EEOC RIGHT FOR THE WRONG REASON

The commission threatens to sue businesses that refuse to hire ex-cons because ‘criminal record exclusions have a disparate impact based on race and national origin’

The February 15 issue of Newsmax had a story (‘Obama’s EEOC: We’ll Sue You If You Don’t Hire Criminals’) by Jim Meyers in which he reports that “The Obama administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says it should be a federal crime to refuse to hire ex-convicts — and threatens to sue businesses that don’t employ criminals.”

More excerpts from the story:

__In April the EEOC unveiled its “Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records,” which declares that “criminal record exclusions have a disparate impact based on race and national origin.”

__The impetus for this “guidance” is that black men are nearly seven times more likely than white men to serve time in prison, and therefore refusals to hire convicts disproportionally impact blacks.

__... the new guidelines will scare businesses from conducting background checks. Reason: If a check does disclose a criminal offense, the EEOC expects a firm to do an “individual assessment” that will have to prove that the company has a “business necessity” not to hire the ex-convict. If the firm does not do the intricate assessment, it could be found guilty of “race discrimination” if it hires a law-abiding applicant over one with convictions.

__... the “biggest bombshell” in the new guidelines is that businesses complying with state or local laws requiring background checks can still be sued by the EEOC.

As a former parole agent I am fully recognizant of how critical it is for parolees to obtain gainful employment. That is why I believe the EEOC made the right decision. Unfortunately however, the commission made its ruling for the wrong reason.

Race should not have played any role in the EEOC’s decision. Criminal record employment exclusions impact all ex-convicts, regardless of race or national origin. And those exclusions also impact society in that unemployed ex-cons are the ones that are most likely to commit crimes. Ex-cons should have the same opportunities to obtain gainful employment as anyone else, provided that the job they are applying for does not put the prospective employer’s business at risk.

I had, what I must admit was a very unusual parole case. I was supervising an interstate compact parolee from Indiana who somehow had managed to get a job with Pacific Savings in LA. He was on parole for ... now get this … bank robbery. He was transporting cash between the main Pacific Savings office and that bank’s branch offices. Sometimes he was transporting well in excess of a million dollars. They did not know he was on parole. After I made him inform the business of his parole status and bank robbery conviction, they were so impressed with his ‘forthrightness’ that they promoted him to manager of the Pacific Savings mail room and print shop. He supervised over a dozen employees and ended up earning twice as much as I did.

Now if I were a banker, I would never consider hiring a bank robber or any other kind of thief for that matter. But for most businesses, hiring an ex-con is probably no more risky than hiring a job applicant who does not have a criminal record.

As for the disproportionate number of blacks in prison, there is a very good reason why black men are nearly seven times more likely than white men to serve time in prison and that is because blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes. Black men are not in prison because of a racist criminal justice system – they are serving time because they did the crime!

Even police officers who are neither sympathetic nor empathetic toward criminals recognize how important it is for ex-cons to be employed. Several crimes-against-property detectives in both the Corona and Santa Ana police departments helped some of my parolees find work. And the jobs weren’t at a car wash either. Those cops believed that by getting my parolees jobs, they would be preventing them from committing burglaries in their jurisdictions. Now that was good police work!

I do not believe that ex-cons should be given preferential treatment in hiring practices. However, I strongly believe that businesses should not arbitrarily reject an ex-con’s application for work and, unfortunately, that is exactly what many, if not most of them are doing.