Hello everyone! It has been a couple of days since my last post and I want to thank everyone still reading what I find on the net. My first article I came across is Ex-Cons Need Jobs, Too found on The Daily Beast by Eleanor Clift. Everyone that reads my blog knows how passionate I am about helping ex-offenders have a better chance in society.
Who doesn’t need a good paying job with benefits? That is right, nobody! A prison reform movement embraced "Ban the Box" on employment, forms that applicants must check if they have had a misdemeanor or felony conviction are gone. Declaring Wednesday, June 10, a "Day of action trying for everyone to take notice and pass this information along. This is a huge difference for peoples who have paid their debts to society, who want to start their lives over again and are going to have an opportunity and fair hiring. Employer still have the right to perform a background check, but cannot base their sole decision on the box anymore. Title 7 of federal civil-rights law to require Individual assessment meaning the age of the offense, the nature of the offense, and evidence of rehabilitation and other factors for a job. Here is the link to the whole article http://www.corrections.com/links/link/36688
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states following the 2007-2009 recession. A number of Americans have criminal records due to tougher sentencing laws particularly for drug crimes and are having difficulty finding work. It is not as easy as one thought to find a job, and one with benefits also. Sure, you get out there and look, but landing the job is the hard part for ex-offenders. We need to be out there support any member of our community that needs a helping hand. It is all up to people who want to see ex-offenders succeed that make a difference in this
Without these men getting to work and becoming productive members of society, they are barred from this opportunity and the economy suffers (Appelbaum, 2015). Devah Pager, who conducted the famous study “Mark of a Criminal Recod,” which unveiled apparent discrimination against ex-offenders in the job market, weighed in on the issue: “Prior to the prison boom, when convictions were restricted to a smaller fraction of the population, it wasn’t great for their rehab potential but it wasn’t having a huge impact… Now such a large fraction of the population is affected that is has really significant implication, not just for those people, but for the labor market as a whole (Appelbaum,
When trying to find themselves in society, jobs may be hard to come by. When prisoners find a jobs, they are usually work in jobs that one doesn’t not have to have a high-skill set, such as food service, wholesale, and maintenance and repair. The number one reason why prisoners end up back in jail is not the lack of job opportunities but perceiving that job when returning home. “Service providers and community leaders consider employment to be the primary factor in a successful reentry” (Casey 2). When the lack of job opportunities come prisoners may feel the need to break the law and return to life of crime because they cannot support themselves, so they may turn to selling drugs to make a quick buck. Selling drugs is not an alternative for not being able to find a job, especially when one has just got out of prison because if they get caught they will find themselves back in jail. Recidivism is a topic that I do not believe anyone could solve, it is hard to comprehend why people look back to crime again and again after they get caught the first time. In the article Parole and Prison Reentry in the United States author talks about how when prisoners or released they usually end up failing to finish their release sentence and out of the parolees how many return back to prison when she states, “About half of parolees fail to complete parole successfully and their returns to prison represent about a third of
The “Ban the Box” is a law that took effect on January 1, 2014, and it inhibits companies from asking about a potential employee’s criminal history on the initial applications for employment (Deitchler, Fliegel, Fitzke, & Mora, 2013). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) endorsed this Ban the Box in that its contemplation of criminal history of arrests or convictions in the Title Ⅶ of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Deitchler, Fliegel, Fitzke, & Mora, 2013). It is directly related to employer’s ability to hire those employees with a criminal past to be compliant with the fair employment requirements. Employers have a balancing act to perform because they should be aware of risks related to negligent hiring. In the case of litigation
The baseline for this argument can be given by looking at America, “America is home to 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners. More than two millions Americans are locked up at any given time, more than half of them in state prisons. This is costly, at $29,000 per federal inmate per year and more for state prisoners—about the price of sending each one to an Ivy League university” (W.). Partially all state prisoners are serving time in jail for non-violent crimes. When these prisoners are released, they struggle and fight for jobs. However, most of them lose this battle and end up right back where they started in prison. Messrs and Paul Booker introduced the Record Expungement Designed to Enhance Employment Act to law on July 8th. This act is mostly known as “The Redeem
Policymakers on the national, state, and local levels are always finding ways to improve the nature of the reentry process. The reentry process starts in correctional facilities and helps inmates prepare themselves for release and proceeds with their transition back into society as law-abiding citizens. In comparison to the average American, ex-offenders tend to be less educated, less likely to gain employment, suffer from substance abuse, or have been diagnosed with a mental illness. All of these aspects discussed are shown to be risk factors for recidivism, which is the tendency that causes criminals to re-offend. Generally, the offender reintegration process needs to be improved by properly monitoring the outcomes for reentry programs in order to return prisoners back to society safely.
