Community News
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On Monday, President Obama is announcing a new order to reduce potential discrimination against former convicts in the hiring process for federal government employees.
It is a step towards what many criminal justice reformers call “ban the box” – the effort to eliminate requirements that job applicants check a box on their applications if they have a criminal record. While the rule was once seen as a common sense way for employers to screen for criminal backgrounds, it has been increasingly criticized as a hurdle that fosters employment discrimination against former inmates, regardless of the severity of their offense or how long ago it occurred. Banning the box delays when employers learn of an applicant’s record.
Obama is unveiling the plan on a visit to a treatment center in New Jersey, a state where Republican Gov. Chris Christie signed a ban the box bill into law last year. Hillary Clinton endorsed ban the box last week, while Republican Sen. Rand Paul also introduced similar federal legislation, with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, to seal criminal records for non-violent offenders.
The White House says it is “encouraged” by such legislation in a new statement, but emphasizes the president’s order will take immediate action, mandating that the federal government’s HR department “delay inquiries into criminal history until later in the hiring process.”
President Obama spoke to several federal prisoners about that very approach in July, when he was the first sitting president to visit an American prison.
“If the disclosure of a criminal record happens later in a job application process,” he told them, “you’re more likely to be hired.” Obama described what many studies show – that when many employers see the box checked for an applicant’s criminal record, they weed them out without ever looking at their qualifications.
“If they have a chance to at least meet you,” the president continued, “you’re able to talk to them about your life, what you’ve done, maybe they give you a chance.”
About 60-to-75% of former inmates cannot find work within their first year out of jail, according to the Justice Department, a huge impediment to re-entering society.
Research shows the existence of a criminal record can reduce an employer’s interest in applicant by about 50%, and that when white and black applicants both have records, employers are far less likely to call back a black applicant than a white one. As a 2009 re-entry study in New York city found, “the criminal record penalty suffered by white applicants (30%) is roughly half the size of the penalty for blacks with a record (60%).”
Obama’s move also comes in the wake of a growing movement for criminal justice reform – from broad calls by groups like Black Lives Matter to a specific campaign on ban the box that ranged from half the Senate Democratic caucus to civil rights groups to artists like John Legend.
On Monday, Legend told MSNBC, “We applaud the President’s decision to end this unfair bias against people who have served their time and paid their debt to society. We hope that Congress and state legislatures across the country will follow suit.”
The President is announcing several other measures Monday, including public housing and money for re-entry programs, and he is speaking about prison reform in a speech and an exclusive interview with NBC Nightly News Anchor Lester Holt.
Via: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-bans-the-box
When Manmit Dhami was in her sophomore year attending the University of Redlands she reluctantly took Jennifer Tilton’s Race and Criminal Justice class to satisfy an ethic studies requirement.
That class changed her.
“I feel so empowered now,” said Dhami, now a junior. “I feel like I’m a part of a community. I feel like what I’m doing matters. I’m changing people’s lives in positive ways.”
Dhami and the rest of her class spent last year researching implementation of Assembly Bill 218 — or “the Ban the Box initiative,” passed in July, 2014, which gives people convicted of a crime more access to public jobs from the city, county and state level.
But her classmates’ research found that the Inland area is not implementing the rule change. Some cities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties didn’t even know the law existed according to Tilton, who led the study.
They will present “report cards” at a town hall meeting, and launch the The IE Fair Chance Coalition today from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the San Bernardino Diocese, 1201 E. Highland Ave. in San Bernardino. The group is made up of U of R students and faculty and community leaders, including Time for Change Foundation, Riverside All of Us or None, Starting Over Inc., Center for Employment Opportunities, IE Concerned African American Churches, Inland Congregations United for Change, California Partnership and the ACLU of Southern California.
The U of R report that several human resource policies are not written or sufficiently detailed to guarantee fair or consistent evaluation of criminal records in the hiring process. They say application language often discourages people with criminal records from applying and does not clearly state a commitment to fair hiring.
Riverside County received the highest grade, with a B. Lake Elsinore, Fontana, Highland and San Bernardino County all received Ds. The grades measured the existing barriers to fair hiring and provided departments with a roadmap for change.
“Until you work in partnership with the community, they don’t understand substantial problems around them or understand how to actually change policies,” said Tilton. “They feel powerless. Connecting them with community leaders doing the changes they want to see is the first step.”
Junior Raquel Anakalea was one of the students who felt powerless.
“My dad has been in and out of prison my whole life,” said Anakalea. “I’m not close to him because he’s been in and out of my life.”
She was raised by her mom, aunt and grandmother. It was hard on them because he was unable to get employed because of his criminal background. Even now he isn’t able to help her pay for her tuition, books or housing.
“I have issues that most people on this campus just don’t have to face,” said Anakalea. “Jobs, that’s the biggest most obvious way to end the cycle of recidivism.”
Senior Jewel Patterson has lived in San Bernardino County her whole life and has members in her family who are unable to find good public jobs because of their criminal background. She was part of the first class to work on the project. She conducted interviews with people who had served time.
“We got stories from formerly incarcerated people,” said Patterson. “We wanted to put a face on the issue.”
The students spent two years researching HR departments. In addition to the interviews they called HR departments, followed up with elected officials poured through public policy documents and spent hours on phones with lawyers. Each of the women has been subsequently volunteering with nonprofits involved in criminal justice and launching IE Fair Chance Coalition to give a voice to people who have been discriminated against because of their criminal background.
This was Tilton’s goal all along, to connect students to issues affecting the community and get them to be agents of change.
“I wanted them to do some research useful in the community to understand how public policies played out in the Inland Empire,” said Tilton. “I’m so proud of the work they have done. They’re having a tangible positive impact in the community. The work they’re doing is giving HR departments a roadmap to better implement this law.”
Tilton also wanted to change stigmas around people with criminal records.
Dhami’s research focused on the city of San Bernardino. But that’s not the biggest impact the class had. Her older sister has been incarcerated twice. After her sister got out of jail her family treated her differently, and so did Dhami.
“Oh I totally had a stigma and that hurt my relationship with her. I was like, oh yeah she’s a criminal, she wasn’t my big sister anymore. These stigmas hurt people and hurt families. I reconnected with my sister. She saw the work I did on the campaign on Facebook and was proud.
“It’s become so much more than a class. The people who we worked with they had a positive impact on my life too.”
