SECOND CHANCES
From prison to workforce is a serious transition.
More than 620,000 people will rejoin the workforce this year, some with training and experience, and almost all looking for a career. But most hiring managers will reject them out of hand.
“When they let me out of prison, I held my head up high, determined I would rise above the shame,” Merle Haggard sang in 1967 of his experience as a convicted felon. “I paid the debt I owed them, but they’re still not satisfied, now I’m a branded man out in the cold.”
President Donald Trump and Congress have realized the error in locking people up too long for too little. Trump signed the First Step Act last month, the most significant criminal justice overhaul since Haggard recorded “Branded Man.”
The act gives federal inmates reduced time for completing job training programs that reduce recidivism. It also evens out sentencing guidelines that punished crack cocaine offenses more severely than powdered cocaine crimes, a blatantly racist policy.
Inmates also earn more credits for good behavior and can gain release earlier. The federal prison system will release between 6,000 and 7,000 people earlier than planned this year, adding to the 1,700 released every day.
How well these men and women transition back into society depends on how the business community treats them.
A top priority for a recently released felon is a job. Nearly half won’t get hired in the first year.
Most employment forms, whether paper or online, have a box to check if the applicant was ever convicted of a felony. That check automatically bars the candidate from further consideration in many cases.
Only 17 percent of whites and 5 percent of blacks with criminal histories get callbacks, according to research by the Hamilton Project. Many more applicants simply stop filling out the form when they see the box, assuming they are wasting their time.
There is a national campaign to “Ban the Box,” but the Texas Association of Business opposes it. Employers want to know early in the process whether someone is a felon. But advocates say the interview is the better place to discuss a person’s conviction, the circumstances of the crime and the likelihood of recidivism.
Disturbingly, though, some studies show that where the box is banned, managers interviewed fewer African-American men, using race as a stand-in for the box. Prejudice is deeply persistent.
Rental applications also have a felony box, and the results are
equally devastating.
A former prisoner is 10 times more likely than the average person to become homeless within two years of release. And since the police often arrest homeless people for petty crimes, parolees can land back in prison.
Landlord background checks force former felons into substandard apartments, often in high-crime neighborhoods. Such housing makes it more difficult for them to change their lives or commute to jobs in better parts of town.
Experts believe these barriers to re-entry contribute to the 37 percent rearrest rate of former felons within three years of release, according to a Pew study. And they worsen the high overdose death rate within the first year of freedom, according to Brookings.
The U.S. incarcerates 698 out of every 100,000 residents, five times more than other wealthy countries. About 6.85 million Americans are on parole, probation or correctional supervision. We cannot afford to shun these people, either morally or economically.
A study of former felons in the military found they were no more undisciplined than other recruits, earned promotions faster and reached higher ranks than nonoffenders. Other studies found that workers with criminal histories are more loyal to the companies that hire them and have fewer disciplinary problems.
The First Step Act applies only to federal prisons, which hold just 13 percent of U.S. prisoners. State systems need sentencing and prison reform and could release more of our fellow Americans sooner, helping to address the current labor shortage.
Former felons who are committed to changing their lives are some of the most emotionally vulnerable people I’ve met. They often describe their journey from prison to productive society as moving to a foreign country where they feel painfully unsure of themselves.
If American society, and employers in particular, cannot find a way to forgive and rehabilitate these people, they will end up burdening our communities with crime, addiction or homelessness. We should allow them to hold their heads up and make something better of themselves.