Convicts rarely serve their entire sentences in prison (Ross and Richards, 146). To alleviate the costs of imprisonment on taxpayers and lessen the staggering populations of prisons across America, it is simply prudent to let inmates out on parole. Unfortunately, the parole system is imperfect and often leads to many ex-convicts recidivating. With the various trials and challenges that ex-convicts are bound to face when rejoining society after prison, Ross and Richards provide valuable lessons in their book of how a convict might survive beyond bars.
“It is suggested that a job provides the individual with not only a legal source of income, but also structured routine activities, increased social controls, and changed identity as a law-abiding citizen.” (Skardhamar and Telle 2009) There are very little studies done but there is no answer to getting a job making you less likely to be incarcerated or people that do not want to get arrested again will be more likely to get a job. It is important to note that stable legal income and criminal behaviors go hand and
The rates that convicts go back to jail are so high, not because these men want to return to a life of crime, but since few employment options are available, they tend to utilize their limited skills to get the money they need to survive. If more efforts do not make additional training available to these males that are realistically designed to help them obtain a living wage job, the rates of convicts going back to jail and black male unemployment will continue to increase.
This is true not only in the workforce, but in their personal lives as well. They are placed back into fragmented populations, however, this time, it’s much worse. Their communities cannot sustain their emotional unravelling after the disturbing realities of serving time in prison. In the article “The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Poverty” written by Robert DeFina and Lance Hannon, they claim that the impoverished communities of color need the removal of imprisoned individuals for the improvement of local economics. However, the article “The Effects of Mass Incarceration on Communities of Color” claims that it does nothing to help these communities.
With few offenders in jail, there is less of a need for employment in the jail system. In twenty-four years the crime rate has drop in New York, below a hundred thousand for the first time since 1987 (Roberts). Many jailer are being laid off. Offering jobs and training programs that keep tracks of offenders out in the communities, would be a great opportunity. Job requirements would consist of giving advices and resources of way offenders can find lawyers or services that can help their
In today’s society, we often find people who have a bias against the correctional system. We find these people to have no credible source besides the information the media proposes, third party information, or if they themselves have been locked up. Whether we sit and listen to them preach about the corruptness is up to us.
In most states ex-felons are not allowed to vote. This takes away a large portion of the voting population because of how many ex-felons there are right now and the many more that will be in the future. Ex-felons may also have a very hard time finding a job or a place to live. Legally landlords are allowed to deny an ex-felon. In Carbondale Illinois rental properties owners “Home Rentals” does background checks to make sure that none of their potential renters are felons. If they are felons Home Rentals claims that they will deny them the privilege of living in one of their properties. Ex-felons may also have a hard time finding jobs. Not many employers are willing to employ ex-felons for the fear of more crime or less commitment. Though denying these ex-felons jobs will not help the economy, only giving them jobs can help that.
Standards for Hiring People with Criminal Records. 11 Mar 2010. http://www.lac.org/ ‘’Legal Affairs’’ http://www.legalaffairs.org/webexclusive/debateclub_disenfranchisement1104.msp ‘’Locked Out’’ Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. 11 Mar. 2010. http://www.powells.com/biblio/65-9780195149326-0 Prison Segregation and Felon Disenfranchisement.
“About sixty-eight percent of state prisoners were re-arrested fewer than three years after their release and 77% were re-arrested within five. When measuring the group arrested within five years, more than a third were incarcerated within their first six months.” They get so used to having their daily lives planned out for them, following strict orders, and getting punished every day, when they get out, they are unsure of how to live in the daily world. Plus, America makes it intentionally more difficult to live once you had committed a felony. They’re not allowed to get student loans, welfare, food stamps, or even public housing. Not only do they have high rates of returning, they also have high rates of homelessness and suicide. When you can’t get a job, you resort to stealing or even dealing drugs to get by in everyday life. You have to make money someway to survive in this country, and a lot of them will end up sending you to
More than 600,000 prisoners are released into the main population of the United States every year. Of that 600,000, 30 percent end up back behind bars within six months of their release, and 70 percent end up returning to jail within three years (Reisig, 409). Upon release, many criminals find that life on the outside is harder on them than it was when they were convicted, sentenced, and locked away. People who know them may become just as prejudiced as the interviewers and landlords who deny them the chance to earn a living or a place to stay. Through the continued use of labels like criminal, thug, crook, and felon, many released offenders feel ostracized and isolated. Their friends and families may turn their backs on them, taking away the few things they have left...