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Recovery in the News
Pros can offset cons when hiring offenders
Ruben Rosario
St Paul Pioneer Press
September 18, 2006
My journalism professor at Fordham University in New York admonished others and me on the first day of class to never, ever start a story with a question.
The rebel in me then and now can't resist: If I were an employer, would I hire an ex-offender?
Heck no.
At least that's the knee-jerk response from the general public and a majority of employers surveyed in recent polls on the subject.
The United States puts a higher percentage of its population behind bars than any other nation. We have turned criminal background checks into a required national pastime.
We have an estimated 2 million people locked up and another 12 million Americans walking around with some sort of rap sheet - a good number of them mostly nonviolent addicts criminalized by our decades-old and arguably ineffective war on illicit drugs, from marijuana to meth.
Our default response to our drug dependency and mental illness problem right now is to lock up these folks and make it nearly impossible for them to get a job when they get out.
Some of that reservation is, on paper, a legitimate response. About two-thirds of ex-cons re-offend in some manner within three years of release. As the late Casey Stengel was wont to say, you can look this up.
I pondered this thorny issue with my wife one night this week.
She's admirably wired by faith to look first for the innate good in people and afford them the chance or chances to redeem themselves.
I admit to a soft spot for the underdog. I am one myself, notwithstanding the New York Yankees. Go Twins, as long as you don't beat my Yanks.
I don't have a record. Yet. But my trust level on ex-offenders is realistically calibrated to "you screwed up, so it's you who has to win me over.'' Even ex-offenders I've written about - both those who are making it and those who tanked - agree with me on this one.
So I willingly played devil's advocate in the marital and intellectual conversation.
What if I'm faced with two job candidates, one with a record and one without, of equal ability? Whom would I hire after factoring in personality, references and plain old self-interest and gut instinct?
Also, what happens if I'm not a super conglomerate like a Target or a Wal-Mart, but a mom-and-pop business with a small number of employees? One wrong hire can significantly damage my livelihood as well as those who depend on me.
Let's cut to the chase: Am I willing to gamble on someone with a rap sheet? And is there a reasonable cutoff to when a years-old rap sheet should no longer be relevant to employment?
A study released this week by two University of South Carolina criminologists tackled this issue in a more analytical and scientific manner.
The study's bottom line? Ex-offenders with years-old rap sheets are less likely to re-offend as those recently released. Moreover, for policy related implications, there should be more legislative buy-in into giving the old records of such ex-offenders less weight in considering whether they should get the job.
The study is appropriately titled "Scarlet Letters and Recidivism: Does an old criminal record predict future offending?"
The study, which analyzed previous studies and crunched original data tracking offenders and non-offenders in Philadelphia since 1958, recommends several policy changes, including expunging records for some offenders.
One of its main premises? Whether past criminal history predicts future offending. The study found that most folks tend to re-offend or violate terms of their probation within months or years of their release. But those who stayed law abiding still suffered from employment difficulties years after the offense, even though they were less likely to re-offend.
"We would like to encourage policymakers through our study to seriously consider about whether we can afford to have a policy where we have carte balance exclusion of such offenders for jobs,'' said Robert Brame, the study's co-author.
Paul Kusterman agrees. A veteran jail counselor for Dakota County, he established a few years ago a fledging nonprofit that labors to link recently released offenders with available jobs.
Kusterman acknowledges the recent study but doesn't need it to underline the Herculean challenge.
"It's always a challenge,'' says Kusterman, executive director of the Minneapolis-based Correctional Transition Services Inc.
My professor never said anything about ending a story with a question. So again, I ask, if I were an employer, would I hire an ex-offender fore the job? Would you?