cocky, I asked one of the recruiters who had the fastest time. He pointed to this guy from the 10th Mountain Division, a hotshot. I said, ‘I’m gonna beat your time.’ And I beat his time.”
Impressed, the recruiters asked Hempel if he had ever considered joining the Army. He replied that he had just gotten out of prison—it had been less than a year—and was afraid he wouldn’t qualify. You might with a moral waiver, the recruiters told him.
Like most people who have done significant amounts of time, finding his footing again on the outside was difficult for Hempel. When life began to hit him “like a sledgehammer,” Hempel decided to go to his local recruiting office and see what his options were. He was 33 years old.
The recruiter he spoke with seemed to lose interest when Hempel revealed his criminal history. But another one sitting nearby overheard their conversation and took an interest in Hempel, offering to help guide him through the moral waiver process. They began the paperwork, and eight months later, the day after Hempel got off parole he signed his Army contract, becoming one of 1,002 incoming recruits that year with felony records.
After basic training, Hempel would ship out for back-to-back tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with the 808th Engineering Company. He left the Army and returned to Houston five years ago, where he now runs a bootcamp-style gym.
“There’s been some collateral damage,” said Hempel, choking up. “I got blown up three times. I ended up getting divorced. There was a time when I got back that I was borderline homeless. It was a rough time but to this day I still look back and say, ‘I wouldn’t change a thing.’”
There are studies that show a correlation between pre-service criminal history and in-service misconduct. Others have found service members with moral waivers are more likely to complete their terms of service than those accepted without them. A more accurate picture only comes into focus upon a more granular analysis of the available data. One study found the correlation between unsuitability discharges and whether or not a recruit graduated from high school to be significantly stronger than having been issued a moral waiver.
“Thus, unless we are prepared to say that, across the board, non-graduates make bad troops, we should not say that ex-offenders cannot make good ones,” wrote legal scholar Michael Boucai in his 2007 study, “‘Balancing Your Strengths Against Your Felonies’: Considerations for Military Recruitment of Ex-Offenders.”
Of course, the absence of a criminal record doesn’t always mean an absence of criminal behavior. While the rate of criminal offenses is pretty evenly distributed across the general population, those who wind up getting charged with those crimes is not, explained Boucai, now a professor at the University of Buffalo School of Law.
“If the question is how many people in the Armed Forces have smoked marijuana at some point, you’ll get a pretty good cross-section across all races,” Boucai told The Daily Beast. “But if the question is how many people have smoked marijuana and have some sort of criminal record for it, that’s going to be overwhelmingly black and brown. The idea that we’re letting in people who are morally bad is based on the criminal record, which is a record of encounters with the criminal justice system. In reality, it’s very often not telling us who has actually committed an offense.”
According to Boucai, bringing ex-offenders into the military is not only good for the offenders themselves but also a smart investment for the population at large, by allowing offenders to restart their lives when the bulk of the private sector has all but discarded them.
Right now, there exists a “de facto ex-offender recruitment policy” in the US military, maintains Boucai. Recruiters need to hit their targets when the service needs bodies, often meaning, Boucai maintains, that violations are ignored, applicants are told to omit negative information, and background checks are left incomplete.
Each of the services has different standards and approval rates when it comes to waivers. To those who receive them, moral waivers are for the most part presented as an exception, not the rule. But, contends Boucai, many problems related to ex-offenders in the service might be traced back to this system of “winks and nods,” rather than simply acknowledging the fact that the military ranks include a certain number of people with checkered pasts, says Boucai. (“People should understand that the majority of ex-offenders, when offered a job, make good employees,” former NYC Corrections Commissioner Martin Horn told The Daily Beast, “and it undermines civil society when we ostracize them.”)
According to a 2013 Army War College Strategy Research Project by Lt. Colonel John Haefner, informed leadership could pay closer attention to recruits who enlisted under moral waivers—not just to steer them away from trouble, but to be better prepared for other issues that could arise, such as the fact that males with a criminal conviction are 200 percent more likely to attempt suicide than those without.
However, privacy laws prohibit commanders from knowing which soldiers under their supervision have records or what’s in their criminal histories.
Nevertheless, if a recruiter has adequately tested an applicant’s commitment to joining the military before they ship out to boot camp, the higher-ups don’t need to know about their pasts, said Kate Germano. What’s important, she maintains, is doing proper due diligence on people from the very beginning to “make sure they’re a good fit for the service and the service is a good fit for them.”
As the Second Chance Job Fair wound down, Staff Sgt. Boswell, the recruiter, said he was feeling cautiously optimistic.
