U of R students study employment fairness for convicted criminals

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.”

SAVE THE DATE: Riverside Strong Communities Forum September 26th!

Save the Date!

The Riverside Strong Communities Forum is taking place on Saturday, September 26, 2015 from 9 am to 5 pm at the Hyatt Place in Downtown Riverside, California.

We are inviting organizations to share and receive the “best of the best” that community organizations, non-profits, colleges, and universities have to offer in the areas of re-entry, Prop 47 assistance, social services, employment opportunities, post conviction relief, civic engagement, social enterprises, alternatives to jails, and housing options for those who have been incarcerated and are now being released into the community.

We are featuring solutions that include 9 key areas of re-entry and more!

• HOUSING
• PUBLIC BENEFITS
• PAROLE & PROBATION
• EDUCATION
• UNDERSTANDING & CLEANING UP YOUR CRIMINAL RECORD
• BUILDING BLOCKS OF REENTRY: ID & VOTING
• FAMILY & CHILDREN
• COURT-ORDERED DEBT
• EMPLOYMENT

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Marie Smith

Community Organizer, Riverside All of Us or None

JOBS: Amazon to add 1,000 more jobs

Amazon has announced it will create 1,000 more jobs for its Inland Southern California fulfillment centers.

In addition to 1,000 jobs announced earlier this month, takes the hiring roster to 2,000.

Mike Lee, the community and economic development director for Moreno Valley, says he hasn’t seen this many job

s created in such a short amount of time, ever. “This is huge for our region,” Lee said.

Amazon’s announcement was made at the Moreno Valley City Conference & Recreation Center. The hiring is part of a nationwide recruitment effort by Amazon.

“What we heard was Amazon was impressed with the quality of candidates they are getting from the region,” Lee said.

Amazon, in a statement issued Wednesday by spokeswoman Ashley Robinson, said the firm is proud to continue to hire for 1,000 more newly created permanent, hourly positions at the Inland Empire fulfillment centers in Moreno Valley, Redlands and San Bernardino.

Tuesday, the company held a hiring event with about 400 applicants in Moreno Valley, and each received a contingent offer of employment at facilities there, Robinson said.

Asked to comment on the caliber of the candidates on the whole, Robinson said, “We have found an enthusiastic, dedicated and customer-obsessed workforce in the Inland Empire.”

Moreno Valley Mayor Jesse Molina called the recruitment announcement terrific news.

“Anytime a business says that it is hiring this many people it is a big deal,” Molina said. “When it’s coupled with community investment, it means all that much more.”

Thomas J. Goldsby, a business and logistics professor at Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University, said in a Monday symposium for forecasters at Riverside Convention Center that “Amazon is expanding at a pace that is making Wal-Mart very, very nervous.”

Amazon has created thousands of full-time jobs in the Inland region since the first California facility opened in San Bernardino in 2012, Moreno Valley city officials said. Fulfillment centers in Redlands and Moreno Valley began shipping customer orders in 2014.

Amazon is making the news almost daily with innovations like rapid delivery and mail drops with drones, Goldsby said.

Tuesday’s hiring event was an offshoot of the Hire MoVal program and coordinated efforts with Riverside County Workforce Development Agency. Communication networks were shared. Amazon recruitment opportunities were publicized to Moreno Valley businesses.

As an added benefit to Amazon, the company qualifies for a 2 percent discount on electrical rates under the Hire MoVal program if at least 20 percent of the workforce hails from Moreno Valley. The discount rises to 4 percent if the workforce percentage is at least 40 percent.

Fielding Buck contributed to this report.

Via: http://www.pe.com/articles/amazon-771361-moreno-valley.html

Economist: Job growth in Inland Empire returning to normal

Businesses are hiring, and the Inland Empire is starting to see it — in the numbers anyway.

The region saw the net creation of about 46,800 new jobs in 2013 — a statistic Inland Empire economist John Husing said is a return to normalcy after the economic downturn of the past few years.

