The Sentencing Project provides color on how crime impacts employability, positing that 60% of incarcerated individuals are unemployed within one year of release from prison, and those who do find jobs take home 40% less in annual pay.
This statistic is rather stunning, especially when taken in conjunction with the results of a study conducted by the Redemption Bridge, a nonprofit organization focused on the retraining and hiring of ex-convicts. Their results, focused on a prison in Tarrant County, Texas, found a high degree of recidivism among inmates where 66% of released convicts were arrested again within three years. However, released prisoners that found employment were 10 times less likely to be rearrested. Employment was the key driver in stopping former convicts from committing another crime and being rearrested.
So, what’s the problem?
The root cause starts at the job application level. Employers often screen for criminal records when hiring – 55% ask about criminal history at some point during the interview process with only 10% of employers waiting until after making an offer to ask. Many immediately reject applicants with a history as soon as they check a box indicating a prior background. Applicants have little opportunity to explain the degree of their criminality, leaving no ability for the employer to differentiate between a misdemeanor and a violent crime. This creates an uphill battle to find employment after being released from prison and often leads back to a life of poverty and crime.
Such immediate rejection stems from the cost to employers of diving deeper into an applicant’s history. Few employers run background checks once an applicant has indicated a criminal history, and those that do may find the expense - between $8-$18 per applicant - to dive deeper into an applicant’s background onerous. Workers with a record are often lumped into a bucket that marks them as not hirable, perhaps only after one felony such as distribution of marijuana, which incidentally is now a venture capital-backed business model since the bootstrapped bootleggers are in prison.
What is the solution?
First, employers can do more to calibrate criminality and re-assess hiring concerns based on the degree of the crime committed. Excusing minor crimes and misdemeanors like marijuana related arrests – which account for approximately 600 thousand arrests each year – could significantly increase the potential employee pool and decrease re-arrest rates. Advancements in hiring and screening technology make this possible for employers to do on a relatively cheap basis. Adding follow-up questions in screening applications related to criminality or requesting videos that allow an ex-convict to explain themselves along with the application are but a few ways in how new technology can play a role in allowing employers to widen their acceptable hiring net. This is true, in particular, for traditionally “blue collar” jobs where there are massive labor shortages.
">The last section of this multi-part series covers the impact of a criminal record on nearly 65 million Americans' ability to find work and how a prior background becomes a one-way ticket to a poverty and ongoing criminal behavior. (See the first and second installments in this series).
The Sentencing Project provides color on how crime impacts employability, positing that 60% of incarcerated individuals are unemployed within one year of release from prison, and those who do find jobs take home 40% less in annual pay.
This statistic is rather stunning, especially when taken in conjunction with the results of a study conducted by the Redemption Bridge, a nonprofit organization focused on the retraining and hiring of ex-convicts. Their results, focused on a prison in Tarrant County, Texas, found a high degree of recidivism among inmates where 66% of released convicts were arrested again within three years. However, released prisoners that found employment were 10 times less likely to be rearrested. Employment was the key driver in stopping former convicts from committing another crime and being rearrested.
So, what’s the problem?
The root cause starts at the job application level. Employers often screen for criminal records when hiring – 55% ask about criminal history at some point during the interview process with only 10% of employers waiting until after making an offer to ask. Many immediately reject applicants with a history as soon as they check a box indicating a prior background. Applicants have little opportunity to explain the degree of their criminality, leaving no ability for the employer to differentiate between a misdemeanor and a violent crime. This creates an uphill battle to find employment after being released from prison and often leads back to a life of poverty and crime.
Such immediate rejection stems from the cost to employers of diving deeper into an applicant’s history. Few employers run background checks once an applicant has indicated a criminal history, and those that do may find the expense - between $8-$18 per applicant - to dive deeper into an applicant’s background onerous. Workers with a record are often lumped into a bucket that marks them as not hirable, perhaps only after one felony such as distribution of marijuana, which incidentally is now a venture capital-backed business model since the bootstrapped bootleggers are in prison.
What is the solution?
First, employers can do more to calibrate criminality and re-assess hiring concerns based on the degree of the crime committed. Excusing minor crimes and misdemeanors like marijuana related arrests – which account for approximately 600 thousand arrests each year – could significantly increase the potential employee pool and decrease re-arrest rates. Advancements in hiring and screening technology make this possible for employers to do on a relatively cheap basis. Adding follow-up questions in screening applications related to criminality or requesting videos that allow an ex-convict to explain themselves along with the application are but a few ways in how new technology can play a role in allowing employers to widen their acceptable hiring net. This is true, in particular, for traditionally “blue collar” jobs where there are massive labor shortages.
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