“I think prison is kind of good preparation for the Army, in a way,” he said. “You have to be mentally tough in the Army, you also have to be mentally tough in prison.”
Boswell’s partner, Staff Sergeant Minji Hwang, explained that people with criminal histories tend to be “really motivated when they’re with us,” because they have a lot to prove, as well as a lot to lose. Plus, she added, Army benefits are really, really good.
The two may not have broken any recruiting records that day, though they emphasized that that wasn’t really the point.
“We didn’t come here expecting to recruit dozens of people,” Boswell said, “but we definitely got two or three that we can help.”
Jobs for Felons: The Facts about Companies that Hire Ex offenders and Felons (2018)
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Edward Minor had a paper due for his English class on income inequality
at Wayne County Community College in Detroit. He’d completed all the
research and knew what he wanted to write. The main issue was time—he
only had a few hours.
But countless, frustrating obstacles delayed his progress, from the
laborious pace at which 62-year-old Minor types to figuring out how to
save his document. The final step, however, was really tripping him up.
Since he was using a computer at the library, he needed to email the
file to himself so he could edit it later on a different computer.
“Do I just put my email address up here?” Minor asked, pointing to
the bar at the top of the web browser. Eventually he got some help from a
computer technician, but he wasn’t confident he’d be able to find the
document later.
“They’re
doing it so fast and I’m trying to follow,” he says. “They don’t see
that there’s a baby right here in front of them. I’m a baby out here!”
Ed Minor types at the Detroit Public Library, wearing a pin with a photo of Angela Davis.Photo: Nick Hagen
Indeed, Minor’s relationship to the world isn’t so different from
that of an infant. That’s because, in October 2017, Minor was released
from prison after being incarcerated for more than 40 years. A
modern-day Rip Van Winkle (who left society for a mere two decades),
Minor is adrift in a society that left him behind.
The
hunt-and-peck typing method he employs, which itself is slower than
usual, is just the beginning of his technological difficulties. The
computers, wireless internet, and touch screens that many take for
granted are alien to him. Even looking at a computer screen—with all its
strange icons, commands, and windows—is like deciphering the Rosetta
Stone.
While Minor may be an extreme case, he squarely fits the
description of Americans who suffer most from the digital divide, a
phenomenon that describes how technology can contribute to inequality:
He’s elderly, he’s poor, and he’s a person of color.
Resolving the
divide’s underlying issues will be anything but simple, but the
negative effects are pretty straightforward. If you don’t have access to
the internet or the skills to use it, you also won’t have access to
countless jobs and resources. As Tom Wheeler, former chair of the FCC, said in 2015,
“The bottom line is this: If you are not connected to the internet…you
cannot participate fully in our economy and our democracy.”
As of 2015, Detroit was the least connected city in America. Forty percent of Detroit’s households have no broadband connection and 70 percent of its school-age kids have no internet access at home (excluding smartphones).
For its size, Detroit is woefully under-connected. But rural areas and small metropolises often have it worse. According to a Brookings Institute report,
almost one in four people in the United States lived in low
subscription neighborhoods in 2015. Fewer than 40 percent of households
subscribed to broadband internet.
Price is often an inhibiting factor. Detroit’s two main broadband
providers, Comcast and AT&T, respectively, offer plans for their
slowest connections at $25 for 12 months (and $50 afterwards) and $40
per month with a $99 installation fee.
Ed MinorPhoto: Nick Hagen
Federal programs can lower the cost of these plans, but a study by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance
(NDIA) showed that in Cleveland and Detroit, AT&T didn’t built out
the infrastructure sufficiently to provide residents with high enough
connection speeds to meet program guidelines. In other words, there’s a
major correlation between plan availability and poverty.
The NDIA
has described this as “digital redlining,” a reference to the practice
that denied people of color access to housing, and which ran rampant in
Detroit in the mid-1900s.
That’s in line with what Diana Nucera,
director of the Detroit Community Technology Project, has witnessed.
“Whether it’s artificial intelligence or internet access or healthcare,”
she says, “the problems of the digital divide all stem from the same
place: racism.”
I described Minor’s situation to Nucera and asked what she thought.
“If he’s a victim of the digital divide, he’s also a victim of several
other things before that,” she says. “It’s much more complicated than
giving this gentleman a computer.”
Before Minor ever went to prison, understanding modern-day technology was the least of his concerns.
He
came from a challenging home life. “My family were alcoholics,” he
says. “I never met my mother’s side of the family. My father’s side was
just drunks, dope fiends, dealing in corn liquor. My father was always
jumping on my mother; my uncles were always jumping on their
girlfriends.”
