Last year, I wrote a highly critical opinion piece for the Sun-Times about Gov. Bruce Rauner after learning that he had denied clemency for a client of mine.
Given Rauner’s extreme reluctance to grant clemency to ex-offenders, even to those like my client who had gone on to live honest and productive lives for many years, I questioned why anybody would bother to file the petition.
Though I couldn’t know it at the time, however, that same governor soon would lay the groundwork for my client to earn a second chance. In August 2017, Rauner signed House Bill 2373 into law. This legislation resulted in a significant expansion of the kinds of criminal records a judge can decide to seal from public view.
Last month, as a result of that law, a judge granted my client’s petition to seal his record, closing the book on my client’s addiction-fueled criminal conduct, which began when he was 17 and ended when he was 31. Today, he is 51.
My client’s story, which he has given me permission to tell as long as I don’t use his real name, reminds us that people who make bad decisions as teens and young adults still can grow into law-abiding, productive members of society. If we don’t start believing in our human capacity to change — to learn from our mistakes — we will fail to see the potential in many of our fellow, returning citizens.
My client, Larry, grew up in Chicago with an alcoholic father. His mother managed apartment buildings. Neither of his parents graduated from high school. Larry himself struggled in school, and was diagnosed with dyslexia in the fifth grade. Once assigned to special ed classes, he was teased and bullied relentlessly.
The summer before Larry entered high school, he started drinking beer. By his freshman year, he was smoking weed and using cocaine. He dropped out of school after his sophomore year. A year later, he was arrested for the first time.
He was charged with felony burglary and sentenced to probation.
In no time at all, Larry had gone from high school dropout to convicted felon. His future did not bode well. It is estimated that more than 70 percent of the men and women in United States prisons did not graduate from high school.
Larry’s next arrest, for residential burglary, occurred while he was still on probation. He was sentenced to prison – the first of two prison stints he would serve before turning 20. Larry’s preferred choice of crime? Breaking into cars, though he wasn’t particularly good at it. He was usually drunk or high when arrested.
In 1990, Larry picked up his fourth — and final — felony conviction. He was spared prison, though, sentenced instead to an intensive, in-patient drug treatment.
Larry struggled with his sobriety for another 10 years. But a health scare in 2000 finally convinced him to stop drinking and drugging.
Today, Larry takes his sobriety seriously. He has been sober for nearly 18 years. He attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings three times a week.
A couple of years ago, he met his wife at an AA meeting. With her encouragement and support, he started meeting with a literacy tutor. At the time, his reading comprehension was that of a second grader. Today, he can read at a fifth-grade level.
So there you have it: Larry is sober. He can read a bit better. And he always manages to work for a living, despite his significant educational deficits. The jobs he has found, such as valet parking attendant, don’t pay well, but they are honorable and he has gotten by.
I met Larry and his wife in 2015 and filed his clemency petition in 2016. While the petition was pending, Larry was selected to be a participant in the CTA’s Second Chance Program, cleaning buses and rail cars. Recently, he completed his second full year in the program.
Earlier this year, shortly before a judge granted his petition to seal his criminal record — made possible by the law Rauner signed — Larry learned that his name has been added to the CTA’s hire list.
Over the years, Larry has learned not to give up on himself. And today, he says at age 51, he feels like a “different man.”
He’s a man of few words, but on the day after the judge granted his petition, he called me to say thanks.
How did he feel?
“Really, really good,” Larry said with a chuckle. “Like I never got in trouble before, though I know I did.”
Ina R. Silvergleid is a Chicago attorney and owner of A Bridge Forward LLC. She specializes in helping people with a criminal background eliminate barriers to employment, professional licensing and housing.
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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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When inmates are released, most hope they will never face incarceration again. One sure way to increase the odds of success is to find stable employment as soon as possible. I have been helping ex-offenders and felons get jobs for many years and I have found some really good ways that people with criminal records can get hired. I am sharing the top five ways here:
Temporary Agencies - Temporary employment agencies are one the best ways for a felon to get a job. Many companies turn to temp agencies as a way to keep their businesses running. Often when an employer finds that a temporary employer has a good work ethic and fits well the job is offered permanently. The key for ex-offenders and felons applying for temporary work is to apply to local independent agencies rather than large corporate agencies. The larger companies often have policies that are set in their corporate offices that prohibit the hiring of those with criminal records. Local independent agencies can employ anyone they feel they can place regardless of whether they have a record or not. Grab you local telephone book and make of list of temp agencies to visit and fill out applications just like you would any other employer.
