The lack of second chances we give in America to some of our most unfortunate means that even non-violent offenses can have lifelong consequences. It's shameful.
We can debate the kind of punishment sex offenders deserve (and don't judge too quickly - urinating in public, statutory rape of a minor 6 months younger than yourself, visiting a prostitute, and even sexting if you are a minor all qualify as sex offenses. [0])
But my point is, if we are going to punish someone for life, let's be open and clear about it. Never being able to escape the year you spent in prison 25 years ago is torturous. It's no wonder recidivism is so high in the US.
[0] http://www.businessinsider.com/surprising-things-that-could-...
The truth appears to be that the general public is OK with this kind of discrimination. Commit a crime, go to jail, get marked for life. It sucks. Make a dumb mistake when you're 17, and you're screwed.
We need to start doing a better job separating the people we're mad at vs. the people we're scared of. Scaling back drug arrests (especially marijuana) is a step in the right direction.
To those who make very comfortable livings in the US legal system, that is not a bug, it's a designed feature.
Oh, and oddly enough, they happen to be the same people whom make the sentencing laws.
However, paid defense lawyers sure get a nice dividend from these recidivists.
Cops get the jobs, status, and power they seek from arresting them.
The prison industrial complex owes it's entire business model to them (as first-timers rarely get state prison time), and the last time I checked, DOC was the largest state budget item for CA and FL (I'll admit to maybe being a little off here)
Need I go on?
Still, lawyers aren't getting rich defending the masses of underprivileged felons filling our prisons. Defending these folks is a pretty honorable task.
See also: Judge Alex Kozinski, 9th Circuit Appeals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/opinion/sunday/rampant-pro...
They will (mostly) always favor Ivy over state school grads, clean record vs. felon, good credit risk vs. applicant that declared bankruptcy ...and so on.
As low economic growth continues, this is only going to get worse. How many middle-aged people do you see working at Target/Wal-Mart now vs. 15 years ago? If you're not highly skilled with a clean record, things are going to be awfully tough for you.
This isn't 'right' or 'wrong', it's just reality.
Government-supported reality. You can say that this is okay, but please do not make it look like this is just the way it is: The government could disallow access to all felony records (probably with an exemption for police) and even (if it wanted) provide people with a fake background story for the time they were in prison. Discrimination can only be based on things someone else knows, if the government didn't provide the information, how could the employers be "picky"?
So instead of searching government records to find out if you have been convicted of a felony when you apply to work for me, I use Google to find a newspaper report of your conviction. Not as reliable, but will still probably turn up most applicants with serious felony convictions.
If we are in one of the 40 state that does not prohibit employers from running credit checks on applicants (or if we are in one of those states but the job is one for which there is commonly an exception that allows credit checks, such as jobs in banking) [1], then I can find addresses of banks and loan providers you have used, and possibly more addresses, giving me geographical areas you have probably been in. I can do searches of the local newspapers there, which would be more likely to cover any less serious felony convictions.
Same goes for the locations of any past employers on your resume.
The internet greatly increased the difficulty of leaving your past behind. Even if the primary record (like the government record of your conviction and sentence) is blocked, you leave plenty of breadcrumbs on your way to the present, and the internet preserves them.
[1] http://www.esrcheck.com/Articles/States-with-Laws-Regulating...
Additionally, according to this paper(1) around 8.6% of people have a felony conviction in the US. I have a hard time believing that all - or even most - of this felonies get reported by a newspaper/Google, so even for very noisy employers this seems to be a small risk (yes, if you are the "Slaughterer of <some town>" people will probably find you on Google even without a public felony record).
All else given: Start with removing access to felony convictions, then remove access to credit information and go from there. I didn't say it was easy, but at the moment the government (in the US) seems to do its best to make the life of people who have been convicted of a felony very hard.
For $49.95 we will find any past convictions that any of your new hires might have!
No.
We have this system because that is what people want. Maybe not you, but clearly the majority.
Employers can be legally responsible for crimes their employees commit.
