Gainful employment is the most critical factor in preventing the recidivism of ex-cons. There are basically two types of ex-cons. There are those who are career criminals and have no intention of going straight upon their release from prison. And there are those who truly want to turn their lives around.
The ex-cons who want to go straight are running into a roadblock of criminal background checks that employers use to screen out job applicants. According to a recent survey, more than 90 percent of employers run such checks. And that means less than 10 percent of employers will even consider hiring ex-cons.
Things used to be different. Back in the 1960s when I was a California state parole agent, employers were willing to hire ex-cons. Granted, the economy was booming then. I even had a parolee serving time for an armed robbery who was driving a truck to make daily transfers of cash between the different branches of Pacific Savings in Orange County and parts of Los Angeles.
Whenever I had a parolee that was out of a job, I told him he had three days to get one or I would throw his ass in jail for violating the parole condition that required him to maintain gainful employment. And guess what, every one of them managed to obtain a righteous job within those three days.
If a parolee had trouble getting a job, it wasn’t because employers did not want to hire ex-cons - it was because he had no skills to speak of. The California prisons had job training programs, but most of them were in skills for which there was little demand.
Every prison for men had upholstery training and furniture making programs. The problem was that in the fee world, upholstery businesses were mom-and-pop operations in which the workers were all family members. And most furniture manufacturers were back in Georgia, North Carolina and other nearby states, not in California.
Landscaping was another big training program. Surprisingly, I had several Latino parolees who started out with one lawnmower cutting grass who became quite successful in taking care of people’s lawns, so successful in fact that they were able to hire several parolees to work for them.
Many employers back then wanted to give ex-cons a chance to make it in the free world. It was a feel-good thing for them. With today’s high unemployment rate and more than 90 percent of employers running criminal background checks, it looks like those days are gone forever. That’s really too bad because ex-cons who want to go straight but cannot find a job, are likely to end up increasing the recidivism rates.
Here are some excerpts from IN TIGHT JOB MARKET, BACKGROUND CHECKS’ INFLUENCE RAISE QUESTIONS, a column by Tony Pough of the McClatchy Newspapers that was published in the March 22 issue of the Houston Chronicle:
“With more than four unemployed workers per opening, the job search has become a contact sport following the Great Recession. The buyer's market for labor has employers relying on criminal and credit background reports to help thin the applicant pool and avoid potential lawsuits for negligent hiring.
A recent survey found that more than 90 percent of employers run criminal checks on job applicants, while 60 percent sometimes screen for credit, depending on the position. Black marks on either report can prove fatal for the estimated 65 million U.S. adults with criminal records and the 25 percent of whites, 33 percent of Hispanics and 50 percent of African-Americans thought to have bad credit.
Identifying potential hires who could pose a threat to a company's assets or the safety of its workers and customers is a serious responsibility with legal ramifications, so consumer background reports are invaluable in helping employers gauge the trustworthiness, judgment, reliability and competence of new employees.
But at a time when jobs are scarce and 5.4 million have been unemployed for more than six months, a robust discussion is brewing among lawmakers, employers and regulators who are re-examining the way that negative background information is used.
Millions who lost jobs through no fault of their own in the Great Recession were left unable to pay their bills, which has hurt their credit standing and made it even harder for them to find work.
And adults with minor or even "stale" criminal convictions that date back 20 or more years can still have trouble finding work even if they've kept their records clean since their conviction. Researchers in 2009 found that a criminal record cut chances for a job callback or job offer by nearly 50 percent.
The EEOC enforces Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employers from using job-screening standards that have a disparate racial impact. So denying jobs solely on the basis of criminal convictions is illegal because it would disproportionately affect African-Americans and Hispanics, who have higher rates of criminal convictions. The same is true for rejecting applicants solely for poor credit histories, which would disproportionately affect African-Americans, Hispanics and women.”
For these job denials to pass EEOC muster, the rationale must be "job-related and consistent with business necessity," according to EEOC guidelines. This means the employer must show that it considered three factors: the nature and gravity of the offense, the amount of time since the conviction and the relevance of the offense to the type of job being sought.”
The problem for ex-cons is that a crime which resulted in a prison term can be legitimately construed as meeting the EEOC's ‘gravity of the offense’ criteria.
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