Comment by newsreader | Hacker News Reader

Comment by newsreader | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I spent 19 years of my life incarcerated. My life of crime started when my family moved to East Los Angeles and I decided to become a gang member at the age of 15. My last stint in prison was fourteen years straight; having been sentenced to 21 years but was granted parole on my first parole hearing. During my prison time, I enrolled in educational activities and got my GED, an Associate of Arts degree with honors, and later a degree in Computer Information Systems. Needless to say, that it took me time to adjust to a completely different type of life on the outside than the one I had been accustomed to. More than once I had the experience of being rejected, and of job offers being withdrawn, because of my criminal history. For the last 20 years, I have been working as a software developer and make a good living thanks to the career I chose while in prison. I hope more companies have the courage to take a chance on others such as myself that have paid their debt to society and are trying to live a normal life. Kudos to Slack and all the companies that believe in giving people a second chance.

Thanks for sharing your story. It really makes me angry to hear about the countless obstacles the formerly incarcerated face when it comes to reintegrating into society. As you put it, the debt to society has been paid. Someone who makes a mistake when they're young and stupid -- I know I made my share -- shouldn't be prevented from ever being able to have a good, normal life.

It is unfortunate that, although sentenced with finite punishments, ex-cons continue to be punished (i.e. judged, discriminated against) well after their sentence is over.

That said, I can also understand why companies avoid ex-cons. Companies make decisions based on statistics. A company will, ceterus paribus, always choose the candidate who has no criminal history because that candidate is less likely to commit a crime and hurt the company.

Allow companies to pay felons less for the same job, at least for some finite period of time, to compensate for that risk. Otherwise, as you say, it makes sense for them to hire people without a criminal record, other things being equal.

The truth of the matter is that us felons do work for less – at least I did – mostly because we have no choice. We are also less likely to be promoted. Three times I had job offers withdrawn because of my criminal past. Having much more to lose than someone without a criminal record I never considered doing anything illegal, or anything that would cast a shadow of doubt to my integrity. “Once a criminal always a criminal” is just not true. Unfortunately, too many people subscribe to the false cliché.

Most of the software companies I've worked for don't care about the relative salary cost because the all in cost and opportunity cost of a bad hire is way higher than the salary. For example, given the choice between a proven senior dev making 200k or a risky untrained dev making 70k they'd still just hire the senior dev. It's more about headcount with the big companies. They don't care about saving 40-60k in practice, from what I've seen.

"As you put it, the debt to society has been paid."

It's not so simple. A murderer or rapist may have served his term in prison but still not have made restitution to the victim or his or her family. However, it's good for felons to find work after incarceration so that they can support themselves and ideally make amends to victims.

Good point. I also find it to be an odd turn of phrase considering we spent those decades paying 70k a year or whatever to take care of them in prison. I'm going to have to start saying that my debt to society has been paid whenever I've just cost the taxpayers a great deal of money.

To that end, when we shift the problem from 1 reformed ex-con applying to 1 company to a distribution of reformed and non-reformed ex-cons applying to many companies, and consider in general how inefficient hiring practices tend to be in this field, what are some things that could be done to give these companies confidence that the person they hired won't steal from the company?

Perhaps some kind of standardized post-incarceration psychological/behavioral evaluation and certification system?

edit: someone mentioned this: https://thelastmile.org/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com