If you employ someone who has been found guilty of a sexual assault crime and hire them to work at a carnival where they assault someone, you will be sued.
You don't have to like it, but the reality is that the US is a country where the majority of the public wants to be able to know when someone committed a serious crime.
Laws and regulations are usually designed to protect the minority. Our country would have made very little social progress if we only enacted reforms that the majority wanted.
The axe against ex-cons is an ingrained bias that hurts competitiveness. It is an unfortunate 'reality' that it is a bias that is tolerated in America today.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/628-labor-force-pa...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-06/americans-not-labor...
2) The workforce participation rate number is meaningless unless you put it into context. How many people would be in the labor force that aren't currently? Is the drop because there was a lot of people retired early after losing their jobs or is it because a lot of young people gave up looking for work?
The economic improvement is undeniable. I would find better reading material then right-wing and conspiracy theorist "news" outlets.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the modern definition of underemployment as education majors working as waitresses or CS majors working helpdesks or similar examples of "I was trained for a totally different field paying four times as much, or I was trained to be my bosses bosses boss, but here I am instead with a paycheck lower than some current high school students"
"The economic improvement is undeniable."
Where? Everyone seems agreed its the case for propaganda reasons, although its invariably described as "far away from here" for all personal values of "here". With the usual meaningless weird exceptions for ivy league grads of CS programs in Manhattan and SV that we all know about etc etc.
For #2, you forgot the ones that just ran out of unemployment benefits.
It's the numbers, not the spin.
I agree. I think it is the misperception that these people are risky hires. I believe employers are very nervous about liability and simply disregard anyone that may pose a potential risk (bad credit, arrest record).
Greyston works because they make no assumptions about the type of person they receive. Because of that, they need systems surrounding each individual to ensure they're successful at all costs. And they have them.
The latter can be far more effective, but requires a broad humanistic approach that very few people, businesses, or cultures in the world have. The chance of transformation is extremely low, and the costs extremely high, so the resistance is nearly insurmountable, companies take the traditional (chaotic) approach, and we suffer for it.
Look at the sociopaths and murderers who sometimes have millions or billions, and are in control of thousands of jobs. They're just smarter about getting away with things.
Furthermore, you suggest that if only we didn't have those strangling minimum wage laws, businesses would hire convicts for less than minimum wage. But sticking ex-cons into wage slavery is exactly the opposite of what the business described wants! They want to maximize their positive impact on their community, not just get out the most from their employees for the least investment.
Even at the lowest level, not all employees are equally productive. And even at the lowest level, there's something to be said for "loyalty" - for the employee genuinely trying to act in the best interest of the company.
Money is just one way these sorts of behaviors can be incented.
I like to give the example of the choice of hiring a citizen vs. hiring a H1B worker.
Even if the company does pay them the same as a citizen, the employer has rather more leverage over the H1B, as if the H1B gets fired, they've got two weeks to find another employer that can sponsor their visa, or to get their shit together and get out of the country.
There's the positive side of that, too; If you take a person that has never been given a chance and give them a chance, well, there's a chance they will feel grateful, and attempt to return the favor... whereas if you hire someone who gets five or six phone calls from recruiters every day? You probably aren't going to get as much gratitude from that person.
Do you have some statistics you'd like to share? Otherwise this seems like the exact bias that silently justifies relegating felons to sub-citizenship.
I do note that this business in the article is not really subject to costly losses from theft. There are likely others of similar nature where this can work.
Lastly, back on the government angle. There isn't any reason to not develop programs that start in prison to guide people into jobs with private employers who do not high skilled workers. From wage and transportation assistance there is opportunity there. It won't come free, but is has to be many times cheaper.
I wonder how many felons would vanish off the rolls if all marijuana convictions were pardoned?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/altered_stat...
The system is blatantly racist. It's kind of weird that Americans tolerate the waste of money and the obvious racism.
http://nytimes.com/2014/07/29/opinion/high-time-the-injustic...
> Only about 6 percent of marijuana cases lead to a felony conviction;