“What normally has occurred in the Inland Empire is, if you go back over the last 10 years and you look at growth, 46,000 is a slightly above-average number for us,” Husing said. “We’ve been as high as 60,000 but 46,000 is really strong. So it means that 2013 was an extraordinarily strong year, and it means that the whole economy has reached the point where it shifted gears from being struggling to starting to act more normally.”

The figure, Husing said, is based on a revision by the California Economic Development Department released on Friday. An earlier EDD estimate had net job growth in the Inland Empire for the past year at about 14,000 jobs, though the figure was presented prior to new calculations from data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Husing said.

“The conversations I’m having with people in different sectors of the Inland Empire economy are very positive,” said Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership. “People have been reticent to invest and to hire and I think what I’m hearing is that now is the time that things have changed and that investment is necessary for them to position themselves for the next few years.”

According to Husing’s data analysis, social assistance was a sector that made the biggest gain in job growth with about 12,000 new jobs.

“That was a rather aggressive expansion of social services last year and that makes sense given the fact that unemployment tends to be rather high,” Husing said.

The revised data also marked a strong return for the construction sector with 6,700 new jobs according to a chart provided by Husing.

“Construction has been negative for the last several years,” Husing said. “That is a definite turnaround for that sector since we’re finally seeing construction taking back its traditional role as a strength for our economy.”

In an economic report keynote earlier this year, Husing said the sectors of logistics and healthcare are major driving forces of the regional economy.

According to the latest march EDD report, looking at the past year, trade, transportation, and utilities were major growth sectors, adding 9,600 more jobs. Transportation and warehousing added 4,300 jobs, retail trade was up 3,800 jobs and wholesale trade increased by 1,700 jobs over the year, according to the EDD.

Other industries that reported job gains for the year include leisure and hospitality employment with 8,600; education and health services with 6,600 jobs; and professional and business services with 6,100 jobs, according to the EDD report.

The Southern California Association of Governments, Granillo said, expect the Inland Empire population to grow from 4.3 million to 6 million by 2035.

“The economy is on an upswing and people are making investments in the employees, and looking to, in some cases, relocate to the Inland Empire, based on the fact that our economy is situated for growth,” Granillo said. “The people I’ve been talking to lately are in the professional services sector – lawyers and accountants looking to grow their footprint in the Inland Empire or to establish companies in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.”

PHOTO: The State Economic Development Department on Friday released a jobs report for the Inland Empire - showing a surprising 46000 people were hired for new jobs - the figure is higher than an earlier report - surprising IE economist John Husing. Construction has made a strong showing in the new report.

via: http://www.sbsun.com/business/20140312/economist-job-growth-in-inland-empire-returning-to-normal

Inland Empire’s jobless rate lowest since 2008

The Inland Empire’s unemployment rate dropped to its lowest in more than five years in December to 8.9 percent, reflecting gains in retail and warehousing and raising hopes that the region’s economy is revving up again after years of bad news.

The last time the Inland Empire’s unemployment rate was at 8.9 percent was July 2008, said Michael Goss, spokesman on labor force and industry employment data for the state Employment Development Department, which released the numbers on Friday.

In the last year alone, between December 2012 and December 2013, the unemployment rate for the area encompassing San Bernardino and Riverside counties dropped from 11 percent, with total nonfarm employment increasing by 14,000 jobs and agricultural employment falling by 300 jobs. The trade, transportation and utilities sector posted the largest overall gain with the addition of 9,100 jobs, with nearly 62 percent of that growth in the retail trade.

In the region, the better jobs numbers were raising some eyebrows, and some hopes.

In Fontana, California Steel has seen steady job growth since 2010, said Brett Guge, executive vice president of finance and administration.

“We continue to gradually build up from where we were during the recession,” Guge said Friday. “We have roughly 960 permanent (employees) and another 100 contractors and temporary employees.”

