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I read this article with interest. 70MillionJobs is a for-profit recruitment platform for people with criminal records. Our goal is to match the huge pool of un

I read this article with interest. 70MillionJobs is a for-profit recruitment platform for people with criminal records. Our goal is to match the huge pool of untapped talent (those with records) with employers that have urgent HR needs. In this capacity, my team and I engage with large, national employers, so I think we have a strong sense of where the corporate zeitgeist lies regarding hiring the formerly incarcerated. While the Times author points to a historically low rate of unemployment and cites business conditions in Dane County, WI, this willingness to hire men and women with records does not generally exist with large, national employers. Nearly all of them have internal criteria relating to who they will or will not hire, based upon the nature of the crime(s) an applicant has committed and when it occurred. Most require at least five or six years to pass before they'd consider hiring someone guilty of a felony. And therein lies the rub: there's nearly an 80% chance that someone released from jail or prison will be re-arrested within five years of their release. The vast majority of them will be unemployed at time of re-arrest. Contrariwise, there's very little chance of someone who has found employment being re-arrested. Employment is truly the silver bullet that short circuits this pernicious cycle of recidivism. Recent studies have shown that those with records often emerge as an employer's best hires. Unlike others, people with records have no sense of entitlement and truly appreciate the opportunity they've been afforded. Typically, they reward employers with great loyalty, which translates to much greater retention (the true bane of HR professionals). While attitudes are changing for the better (I, as a formerly incarcerated person, have noticed this in my own life), there still exists a great negative bias towards those with records, the NY Times notwithstanding. Racism figures mightily in this equation. But we're a country that elected a racist President, whose Atty General is eager to reinstate ineffective drug laws (including marijuana) that destroyed lives, families and communities in the 80's 90's and even today. Anyone with a record can attest to the stigma that doesn't leave after doing one's time. In fact, for most, it's a life sentence, a sentence that even low unemployment can't expunge.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Is there any way to use subcontracting to attack this? Traditionally, subcontracting is used in an abusive way to deny workers proper benefits, pay, and stability. But what if the subcontracting firm operated with essentially no profit motive, hired previous offenders, hacking around internal HR groups at large firms? They’re then not hiring someone with a record; they contacting to a firm who has their own hiring standards (which you’re using to your advantage). Offtopic: thanks for attacking this problem. There are few people willing to attack important problems like this.
- RBBronson123 9y ago
  This is a model some staffing agencies employ, whereby they are the employer of record, serving a larger corporate client. In theory, it makes sense, however it fails to address the real needs of job-seekers with records: they need a full-time, stable job. Flexibility does not serve their interests. And those newly out of prison are generally required to have a full-time job as a condition of their release. As any general contractor can attest, it's nearly impossible to maintain full-time employment for their crew. And "crews" are rarely the scalable solution to a problem faced by many millions.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to reply.
    - RBBronson123 9y ago
      Thanks for caring.
  - Xylakant 9y ago
    It’s not impossible to maintain full time employment for your staff as contractor. You’ll just have to calculate your rate in a fashion that includes the time between jobs. So it’s cheaper not to keep the staff on a paid contract in that time, doing otherwise reduces the companies earnings since you can’t increase your rate beyond what the competitors demand.
  - newfoundglory 9y ago
    > And those newly out of prison are generally required to have a full-time job as a condition of their release That’s insane, plenty of people who didn’t just get out of prison can’t get a full time job.
    - RBBronson123 9y ago
      Yes, I know from personal experience.
recordthrowaway 9y ago
