Except that - if I understand how US justice system works correctly - they won't be hired by anyone because they have a sentence in their books. Which is awful.
As a felon, I was rejected from an internship at IBM, but I was able to get hired at startup-type companies.
Over the past twenty years, I've been told by many folks in the US tech industry holding unskilled positions that non-white-collar convicts should never be given jobs again, should do all their time in solitary, shouldn't have books or access to entertainment, or should be beaten with stones or bats (and a few variations on this theme of torture-as-penance, always by women oddly.) Regardless of whether those attitudes are right or wrong, it's important to understand they are there and seem to be commonly held by the folks standing at the gates. And, for people who've committed felonies and done their time to understand they can either get very creative in how they adapt, or reoffend.
To bring this rambling back to the topic at hand: can "felons" get a tech job? Sure, but it's unlikely where those attitudes have had time to become invisibly entrenched, e.g., in human resources' workflow. So, as another poster said, startups are a real possibility. But really, any company where paperwork or blind-policy isn't in play--especially as a first step, e.g., a cookie-cutter job application--is a possibility. Another approach is to create the job, something almost uniquely possible in tech.
In short, it's tough, doable, and I think great because people can use it to walk far from the scenery of recidivism, figuratively and literally.
Edit: Apparently I am wrong, they aren't technically required to disclose it. However, in practice, every job application I have ever seen has had the question.
I think you meant that some people prefers not to hire them, which drives their prospective wages down and, in turn, makes them more attractive candidates to people will hire them, like me.
First, because it reads like a tacit threat - even if you aren't personally a convicted felon, anyone reading this might find themselves less willing to even consider someone who is.
Second, people adjust their expected salary expenditures on any number of qualities and characteristics. It's not "taking advantage" of someone any more than paying a junior developer less than a senior developer. There's increased risk - real and/or perceived - involved in hiring someone who has had difficulty staying within the confines of the law.
"There's increased risk - real and/or perceived - involved in hiring someone who has had difficulty staying within the confines of the law."
This is the same argument banks make when they jack some single mother's interest rate to 39% when she misses a payment on her credit card. It has nothing to do with risk, and everything to do with seizing an opportunity to take advantage of someone.
If you're going to help someone return to society, then you ought to pay them in the same range as everyone else on your team. That - is just good business.
This does a poor job of extending your argument. That's an explicitly defined and agreed-upon contract between the issuer and the recipient of the credit card.
Maybe we have very different interpretations of what "taking advantage" means. To me, that pivots heavily on shared or expressed understanding.
Is that not what you said above?
But, you have no moral issue with such practices?
Being restrained only by the limits of federal law is essentially a sociopathic value system. Bigoted behavior didn't become wrong because of various legislative changes in the 60s. It was already wrong, as is systematically underpaying former criminals who have already served their time.
It's also worth pointing out that this country imprisons millions of non-violent offenders, and those people are disproportionately likely to be black and male.
And this is all the more reason, if you're going to hire someone with a criminal record, to try and treat them with the same respect you'd treat any other employee. For the very fact that many of them get treated so poorly when they get out that it makes just as much sense to go back in.