Jobs in short supply for ex-offenders
By Stephanie Armour
USA Today
An increasing number of ex-offenders — more than 600,000 — are released from prison each year, and the tight job market of recent years is making it harder for them to find jobs.
Advertiser library photo • July 9, 1998
An estimated 5.6 million adults have been imprisoned at some point, according to 2001 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Millions more have convictions that never led to jail time.
Ex-convicts often find it tough to land work after prison. The issue is coming to the forefront because 600,000 people each year exit U.S. prisons, including Halawa Correctional Facility, and the number is expected to rise.
Statistics paint a grim picture for ex-offenders who seek jobs.
Job candidates with criminal pasts are less likely to be called back after a job interview, according to a study by a sociologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. While 34 percent of whites without a criminal record received a call back, just 17 percent of whites with a criminal record were asked to come back. Blacks fared even worse: Just 5 percent of black applicants with criminal records got called back.
More than 40 percent of employers would probably or definitely be unwilling to hire an applicant with a criminal record, according to a 2001 survey of 619 organizations in Los Angeles. More than a third said their response would depend on the applicant's crime.
Harry Holzer, a public policy professor at Georgetown University in Washington, who headed the study, says: "The weakening of the labor market (in recent years) has made it even more difficult. In this environment, employers don't have much trouble filling the jobs."
While some employers who've hired ex-offenders say the workers may need more training and may not be as loyal, others say the workers can be more motivated and less likely to quit.
Leonardo Oden has hired ex-offenders as bakers, drivers and maintenance workers at his Chicago business, Leonardo's Catering Service. One worker had spent 17 years in prison for attempted murder. Some have been with him for years.
"I believe people with unsavory backgrounds deserve a second chance," Oden says. "They want to learn, because they don't want to wind up back on the streets."
Legal roadblocks to hiring
A number of states have laws that bar employees with criminal records from working in a host of industries, such as healthcare facilities and mental-health services. Some of those laws are fairly recent, passed in the 1990s during the get-tough war on drugs.
The laws are aimed at protecting public safety and keeping ex-offenders with specific kinds of convictions from working with vulnerable groups of people. But critics say some of the restrictions are too broad. They object to some laws that bar ex-offenders from holding any jobs, including janitorial work, in off-limits fields such as healthcare.
Some ex-offenders and legal aid groups are filing lawsuits or lobbying to weaken those laws. A case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will decide whether a law that bars certain employees with past criminal convictions from work in certain occupations, such as home healthcare agencies and nursing homes, is legal.
That's the case being made by Earl Nixon, 52. When he was 19, he was arrested and convicted on drug charges — he was caught in possession of marijuana. He never served any prison time.
After the conviction, he worked for about 10 years with physically and mentally disabled people and owned his own medical billing business. Eventually, he got a job as an administrator for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. After he was hired, the state passed a law barring workers with criminal convictions from certain healthcare jobs. Nixon was grandfathered in, but the law meant that he would be unable to get another comparable job if he were to quit or be fired. That's the predicament Nixon found himself in when he left after five years because of a disagreement with management.
Unable to find similar work in the state, Nixon was forced to move to Michigan to get a job in his field. He took a sizable pay cut. He and other ex-offenders have filed a lawsuit saying the statute is unfair. They argue that the law doesn't take into account how long ago the offense occurred and provides no way for ex-offenders to explain the circumstances surrounding the crime.
"It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me," says Nixon, who lives in Belleville, Mich., where he is a manager of a senior-living facility. "I understand the state's desire to protect a vulnerable population, but there should be a board you can approach to explain your situation. It was (more than) 31 years ago."
New security concerns
Employers are more likely to carry out criminal checks because new technology has made it cheaper to get access to records. They're also carrying out such checks because qualms stemming from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have companies more wary about the people they're hiring.
About 15 percent of employers reported that background checks on employees are more comprehensive now than before the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a 2002 online poll by the Society for Human Resource Management.
There are legitimate concerns. In many states, employers who hire ex-offenders with certain types of criminal records can be held liable if another crime is committed.
Such hires can be costly: Employers have lost more than 79 percent of negligent-hiring cases, with an average settlement of more than $1.6 million, according to a report in the quarterly journal Public Personnel Management.
"We don't want people who have been convicted and done time to be denied employment, but on the other hand, look at the potential liability the employer can face," says Traycee Klein, a New York employment lawyer at Epstein Becker & Green. "It's a balancing act."
Some penal experts, union leaders and ex-offenders say the security concerns go too far.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has been fighting a push to run background checks on dockworkers in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Members of Congress called for the checks to enhance security after Sept. 11, but union leaders say it amounts to harassment and could cost workers their jobs.
Background-check providers say such snooping is necessary because ex-offenders may not always be truthful on job applications.
But some former prisoners say the reason they omit information is that it's the only way to get a job.
Jocelyn Fernandez of New York says that to get work, she has crafted a résumé that doesn't disclose her criminal record. She got out of prison in 2001 after serving three years on drug-possession charges. After being away so long from her son, now 5, she says she was determined to get a job with better wages and good hours.
"It took me about a year before I landed this job," says Fernandez, 27, a receptionist. "I would get interviews, but the gap in my résumé — they wanted to know what happened. They'd say they'd call me, and they didn't.
"No one wanted to give me a job."
Competitive job market
With an unemployment rate of 5.9 percent in November, compared with 4 percent in 2000, there are more job candidates to draw from for the type of lower-wage jobs typically held by ex-offenders.
Average quarterly earnings of ex-offenders in some studies range from $1,000 to $2,000. Nearly half of ex-offenders are black, a minority group that already has a higher unemployment rate than the national average.
And while two-thirds of employers would hire an applicant with a spotty work history, just 20 percent said that they would definitely or probably consider hiring an applicant with a criminal history, according to the study led by Georgetown University professor Holzer.
Those most willing to hire applicants with criminal records are in manufacturing, construction and transportation — all jobs with minimal customer contact.
While the reluctance to hire ex-offenders has persisted for years, the issue is causing growing concern now because of the surge in the prison population. There were nearly 4 million people on probation in 2002, up from 2.6 million in 1990, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
"It's an issue of growing importance because there are a record number of people coming out of prison," says Mark Mauer, assistant director of The Sentencing Project in Washington, an organization that conducts criminal justice policy analysis.
The lack of employment can lead to further criminal activity, he says. "There's an obvious public safety issue."
Ex-offenders also have to contend with other barriers, such as finding transportation to get to a job, finding money to purchase clothes for work and interviews, and learning how to function in the workplace.
Says Nancy Weber in Tulsa, Okla., a career counselor at the YWCA who works with current and recent female offenders: "I have to tell them not to say, 'Yes, ma'am' and 'No, ma'am' all the time. That doesn't go over well in the workplace."
It's not just recent offenders who have to worry. The heightened attention to security means even some seasoned employees with long-ago convictions are running into problems as companies carry out background checks on current employees or workers they're promoting.
Legally, in many states, employers can refuse to hire an ex-offender only if the crime committed suggests the person may pose a threat in specific jobs, as in hiring someone convicted of child molesting for a job with children. But those who lie on a job application often have scant legal protection.
Troy Steen, 29, says he can't land a job. The Dickson, Tenn., father of two was convicted when he was 18 of stealing a car and breaking and entering. He served two years in prison.
He was able to find a job in a grocery three years ago when the economy was good. He left that job to move to Ohio. But now he says there are so many others out of work that a job candidate with a criminal record no longer stands much of a chance.
"I have a wife and two kids. The only trouble I've been in since I got out was a traffic violation. Prison scared the heck out of me," he says. "But nobody wants to hire me now."