> Anyone with a record can attest to the stigma that doesn't leave after doing one's time. In fact, for most, it's a life sentence, a sentence that even low unemployment can't expunge. This is correct. I have a criminal record (though hopefully after probation it gets deleted - deferred adjucation) and lucky enough to have a well paying tech job because my company did not do a background check. However, you never know when you may be fired, have to leave, or the company may fail. I always worry ahead of time when I might need another job and be unable to find an engineering job that doesn't background check me. One time I accepted an offer after many interviews and worked at a place for two weeks - enough time for someone to settle down and feel like they are back to a normal life, and bang - background check, and I was out the next day. I am also in a support group with people with the same crime as me and those who were no as fortunate to be college educated suffer from unstable and low paying employment. Those are college educated are not much better off because the jobs that they know how to do and pay decently are behind background checks. It is very frustrating to know that you might not get a job not because of your skills, interview prep, or personality, but because of something you did years ago. I get it that not all of us are good guys or have learned our lesson, but everyone should be able to feed themselves and their families.
- njovin 9y ago
  Curious: why didn't you disclose to the employer up-front? I've had a few applicants do this. We don't discriminate for many minor crimes, but if I Google somebody or something comes up in a background check that's going to do more damage than if they'd just been up-front about it.
  - recordthrowaway 9y ago
    > Curious: why didn't you disclose to the employer up-front? a) I didn't know as I was 22 and this was my first time getting a job after everything happened, so I was ignorant of the process. The subject never came up during interviews or offer signing. b) NYC has laws/rules (?) that don't let employers ask about criminal records before giving an offer. To me these laws are useless as I'd rather be rejected up front than accept an offer and then have to leave... Anyway, the company was a CRM start up and their excuse was that their investors wanted everyone in the company to be clean because we handle customer data or whatever, so I doubt I would've gotten the job even if I had been up front. But, I love where I work now so it's all good.
Xeoncross 9y ago
If I remember correctly, while the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world's population, we incarcerate 25% of the worlds prison population. I am thankful for work like yours that is helping to rehabilitate people in the most danger.
- RBBronson123 9y ago
  Thank you. Your facts are correct. As a patriotic American, I'm ashamed with some of our country's medieval criminal justice practices, including our distinction of being the only country in the world (which includes China, Iran, North Korea, etc) that keeps juveniles in solitary confinement.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    It's the protestant puritan spirit. People can go towards atheism these days (and strangely few do for such a modern western country), but a cultural bias (that those people that ended in jail are somehow inherently bad and must be punished in life) is less easy to shake off -- even when the original cultural leaders of the country (WASPs) have been superseded by a much more diverse population. (Part of the Politically Correct movement have that protestant dynamic in play too, as does the obsession with "evil", and this or that thing or person being it).
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      That’s certainly part of it, but there’s also the political dimension. You don’t lose an election by being tough on crime/criminals, but on the flip side... Dukakis. Plus, there is just so much money and power and jobs tied up in law enforcement and corrections. Then as you say, there is the religious/cultural dimension. Edit: I’m just describing the realpolitik, not endorsing it.
    - richmarr 9y ago
      > It's the protestant puritan spirit. Have you watched the documentary "13th"? If so I'd be curious to hear what explains the delta in your opinion. If not, I can recommend it. [Edit to clarify] For the sake of folk who haven't watched it, my rough TL;DR would be that it paints an apparently clear continuum from slavery to mass incarceration based on the 13th amendment's allowance of "involuntary servitude" for convicts.
JamesBarney 9y ago
>Employment is truly the silver bullet that short circuits this pernicious cycle of recidivism. Is this shown with a pseudo randomized trial or just correlation? Because I could easily see lots of attributes that make someone more hirable would also be associated with reduced recidivism rates (college degree, strong support structure, low impulsivity, high conscientiousness)
- eigenstuff 9y ago
  Have you ever heard of Homeboy Industries? Their motto is actually "nothing stops a bullet like a job." It was started by Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest out in LA, and basically he opened these bakeries (and some other businesses) specifically to give former gang members jobs in addition to offering free tattoo removal and a lot of other counseling/therapy services. The idea is that people fall into the cycle of gang violence when they have no hope and no prospects, so by offering them gainful employment in spite of their pasts and the additional support to address their psychological traumas, HBI helps them to break the cycle and pave the way for them to become functional, contributing members of society. They do amazing work and I would love to see this model replicated across the country. I'm an atheist but Father Greg is one of my greatest heroes. I highly recommend his recent interview on Fresh Air.