Moving Companies, Furniture and Appliance Retailers - Moving companies and stores that sell large appliances and furniture often are looking for strong capable people who can move large items. Often criminal records are of little importance if they can find a dependable person who can get the job done by delivering goods safe and sound to customers.
Large Retail Stores - When you think of large retail stores like Target, Wal-Mart or you local supermarket you think of cashiers and department salespeople. What few people think about are the unseen people who help to keep the store running. There are people who clean the floors, stock the shelves and unload trucks. The reason we rarely see these people is because they work overnight. Not everyone is cut out to work the overnight shift. Often it is hard for people to work that shift. Because of this, there are often openings for people who can do a good job on the overnight crew. Contact your local large retail store or supermarket to find out if there are any openings on the overnight shift.
Property Managers - Many apartment and condominium communities are manage by property mangers who keep everything looking nice for the residents. Every property manager has a staff at every property who does the work necessary to maintain these communities. There are often openings for people who can do minor repairs, painting and general cleaning. Many of these communities have the property manger's name on the signs at the entrances. Contact them to inquire about any open positions
Restaurants - Every restaurant is in need of people who are dependable and can do a variety of jobs. Dish washing, filling ice stations, and helping the kitchen, bar and wait staff are just a few of the duties of the kitchen utility person. If you can get to work on time and have a passion for serving guests, there are many jobs available. Make a list of restaurants in your area and call each one to see if there are positions available. You can cover a lot more ground on the telephone than you can on foot.
Ex-offenders and felons are hired everyday. There are jobs to be had if you are willing to put in the work to find them and prepare yourself to show employers that you will be a great employee. Best of luck!
Jobs for Ex-offenders and Felons: Where can Ex-offenders Find Jobs
Jobs for Ex-offenders and Felons: Ten Steps to Getting a Job with a Criminal Record
Jobs for Felons: Immediate Jobs for Ex-offenders and Felons
Jobs for Felons: Using Temp Agencies
Jobs for Felons: Top Five Ways for Ex-offenders and Felons to Find Jobs
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Claims of racial disparity in how criminal background checks are used led to $3.7M class-action settlement.
By Kavita Kumar Star Tribune
Target Corp. has agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle a lawsuit over concerns that the way it uses criminal background checks as part of the hiring process has disproportionately hurt black and Latino applicants. “Target’s background check policy was out of step with best practices and harmful to many qualified applicants who deserved a fair shot at a good job,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which worked on the case. “Criminal background information can be a legitimate tool for screening job applicants, but only when appropriately linked to relevant questions such as how long ago the offense occurred and whether it was a nonviolent or misdemeanor offense.” As part of the settlement of the class-action complaint, independent consultants will recommend changes to Target’s current screening guidelines. For example, they will come up with a list of convictions that are not considered job-related and should not disqualify a person from a particular position. They will also review the company’s appeals process that offers candidates a chance to show evidence of rehabilitation. “We’re glad to resolve this and move forward,” the Minneapolis-based retailer said in a
statement. “At Target, we have a number of measures in place to ensure we’re fair and equitable in our hiring practices. … And in hiring, like the rest of our business, we hold diversity and inclusion as core values and strive to give everyone access to the same opportunities.” Maurice Emsellem, program director with advocacy group National Employment Law Project, said this is one of the largest settlements of its kind and will likely provide a model for other employers as they look to adopt better hiring practices and policies. In 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau agreed to pay $15 million to settle a similar class-action suit that involved an estimated 450,000 black and Latino applicants who may have been passed over for jobs because of background-check practices. “Employers are now way more tuned into the laws and policies that encourage them to create more fair practices to hire people with records,” Emsellem said. “But there’s still plenty of big employers and small employers who have a long way to go to clean up their policies.” As part of the settlement, which was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in New York, black and Latino applicants who were denied employment from a Target store because of a criminal-background check since May 2006 will be eligible for priority hiring or interviewing for current open positions. Alternately, they can seek a financial award of up to $1,000. Target is also giving $600,000 to five organizations that work to help individuals with criminal backgrounds find employment: AccessAbility’s Career & Educational Pathways program and RS Eden in Minnesota, Center for Employment Opportunities and the Fortune Society in New York, and A New Way of Life Reentry Project in California. In 2016, Target was among the companies that signed on to a White House pledge that encouraged employers to eliminate unnecessary barriers facing applicants with criminal records. Like many major employers, Target started using criminal background checks as part of its hiring process more than a decade ago. The retailer, which employs about 345,000 workers and is among the nation’s largest employers, used to ask job applicants about their criminal history on the initial application form. But as part of the so-called “Ban the Box” movement, critics complained that such screening at the outset made it difficult for ex-offenders to get jobs even if their offenses were from when they were young or were not pertinent to the positions