I’ve met these people in the public sector where we have policies in place to employ the people who are hard to employ and focus on not discriminating people because of what they bring. But the fact that we have those policies and that focus speaks a lot about how hard of an issue it is.
Because if you’ve committed crime, you’ll simply be considered a more risky hire, and we don’t like that. The most expensive mistake a manager can make in my country is hiring the wrong person. This is where a lot of the discrimination against former criminals, people with different sort of diagnosis’s, people over 60 and so on come from.
Often the risk assessment isn’t actually true. Because a lot of these people will be far more loyal to your organisation than a fresh hire out of university, but the risk assessment will still favour the young person, and if someone experience and “normal” in their late 30ies or early 40ies is in competition, well…
I'm even experiencing this. And I'm a "normal" person by many accounts (graduated from uni, no crime, little experience, etc.).
I can't imagine how tough it must be for people that committed a crime in the past.