  - AlexB138 9y ago
    That's fantastic. I believe Men's Warehouse's founder (who has been ousted) also advocated for something similar. I wonder how well those "second chance" hires end up working out compared to typical hires. I have to imagine those that have reformed themselves appreciate the opportunity and may end up being more loyal employees longterm, but I also have to assume there are some who don't turn it around.
  - RBBronson123 9y ago
    I've worked with Home Boy, and you're right, it's a wonderful organization staffed by great people. Unfortunately, for it along with many other great non-profits, they spend so much of their time fund raising (development) and exist year to year, on donations and grants. No npo has scaled nationally. After working in the non-profit space myself, I grew convinced that a for-profit approach could address the breadth of the problem of recidivism. That' when I launched 70MillionJobs.
jacquesm 9y ago
Have you considered using the tools the net afford to help remedy this? I'm going on the assumption here that the country that you have a criminal record in is the one where it is easiest to dig that up and hold it against you. But as long as crimes committed have some real world factor there should be absolutely no reason to hire someone with such a record to do remote work. Which might just give you an edge. I love your initiative by the way, if there is any way that I can help promote it please let me know.
- RBBronson123 9y ago
  thanks very much
- pm90 9y ago
  The Criminal Database used by the FBI and federal agencies is shared with Canada as well (probably with European organizations if they bother to ask). Which is why its sometimes important to see if the crimes you're accused of might have a more strict interpretation in other countries. e.g. DWI in Canada is considered much more serious than in the US. One of my friends pleaded no contest to another misdemeanor charge to escape the scrutiny that would come with having to deal with DWI on record by arguing that he would have difficulty in traveling to Canada.
UncleEntity 9y ago
> But we're a country that elected a racist President... Lyndon B. Johnson?
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  He was important to getting civil rights legislation passed in 1964. He also taught poor Mexican kids when he was younger. He was a lot of things, but racist isn't fair.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  LBJ was a odd duck. I suggest that you read one of Robert Caro’s Biographies of him. He was many things, but I don’t think racist was one of them. He was mentored politically by southern racists, but betrayed them epically, indirectly creating the modern GOP in the process.
nashashmi 9y ago
> large, national employers. Nearly all of them have internal criteria relating to who they will or will not hire I always found it difficult to get hired by such firms without prior experience. And that experience only comes from small local employers. Work small and locally and then get hired by the bigger firms to have a better chance at employment. Bug firms are just "too efficient" and don't really have time/resource to give chances. And take risks. Among the plethora of ridiculousness they use in hiring and firing, I cannot consciously give 2 cents about what they think. So I'd rather skip them and jump to the more "personal" employers. Let them come and beg for me if they need to.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
crispinb 9y ago
Some indigenous nations here (Australia) used spearing in the leg as one form of sentence for serious crimes. This is popularly used as a stick with which to beat indigenous Australians for having been 'savage' (thus implicitly deserving of the 'civilising' process comprising land theft, exterminations, rapes, etc). Yet truly belonging to a community is among the most fundamental of human needs, social beings that we are. And here's the rub: once speared, aboriginal offenders had paid for their crime, and were still fully part of their tribe, with all the requisite privileges and obligations. There were other technical mitigations of the apparent severity of the punishment (eg. the spear head used was specifically designed for the purpose, smooth and covered with antibiotic agents to reduce damage & infection), but more crucially: the punishment was executed within a context that said: "you'll pay for your crime, and it will be a painful price, but you're still one of us". Employment, for better or worse, is a lynchpin fetish of our current social arrangements, central to full community membership. Denying it is tantamount to community expulsion: a truly savage punishment.
- Banthum 9y ago
  It's not a punishment, though. Employers' motivation is not to exact retribution. It's just people not wanting to associate with others who are more likely in the future to commit dangerous or destructive acts, because they fear being victimized. They rightly believe that if this person committed such an act in the past, they're more likely to do so in the future, as compared to someone with no such record. If you pretend the motivation is to punish the other, instead of to avoid being victimized, you'll never be able to understand this behavior and thus will never be able to change it or adapt to it.