for which they were applying. In 2013, Minnesota passed a law barring private employers from asking about criminal history on application forms. The following year, Target removed that question from its applications nationwide. “Now, we gather criminal background information in the final stages of the hiring process,” Target said in a statement. “This ensures individuals are considered for employment based on their qualifications, interview and availability.” However, the company said it still believes it’s important to consider conviction history. “Individuals are given an opportunity to explain their criminal history and provide information about the circumstances, mitigating factors, good conduct and rehabilitation,” the company said. “We exclude applicants whose criminal histories could pose a risk to our guests, team members or property, and design our process to treat all applicants fairly while maintaining a safe and secure working and shopping environment for team members and guests.” According to the lawsuit, Target’s policies mandated automatic rejection of applicants for broad categories of misdemeanors and felonies such as violence, theft and controlled substances convictions within seven years of applying. If an application required further review, it was forwarded to Target’s human resources division, which used its discretion to make a final determination “rather than apply any objective or validated measures,” the complaint said. Such a screening process imported “the racial and ethnic disparities that exist in the criminal justice system into the employment process, thereby multiplying the negative impact on African-American and Latino job applicants,” the lawsuit said, noting that those groups are arrested and incarcerated at rates much higher than whites. The plaintiffs in the case included Carnella Times, a 47-year-old black woman who applied for an overnight stocker position at a Target store in Connecticut in 2006. She was disqualified because of two misdemeanor convictions from 10 years earlier. The following year, she filed a discrimination charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which issued her a right to sue in 2015 after years of investigation.
Another plaintiff was Erving Smith, a 40-year-old black man who applied for a stocker position at a store in Pittsburgh in 2014. He was denied the job because of a drug-related felony conviction from 2004.
Jobs for Felons: The Facts about Companies that Hire Ex offenders and Felons (2018)
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In his 2018 State of the Union address, President Trump said that “we will embark on reforming our prisons to help former inmates who have served their time get a second chance.”
This sentiment directly follows what Trump promised during his inaugural address, that “we will get our people off of welfare and back to work.” People coming out of incarceration face two distinct paths—they can either find a job, or they will fall into government dependency. Beyond being the main predictor of whether someone is living in poverty, not having a job is the clearest indicator of how likely someone is to re-offend.
Yet one year after their release from incarceration, between 60 percent and 75 percent of ex-offenders remain unemployed. Rather than promoting rehabilitation and independence, states across the country severely limit the work prospects of ex-offenders through occupational licensing laws.
Most states have little oversight over how licensing agencies can treat those with criminal records, meaning agencies can consider old convictions or convictions that are unrelated to the occupation. Even worse, boards can require that applicants meet vague standards such as having “good character” or not showing “moral turpitude.” These unclear requirements give licensing boards broad discretion to prevent ex-offenders from getting work.
With the devastating opioid crisis leaving tens of thousands of individuals across the country with records, vague standards that allow boards to judge applicants’ character can serve as a major obstacle for those recovering from addiction who are seeking work in licensed occupations. Because work is a core component of recovery and has the largest positive effect of any indicator on overcoming drug addiction, states should be promoting work for these individuals, not adding barriers to recovery.
Given that there are 2.3 million people incarcerated in America—at least 95 percent of whom, or 600,000 people each year, will re-enter the general population at some point—excessive licensing regulations for those with records pose a major problem to people like Texas resident Christopher Owen.
After finding work at a home security company, Owen was denied a fire alarm installer license because of a felony burglary on his record. His offense? He had stolen a $5 pair of socks from a Goodwill drop-off trailer in 2014. This incident happened right after Owen’s home had burned down and his mother had passed away. In a brief period, he had gone from owning his own oil and gas company to being homeless. Yet none of these mitigating circumstances were considered by the Texas Department of Public Safety. A crime of $5 cost Owen a career.
There are countless other stories similar to Owen’s—each more unbelievable than the last. Perhaps the least-defensible example of overreach from licensing authorities can be found in Calvert County, Md., where a misdemeanor or a felony can automatically disqualify someone from working as a licensed fortune-teller. Many of these licensing restrictions have nothing to do with protecting public safety. And paradoxically, research has shown that broad licensing restrictions against ex-offenders endanger the public more than they protect it.
Thankfully, states are acting to lower the barriers faced by those with records. Florida State Sen. Jeff Brandes and State Rep. Scott Plakon (both Republicans) introduced a bill that would allow those in prison to apply for licenses before their release date. The reform also allows those with records to petition licensing boards to ensure that they will be approved before they invest substantial amounts of time completing government-required training. And boards for certain occupations will no longer be able to consider convictions from more than five years ago, which will no doubt help the thousands of people recovering from opioid addictions and related offenses move on from their pasts.