That contributed to his feeling aimless as a youth
growing up on Detroit’s west side. “I didn’t know what to do with my
life,” he says. “Didn’t want to do anything with my life.”
As for technology, his family didn’t even own a color TV.
“The problems of the digital divide all stem from the same place: racism.”
Minor was imprisoned once for seven months for breaking and entering.
When he was released, he wanted to pay back a favor for a friend that
helped him out while in prison. But the only way he knew how to get the
money was to steal it. Planning to mug someone outside a nightclub, he
says he brought an unloaded BB gun whereas his co-defendant, without
telling him, brought a real gun.
According to Minor, his accomplice shot the person they were mugging,
and after they were arrested, made a statement saying Minor committed
the murder. Minor says he was pressured by his lawyer and the judge to
plead guilty to second degree murder.
The sentence: life with parole.
Ed Minor checks the bus schedule on his phone.Photo: Nick Hagen
Since getting out of prison, Minor has lived with his cousin in
Southfield, an adjacent suburb of Detroit about 15 miles from downtown.
On a normal day, Minor wakes up at around 11am, eats breakfast, and
takes an hour and a half-long, two-bus transfer journey—with an
undersized bicycle in tow—to either the WCCC campus or Detroit Public
Library’s main branch. There he’ll do school work and develop his
computer skills for several hours before heading to his job as a
dishwasher at a nearby restaurant.
He often closes out, which
means leaving work at around midnight and catching one of the last rapid
buses heading north. At that time of night, the bus no longer runs for
the last four-mile leg home, so he either bikes or walks depending on
the weather. Once, the bus never came and his co-worker paid for a
rideshare. He rarely gets into bed before 3am.
While at the downtown library, the person assisting him is often
Keronce Sims, a computer technician. He teaches classes on computing
basics, but his main job is helping patrons and employees troubleshoot
computer issues. That means he’s often running from one request to the
next all day long.
“What aren’t I responsible for?” Sims says with
a laugh. “I’m one of three in the building…I’m putting out some
matches, some candles, some fires.”
Local libraries are common destinations
for people without computers or internet access. Detroit’s main branch
has about 80 computers and there’s no time limit on how long someone can
use one or, aside from games and X-rated content, what they can use
them for.
In his 30 years at the library, Sims has seen all types of people use
the computers for every conceivable reason: to apply for assistance,
look for work, write a thesis, sue someone, or just to watch videos and
go on Facebook.
Sometimes, according to Sims, people have panic attacks when trying
to take care of a stressful matter using a machine they don’t
understand. “I see it all the time,” he says. “I see a lot of
impairments. Some are dyslexic, some are recovering from a physical
injury or a stroke. Some are visually impaired. I’ve seen people with
missing digits.”
Sims has been working with Minor since the summer
and is encouraged by his effort. “Some people inquire about our
services but don’t show up,” he says. “But [Minor] showed up. He knew
nothing at first—the whole digital world was foreign to him.”
Keronce Sims helps Ed Minor navigate a computer at the Detroit Public Library.Photo: Nick Hagen
In addition to having a felony on his record, little free time in his
daily life, bad eyesight, hyperthyroidism, and no car, Minor also has
very little money, and few people he can rely on besides his cousin.
He’s also battling the type of culture shock that has nothing to do with
the digital world. Simply going to the supermarket is a stressful
experience that results in decision paralysis. “I stick to chocolate or
vanilla ice cream and white socks,” he says.
As director of DCTP,
Nucera oversees programs that foster use of technology based on
community need. One of those programs is the Equitable Internet Initiative,
which will provide 150 Detroit households with high-speed internet
access. The program also involved training 25 local “digital stewards,”
two of whom were in their late seventies, in hardware installation and
WiFi setup. Age matters, but it’s not the primary barrier.
Minor has a passion for housing. After he’s done taking his
prerequisites at WCCC, he’s planning to take classes on real estate.
Despite everything he’s been through, he’s remarkably optimistic.
“Oh, it’s gonna get done,” he says. “Keep doing what I’m doing, don’t cry about it, move with it. I feel I’m on a mission.”
Sims and Nucera both think he has the capacity to overcome his technological difficulties.
“Clearly
he’s extremely resilient,” Nucera says. “You don’t come out of prison
after 40 years as an optimistic man without having a sense of self and
being very intelligent. It’s not about his ability to learn. It’s about
whether or not society can accept someone who’s been in prison for that
long.”
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