  - crispinb 9y ago
    Perfectly fair point. But there are 2 levels of analyses here, which have different uses. If you're a US felon trying to make a life, thinking of employers' motivation as being to punish you would be inaccurate and probably counter-productive. I don't quite agree with your characterisation of employers' motivation (I think corporate management is as uninformed, irrational, and prone to post-hoc rationalising of unthinking reflexive behaviour as is any other sector of society), but that's a side issue here. If you have a criminal history, and want to get back on track, you have to deal with potential employers as you find them. If you're instead concerned about policy & intent on analysing the system as a whole, employers' reluctance to hire is absolutely part of the criminal disciplinary system, interacting with many other parts (eg. cultural attitudes towards criminality, levels of legally required disclosure of criminal history, legal classification of crimes, etc, etc). In a society (for example) without permanent public records of criminal convictions, or where they are rapidly expunged, and with no duty to disclose criminal history, ex-cons de facto receive less punishment. Whether the more or less punitive system offers the best balance of goods for society is a topic for debate, but that employer reluctance to hire acts as part of the punishment system is just a fact, regardless of employer motivation.
lr4444lr 9y ago
Recent studies have shown that those with records often emerge as an employer's best hires. Unlike others, people with records have no sense of entitlement and truly appreciate the opportunity they've been afforded. Typically, they reward employers with great loyalty, which translates to much greater retention (the true bane of HR professionals). Citations, please? That is a highly counterintuitive result.
- vidarh 9y ago
  Citations would indeed be great. But why is it a counterintuitive result? If someone with a record faces a much harder time getting hired, then doesn't it make sense if they take extra care to hold on to a job once they have found someone willing to take a risk?
  - lr4444lr 9y ago
    Because the criminal mind, as I had learned in psych., has a very inflated sense of entitlement and views opportunities as how to take advantage of others. Now you might rightly reply, "America has a mass over-incarceration problem. Not everyone in prison has those psychopathic tendencies". Even if we grant that for the sake of argument, and assumed that people in the general population of never-incarcerated fail to fully appreciate their freedom and lack of a record, I would still expect the significant number of ex-felons in the former group to bring down that population's aggregate measure in "employer's best hires" well below that of the general population. I'd also ask about the traumatic effects being in a prison itself might have on the psychological well-being so-called targets of an unjust incarceration system who don't belong there. Again, I'm sure there's a profile of the reformed convict who's learned to value every breath of life of freedom with appreciation and gratitude. I'm just not convinced this is the norm to the extent that they'd typically outstrip employees who did not go through the system. That's why it's counterintuitive to me. Now I'm ready to say I've been all wrong about this. But I want to see data.
- RBBronson123 9y ago
  Unlike many people in the job market, those with records generally have no sense of entitlement. They are used to taking orders and fearful of screwing up. For certain jobs, these are great attributes. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/05/06/why-former-felons-may-be-good-employees/?utm_term=.26e2cd57b2b5 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/05...
nicolashahn 9y ago
Does 70MillionJobs currently have a need for developers?
- RBBronson123 9y ago
  Not currently, thanks.
sureaboutthis 9y ago
I would think not getting arrested for breaking the law is the best thing one can do. I have never been arrested. I don't know anyone in my family or group of friends who have ever been arrested. I do notice that, among younger people, getting arrested for something is almost a matter of course. A fact of life. That is the real problem in my opinion.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Is there any way to use subcontracting to attack this? Traditionally, subcontracting is used in an abusive way to deny workers proper benefits, pay, and stability. But what if the subcontracting firm operated with essentially no profit motive, hired previous offenders, hacking around internal HR groups at large firms? They’re then not hiring someone with a record; they contacting to a firm who has their own hiring standards (which you’re using to your advantage). Offtopic: thanks for attacking this problem. There are few people willing to attack important problems like this.