In Nebraska, State Sen. Laura Ebke (a Libertarian) introduced a comprehensive licensing reform bill making clear that criminal histories alone should not disqualify people from work. If this bill becomes law, Nebraska boards will no longer be allowed to consider offenses that are unrelated to safely working in a licensed occupation. This highlights another kind of overreach where licensing boards impose blanket bans, which are occupational bans for any kind of felony or misdemeanor, even when the offense is unrelated to the job. One example of this can be found in Nebraska, where those with any criminal record can be denied a massage therapy license. Similar bills to get rid of blanket bans are moving through the legislatures in Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and New Hampshire.
President Trump’s State of the Union address highlights that being tough on crime is perfectly compatible with wanting individuals with records to find work and become independent instead of falling into government dependency, whether through welfare or re-incarceration. Work keeps ex-offenders out of poverty, allows them to gain valuable skills and experience, moves them off welfare, and helps them avoid reoffending—those are more than enough reasons for states to give them a chance at a fresh start.
Jared Meyer (@JaredMeyer10) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability.
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Jobs for Felons: Trump wants to give ex-cons a fresh start
Ron Nelsen has been in the garage door business since 1976. He can’t recall a time when it’s been this difficult to find workers for his family business, Pioneer Overhead Door in Las Vegas.
When his assistant handed him Ian Black’s resume in April, it seemed like a godsend. Black had more than a decade of experience.
Then Nelsen noticed that all of Black’s recent jobs were at a state prison.
Black is an inmate at Casa Grande, a work-release facility that’s a seven-minute walk from Pioneer Overheard Door. Nelsen knew the place well. He and other business owners in the industrial neighborhood had protested Casa Grande’s arrivalin 2005.
But now his business was booming, and Nelsen needed workers who knew what they were doing. He decided to interview the inmate.
“Ian did well in the interview. He was articulate and respectful, and he told me he’d been an idiot when he was younger,” Nelsen said. Even so, Nelsen said, “I was still apprehensive.”
America’s unemployment rate is at a 17-year low — at 4.1 percent — and JPMorgan predicts it could fall to 3.4 percent this year, the lowest level since the 1969. Businesses large and small complain they can’t find workers, especially ones willing to do the arduous labor of landscaping, construction or stocking shelves. Companies have traditionally sought out immigrant labor to fill some of these jobs, but the Trump administration is aggressively going after businesses that use undocumented immigrants. In this political and economic environment, big companies like Walmart and Koch Industries and smaller ones like Pioneer Overhead Door are turning to an underutilized source of labor: inmates and the formerly incarcerated.
It’s a large, mostly untapped pool of workers: Roughly 20 million Americans have been convicted of a felony, according to research by University of Georgia Professor Sarah Shannon and her colleagues.
But even if the need for workers is great and attitudes are shifting, it’s not an easy decision. On his desk in a big warehouse a few blocks from the Las Vegas Strip, Nelsen has statues of saints and the Virgin Mary. A practicing Catholic, he asked friends whether he should hire a Casa Grande inmate. Almost everyone said yes, he should offer a chance of redemption. Among fellow business owners, opinions were mixed.
Nelsen has five workers who hang the garage doors at homes and commercial facilities such as warehouses and carwashes. It was a big risk, some said, to take on someone who has been convicted six times for nonviolent burglaries. Nelsen’s wife urged him to take a chance. So he offered Black a job, and Black, who has been in prison for the past nine years, accepted quickly, saying it gave him a “sense of purpose” for the first time in decades.
Black spends his nights locked in a cell, but on weekdays, he wears a dark gray Pioneer Overhead Door uniform with his name on it. Customers don’t know about his past. They only see the quality of the work now. “He’s my best worker,” Nelsen said. “Out of all my technicians, he’s the one I wouldn’t want to lose.”
Some companies ask job applicants immediately if they have ever been convicted of a crime to screen them out, but the ACLU and the NAACP say they have seen a “change of heart” in the past year, with more businesses willing to take a chance on people with criminal histories. “Businesses are beginning to ask: Why did we have such stringent bans?” says Ngozi Ndulue, senior director of criminal justice programs at the NAACP.
Increasingly, business leaders see hiring people with criminal records as the right thing to do for America — and for their companies. Formerly incarcerated workers are often hard-working and loyal, and not looking to jump to another employer. “We’ve hired a lot of people with criminal records who have been good employees,” said Mark Holden, general counsel at Koch Industries. “What someone did on their worst day doesn’t define them forever.”
