How many years should we make a person with a felony conviction wait until we let them have a job? Most people I have asked this question to have an immediate answer without even thinking — "We should make them get a job the day they get out of prison!"
And wouldn’t that be lovely? That is the day people are filled with hope for a brand new future; the day they are filled with the courage to change the things they can. That is the day we as a society have the opportunity to welcome folks to a whole new way of life. That is the day to set people up for success.
Unfortunately, being a community wired into the fear factor with which our media fills us, we are satisfied to continue to cheat our children out of the education they so deserve. We let people in our community go hungry and homeless (don’t sit on the sidewalk!), as we give our legislators permission to spend billions of dollars for the expansion of prisons in the name of public safety, without any expectation that people can and do change.
Not so with Multnomah County Commission Chair Ted Wheeler. He has committed to working with Partnership for Safety and Justice to research how to best change the hiring policies in Multnomah County. He agrees with Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who recently signed an Executive Order creating a Re-entry Council to study the best practices for people returning to the community. There are more than 13,000 people locked up in Oregon prisons and more than 95 percent of them will be returning to the community. In his news brief, the governor said "…criminal justice has to be about more than punishment — it's also about hope. Hope for a better future — for our citizens who deserve safe communities — and for those at risk of sliding into a life of crime. People who have served their time need an opportunity to turn their life around — a job, a place to live, a chance for a new start."
In Multnomah County, there are more than 10,000 people on active supervision (probation, parole or post-prison supervision). Of these people, only 45 percent have any kind of income at all.
Last fall, Partnership for Safety and Justice published Access Denied in Oregon, a report on their survey of almost 400 people in Multnomah County, which asked about the barriers people with felony convictions face. The issues that rose to the top were employment, housing and things as simple as getting a social security card and a state-issued identification card.
Have you filled out an employment application recently? Quite often, the application goes something like this: Name, address, schools attended, degrees achieved and have you EVER been convicted of a felony? Only after that do they ask about your work experience. One box has been removed by many places around the country; the box that asks the question about your felony record. Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Alameda County, California and St. Paul have all removed that question from their initial employment applications.
By asking that question so early in the process, Multnomah County could be arbitrarily screening out qualified candidates based only on a conviction history. The placement of that question on the initial job application also deters qualified people with a conviction history from applying at all. Many people see that question and assume they have no chance, despite the wording that states that this doesn’t necessarily disqualify them.
In an interview I had with Sarah, who was formerly incarcerated, I asked her, in the nine years after leaving prison and earning a college degree, what were some of the barriers she still faced because of her past felony conviction.
Sarah answered, "Anytime I apply for employment opportunities or a place to live, the question used to read, "Have you been convicted in the last seven years?" The last time I applied for a job, my degree and experience made me very qualified. The applications asked several questions. Three of those questions took away any hope of me getting to have that job:
This is a job I was more than qualified for; it was a well-paying job with benefits for both my son and me."
We propose that for jobs that don’t legally require criminal background checks, the County ask people about conviction history later in the process and instead concentrate on identifying the pool of candidates they want to interview based the strength of their applications.
This would also allow people to talk about their conviction history in person in the course of an interview so that people can share how their conviction history is or is not relevant. For example, a person could say that it has been 8 years since her conviction and explain what she has done to positively transform her life. By doing this, the county would be making a more effective hiring process and providing a more thoughtful and sensitive approach to collecting information about conviction history.
Partnership for Safety and Justice has launched a campaign called Think Outside the Box. We believe all of us need to think outside the box, and not just the box that asks the question, "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" We need to think outside the box of prejudices and stereotypes about people with a conviction history; those preconceptions that suggest people will always be a detriment and do not deserve a chance.