RBBronson123 9y ago
This is a model some staffing agencies employ, whereby they are the employer of record, serving a larger corporate client. In theory, it makes sense, however it fails to address the real needs of job-seekers with records: they need a full-time, stable job. Flexibility does not serve their interests. And those newly out of prison are generally required to have a full-time job as a condition of their release. As any general contractor can attest, it's nearly impossible to maintain full-time employment for their crew. And "crews" are rarely the scalable solution to a problem faced by many millions.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Thanks for taking the time to reply.
  - RBBronson123 9y ago
    Thanks for caring.
- Xylakant 9y ago
  It’s not impossible to maintain full time employment for your staff as contractor. You’ll just have to calculate your rate in a fashion that includes the time between jobs. So it’s cheaper not to keep the staff on a paid contract in that time, doing otherwise reduces the companies earnings since you can’t increase your rate beyond what the competitors demand.
- newfoundglory 9y ago
  > And those newly out of prison are generally required to have a full-time job as a condition of their release That’s insane, plenty of people who didn’t just get out of prison can’t get a full time job.
  - RBBronson123 9y ago
    Yes, I know from personal experience.

recordthrowaway 9y ago

> Anyone with a record can attest to the stigma that doesn't leave after doing one's time. In fact, for most, it's a life sentence, a sentence that even low unemployment can't expunge. This is correct. I have a criminal record (though hopefully after probation it gets deleted - deferred adjucation) and lucky enough to have a well paying tech job because my company did not do a background check. However, you never know when you may be fired, have to leave, or the company may fail. I always worry ahead of time when I might need another job and be unable to find an engineering job that doesn't background check me. One time I accepted an offer after many interviews and worked at a place for two weeks - enough time for someone to settle down and feel like they are back to a normal life, and bang - background check, and I was out the next day. I am also in a support group with people with the same crime as me and those who were no as fortunate to be college educated suffer from unstable and low paying employment. Those are college educated are not much better off because the jobs that they know how to do and pay decently are behind background checks. It is very frustrating to know that you might not get a job not because of your skills, interview prep, or personality, but because of something you did years ago. I get it that not all of us are good guys or have learned our lesson, but everyone should be able to feed themselves and their families.

njovin 9y ago
Curious: why didn't you disclose to the employer up-front? I've had a few applicants do this. We don't discriminate for many minor crimes, but if I Google somebody or something comes up in a background check that's going to do more damage than if they'd just been up-front about it.
- recordthrowaway 9y ago
  > Curious: why didn't you disclose to the employer up-front? a) I didn't know as I was 22 and this was my first time getting a job after everything happened, so I was ignorant of the process. The subject never came up during interviews or offer signing. b) NYC has laws/rules (?) that don't let employers ask about criminal records before giving an offer. To me these laws are useless as I'd rather be rejected up front than accept an offer and then have to leave... Anyway, the company was a CRM start up and their excuse was that their investors wanted everyone in the company to be clean because we handle customer data or whatever, so I doubt I would've gotten the job even if I had been up front. But, I love where I work now so it's all good.

Xeoncross 9y ago

If I remember correctly, while the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world's population, we incarcerate 25% of the worlds prison population. I am thankful for work like yours that is helping to rehabilitate people in the most danger.

RBBronson123 9y ago
Thank you. Your facts are correct. As a patriotic American, I'm ashamed with some of our country's medieval criminal justice practices, including our distinction of being the only country in the world (which includes China, Iran, North Korea, etc) that keeps juveniles in solitary confinement.
- coldtea 9y ago
  It's the protestant puritan spirit. People can go towards atheism these days (and strangely few do for such a modern western country), but a cultural bias (that those people that ended in jail are somehow inherently bad and must be punished in life) is less easy to shake off -- even when the original cultural leaders of the country (WASPs) have been superseded by a much more diverse population. (Part of the Politically Correct movement have that protestant dynamic in play too, as does the obsession with "evil", and this or that thing or person being it).
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    That’s certainly part of it, but there’s also the political dimension. You don’t lose an election by being tough on crime/criminals, but on the flip side... Dukakis. Plus, there is just so much money and power and jobs tied up in law enforcement and corrections. Then as you say, there is the religious/cultural dimension. Edit: I’m just describing the realpolitik, not endorsing it.
  - richmarr 9y ago
    > It's the protestant puritan spirit. Have you watched the documentary "13th"? If so I'd be curious to hear what explains the delta in your opinion. If not, I can recommend it. [Edit to clarify] For the sake of folk who haven't watched it, my rough TL;DR would be that it paints an apparently clear continuum from slavery to mass incarceration based on the 13th amendment's allowance of "involuntary servitude" for convicts.