The steel plant had been operating with 800-plus employees during the recession. The initial job loss was attributed mainly to attrition, and when the recession hit those vacant positions were not filled. In 2009, the company began filling those positions again, Guge said.

Now, California Steel has several job openings at any given time and the company is always looking for skilled mechanical and electrical technicians, Guge said.

“Since 2009, each year has been a little bit better than the past. We’re still not quite back to the production levels we were prior to the recession, but we’re closer,” Guge said.

In San Bernardino, business owner Pang Vithean spoke about the future with optimism.

Vithean, owner of The Flaming Grill, opened his small eatery in December in downtown, anticipating a continuing economic recovery and demand from workers at the new courthouse building to open nearby later this year.

“We expect it to improve and to grow, and hope it will grow,” Vithean said of the local economy.

Though economic recovery has been slow and marginal, Vithean remains optimistic that jobs will continue opening up for people.

“People still don’t have a lot of jobs, but we believe it’s getting better,” he said.

Since opening shop, Vithean has hired one employee at his San Bernardino restaurant, and he has hopes to hire more when the new courthouse opens down the street.

For every 50 customers each day, Vithean hopes to add two or three employees over the next several months.

Vithean’s employee, Lina Chea, said she was hired at Flaming Grill after a year without a full-time job and with a family to support.

“It was so hard for me,” she said.

Vithean wasn’t the only who has some hiring optimism. So does Amazon, which opened its giant distribution center in 2012 in San Bernardino.

Amazon expects to continue hiring this year, and recently announced plans to open a distribution center in Moreno Valley, where more than 1,000 full-time jobs will be created, Amazon spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman said in an email Friday.

The doubling of jobs at the Amazon distribution center (700 to 1,400), from the time it opened for operations in October 2012 to the time of its grand opening in October 2013, factored into the region’s warehouse sector growth. Transportation, warehousing and utilities increased by 2,000 jobs, with an additional 1,500 jobs in the wholesale trade, according to latest Employment Development Department statistics.

While Amazon doesn’t specifically track where its employees come from, most are from the Inland Empire, Jackie Underberg, Amazon’s general manager, told this newspaper.

Broken down by county, San Bernardino County’s unemployment rate was at 8.7 percent as of December 2013, and Riverside County’s was 9.1 percent.

The data is in line with San Bernardino County figures, which show that the county’s labor force increased by 3,000 workers from July 2011 to the present, said Kelly Reenders, administrator of the county Economic Development Agency.

She said the county continues to see new businesses breaking ground and existing businesses expanding.

The Inland Empire was one of the hardest hit regions in the nation during the Great Recession, hitting a peak 14.6 percent unemployment rate in early 2010.

The data also mirror some better numbers statewide.

The EDD estimates that 17 million California residents had jobs in December, up 24,000 from November and 291,000 from December 2012.

But the jobs numbers might actually be better than what the EDD reports. The unemployment rate is derived from a federal survey of 5,500 California households while job growth is based on a survey of 42,000 businesses around the state.

Some economists note that the monthly EDD report does not capture what is actually going on in the economy and that stronger growth is reflected in quarterly data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state’s annual revision to the jobs data will be done later this year.

And that has some taking the news with a grain of salt.

“Initially it sounds like good news, but we have to be cautious,” said Paul Granillo, president and CEO of the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, which works with the region’s largest businesses and educational institutions to improve the area’s business climate and quality of life.

He said the unemployment figures are based on a survey of residents that may not accurately reflect the number of people who are actually unemployed, given the way the questions are framed in the survey.

“It may look like it’s great news, but the reality is there are still a lot of people who still do not have jobs,” Granillo said.

