SCREWED BY THE SCREW-UPS

The recidivism rate among parolees throughout the country generally ranges from 50-60 percent. But what about the 40-50 percent who don’t screw up? You never hear about them in the media. They just don’t sell news – only the screw-ups do.

Employment is the critical factor in parole success. That is not to say that parolees who are employed will not revert to criminal behavior. But you can take this to the bank – parolees who are unemployed will very likely end up in the recidivism stats. Employers would have a significant impact on lowering those high recidivism rates if they would just hire more parolees.

Parolees seeking employment are now faced with a triple whammy: (1) There is the reluctance by employers to hire parolees. (2) Now we are in an economic downturn with a jobless rate exceeding 10 percent. (3) All the publicity the screw-ups are getting makes it that much harder for parolees to obtain gainful employment.

Even in the best of times, parolees seeking to work for an established business or industry are immediately confronted with an application form asking them to list their employment history. How is a parolee going to describe his work history during the three, ten or twenty years he spent behind bars? "Unemployed” won’t do it. “Worked for the State” won’t do it either. He might get hired by listing a bogus job, but when the employer checks out the listed work history and finds that the parolee lied, his ass is gone in a New York minute.

Back in the 1960’s, when I was a parole agent, California’s Conditions of Parole required all parolees to inform their employers within 30 days that they were on parole. Most other states had the same parole conditions. If the parolee refused to inform an employer of his status, the parole agent was required to do so. I do not know whether those requirements are still in effect nowadays, but I firmly believe that an employer is entitled to know that one of his workers is on parole.

I would like to think that an employer would give a parolee the chance to become a contributing member of society, but with all the bad publicity parolees are getting, I can’t blame them for being reluctant to hire any ex-cons. The sad fact is that the parolees who really want to make it are getting screwed by the screw-ups.