Black credits Nevada’s work-release program with breaking his “prison mind-set.” He had been in prison twice before for shorter stints that he says didn’t change him. He was released in 2008 with $25 to his name. With no money and few prospects, he went right back to what he knew before, the world of crime and drugs. Within two months, he was caught stealing again.
“I grew up in a very cliche childhood: Broken home. My mom passed away when I was young, and I bounced around a lot. I cared about nothing,” Black says. “I was a career criminal. It took a devastating amount of prison time for me to rethink my position in this world.”
Black has now spent nearly a decade in prison, staying clean from drugs and learning how to be “more thankful” and “not so judgmental.” He meditates and draws in the evenings. When he turned 40, he joined the prison squad that fights wildfires. A year later, he was able to apply for Casa Grande and get into a job orientation class called Turning Point. “I want to be able to look myself in the mirror. I want to be respectable,” Black, now 42, says.
Most of the money he earns goes to pay restitution to people he stole from and to the state of Nevada to cover rent at Casa Grande. But he has saved about $700, which he believes will be life-changing when he gets out of prison.
Black is among the 2.3 million Americans behind bars, about 95 percent of whom will be released. Finding better ways to get people from prison into jobs is a cause that has united conservatives, especially religious and business leaders, with progressives. It has even made it onto President Trump’s agenda.
“Many prisoners end up returning to crime, and they end up returning to prison,” Trump said at a White House event this month on prison reform. “We can help break this vicious cycle through job training.”
Only 45 percent of men released from prison had a job eight months later, according to a 2008 study by the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center. There’s a major push to change that now that the economy is far better than it was a decade ago. Some of the most outspoken advocates are conservative power brokers like the Koch brothers and Clay Bennett, owner of the Oklahoma Thunder basketball team. Last summer, Bennett invited ACLU fellow Megan Marcelin to speak to a large gathering of Oklahoma business executives to make the case for hiring people with criminal pasts. She found a receptive audience.
“This would never have happened a year ago,” says Marcelin, who is now with JustLeadershipUSA, a criminal justice reform advocacy group. “Businesses and corporations on the right are really playing a role in getting behind this issue.”
Many conservatives, including Trump, see prison-to-job initiatives as part of a larger goal of reducing prison and welfare costs and lowering unemployment.
Walmart and Koch Industries no longer ask about criminal histories on their job applications. That small step has given many more people a chance to get in front of a hiring manager. Walmart and Koch don’t do a full background check until the final stages of the hiring process, when they already have a sense of an applicant.
This is part of a broader movement known as “ban the box,” a reference to removing the check-box question on applications.
President Barack Obama banned the box for most federal government jobs. A grass-roots movement has advocated for changes in state laws as well. “It’s common sense: We want former prisoners to be able to support themselves,” says Beth Avery, a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. “That’s good for everyone in the long run. It reduces recidivism and public spending on incarceration.”
The federal government doesn’t track how many people with criminal histories have been hired across the country. But studies of cities such as Minneapolis that have banned the box found that more than 50 percent of people whose applications had been flagged with “concern” because of a prior conviction were hired after the law changed.
Nelsen says he’s become more aware of what these reforms can do for society — and for businesses.
“I was originally negative on Casa Grande,” Nelson said. “Now I’m one of the biggest beneficiaries of it.”
The ACLU and Koch Industries are also pushing for people with criminal pasts to be able to get state licenses to do everything from plumbing to being makeup artists to being security guards. Nearly 30 percent of U.S. jobs require a state license, according to the Brookings Institution, but some states prevent felons from getting licenses.
Another hurdle that remains is racial prejudice. Studies have found it’s twice as easy for white inmates and formerly incarcerated Caucasians to get jobs than for African Americans. Research by economists at the University of Virginia and the University of Oregon last year found that banning the box caused some employers to discriminate against African Americans and Latinos because hiring managers made assumptions about who was more likely to have a criminal record.
Black feels lucky to be working again and is preparing for a parole hearing in February. He has been mentoring a 20-year-old named Eric Fernandez, who recently joined Pioneer Overhead Door. Black showed him what tools to buy and taught him all the different types of garage door springs. In exchange, Fernandez drives the truck, since Black can’t get his driver’s license back yet.
What’s it like to be working with Black? Fernandez shrugs, signaling he hasn’t given it much thought.
“He’s pretty funny,” Fernandez says. He looks over at Black and they laugh in unison, pausing for a few seconds in the Las Vegas heat before getting back to work.
