Nothing like taking advantage of someone who has nothing to lose, I mean - what could possibly go wrong.
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.