Staff Writer Gregory J. Wilcox contributed to this story.

via: http://www.sbsun.com/business/20140124/inland-empires-jobless-rate-lowest-since-2008

Inland Empire Community Legislative Briefing

Join us this Friday, January 24, 2014

10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

SEIU ULTCW Union Office

195 N. Arrowhead Avenue

San Bernardino, CA

For more information contact Maribel Nunez

(562) 569-4051 or by email mnunez@communitychange.org

PUBLIC SAFETY: Inland counties denied millions for jail construction

Riverside and San Bernardino counties each were denied requests this month for $80 million in state grants for jail construction, even though their applications ranked among the highest-scoring based on criteria used to evaluate grant proposals.

The denial hampers efforts to add and improve jail space in this region. In order to comply with federal court orders, each county has released thousands of inmates early since 2011 because there’s no room for them.

Riverside’s 3,906 jail beds in five jails are all filled. And the chronic lack of beds was exacerbated in 2011 with the enactment of public safety realignment. Under realignment, offenders convicted of low-level offenses serve their time in county jails instead of state prisons, a move made to satisfy a court mandate to reduce California’s prison population.

Almost 7,000 Riverside inmates were turned loose early in 2012 to relieve crowding. More than 9,000 have been let go so far this year.

Early release could cause a rise in low-level crimes, such as petty theft and drug possession, said Riverside County Assistant Sheriff Steve Thetford.

“There’s no deterrent effect when you can’t keep people in custody,” he said. “It’s not healthy for public safety.”

San Bernardino’s four jails hold about 6,000 inmates. Since January 2012, more than 6,900 inmates have been released early. An expansion of the Adelanto jail will add another 1,392 beds.

Both counties competed for a slice of $500 million set aside by the state Legislature for jail construction with an emphasis on programs intended to stop inmates from re-offending. In all, Sacramento received $1.3 billion in requests from 36 counties.

Riverside wanted the money to add 582 beds to the 1,520-bed Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. Grant dollars also would have paid for more space for vocational, substance abuse and education programs already taking place at Larry Smith.

San Bernardino wanted $80 million to reconfigure and add buildings to the Glen Helen Rehabilitation Center, said Cindy Bachman, a sheriff’s spokeswoman. Money also would have gone to improving a road to the jail that is subject to flooding, she said.

A state steering committee graded each request. Among large counties, San Bernardino scored the highest and Riverside ranked third. However, the recommended grant awards went to Orange, San Mateo, Fresno and Sacramento counties.

Robert Oates, a project manager with the state corrections board, said Riverside and San Bernardino did not do enough to show that their respective county supervisors were committed to funding the jail projects that were the focus of their grant requests. Preference goes to shovel-ready projects, he said.

Riverside County officials disagree. In an email, spokesman Ray Smith said the county plans to appeal the grant decision. He contends that the county demonstrated its commitment by expanding the Indio jail and building a new secure youth treatment facility.

A $100 million state grant is paying for the estimated $267 million cost of adding more than 1,200 beds to the 353-bed Indio jail, which will be known as the East County Detention Center. The expansion is supposed to be ready by 2017, but Riverside officials earlier this year were worried that delays in getting state approvals might push back the timeline.

Smith and Thetford said the county will try to find other funding to expand the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility.

Besides seeking funds elsewhere, Riverside also is considering non-jail alternatives for offenders. These include sending more inmates to state-run fire camps and increased use of electronic monitoring.

Adding onto Smith remains a priority, Thetford said.

“It’s a competitive process. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t,” he said. “We’re just going to keep plugging away at it.”

Staff Writer Brian Rokos contributed to this story.

Follow Jeff Horseman on Twitter: @JeffHorseman

Grants rejected

Riverside and San Bernardino counties each were turned down for $80 million in state grants for jail construction.

What’s at stake? The denial hampers efforts to add and improve jail space in this region.

What it means: Lower-level criminals will continue to be released early.

Why does that matter? Early release could cause a rise in low-level crimes, such as petty theft and drug possession.

What’s next? Officials from both counties say they’ll seek funding elsewhere.

via: http://www.pe.com/local-news/politics/politics-headlines-index/20131224-public-safety-inland-counties-denied-millions-for-jail-construction.ece