JamesBarney 9y ago

>Employment is truly the silver bullet that short circuits this pernicious cycle of recidivism. Is this shown with a pseudo randomized trial or just correlation? Because I could easily see lots of attributes that make someone more hirable would also be associated with reduced recidivism rates (college degree, strong support structure, low impulsivity, high conscientiousness)

eigenstuff 9y ago
Have you ever heard of Homeboy Industries? Their motto is actually "nothing stops a bullet like a job." It was started by Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest out in LA, and basically he opened these bakeries (and some other businesses) specifically to give former gang members jobs in addition to offering free tattoo removal and a lot of other counseling/therapy services. The idea is that people fall into the cycle of gang violence when they have no hope and no prospects, so by offering them gainful employment in spite of their pasts and the additional support to address their psychological traumas, HBI helps them to break the cycle and pave the way for them to become functional, contributing members of society. They do amazing work and I would love to see this model replicated across the country. I'm an atheist but Father Greg is one of my greatest heroes. I highly recommend his recent interview on Fresh Air.
- AlexB138 9y ago
  That's fantastic. I believe Men's Warehouse's founder (who has been ousted) also advocated for something similar. I wonder how well those "second chance" hires end up working out compared to typical hires. I have to imagine those that have reformed themselves appreciate the opportunity and may end up being more loyal employees longterm, but I also have to assume there are some who don't turn it around.
- RBBronson123 9y ago
  I've worked with Home Boy, and you're right, it's a wonderful organization staffed by great people. Unfortunately, for it along with many other great non-profits, they spend so much of their time fund raising (development) and exist year to year, on donations and grants. No npo has scaled nationally. After working in the non-profit space myself, I grew convinced that a for-profit approach could address the breadth of the problem of recidivism. That' when I launched 70MillionJobs.

jacquesm 9y ago

Have you considered using the tools the net afford to help remedy this? I'm going on the assumption here that the country that you have a criminal record in is the one where it is easiest to dig that up and hold it against you. But as long as crimes committed have some real world factor there should be absolutely no reason to hire someone with such a record to do remote work. Which might just give you an edge. I love your initiative by the way, if there is any way that I can help promote it please let me know.

RBBronson123 9y ago
thanks very much
pm90 9y ago
The Criminal Database used by the FBI and federal agencies is shared with Canada as well (probably with European organizations if they bother to ask). Which is why its sometimes important to see if the crimes you're accused of might have a more strict interpretation in other countries. e.g. DWI in Canada is considered much more serious than in the US. One of my friends pleaded no contest to another misdemeanor charge to escape the scrutiny that would come with having to deal with DWI on record by arguing that he would have difficulty in traveling to Canada.

UncleEntity 9y ago

> But we're a country that elected a racist President... Lyndon B. Johnson?

aaron-lebo 9y ago
He was important to getting civil rights legislation passed in 1964. He also taught poor Mexican kids when he was younger. He was a lot of things, but racist isn't fair.
Spooky23 9y ago
LBJ was a odd duck. I suggest that you read one of Robert Caro’s Biographies of him. He was many things, but I don’t think racist was one of them. He was mentored politically by southern racists, but betrayed them epically, indirectly creating the modern GOP in the process.

nashashmi 9y ago

> large, national employers. Nearly all of them have internal criteria relating to who they will or will not hire I always found it difficult to get hired by such firms without prior experience. And that experience only comes from small local employers. Work small and locally and then get hired by the bigger firms to have a better chance at employment. Bug firms are just "too efficient" and don't really have time/resource to give chances. And take risks. Among the plethora of ridiculousness they use in hiring and firing, I cannot consciously give 2 cents about what they think. So I'd rather skip them and jump to the more "personal" employers. Let them come and beg for me if they need to.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

crispinb 9y ago

Some indigenous nations here (Australia) used spearing in the leg as one form of sentence for serious crimes. This is popularly used as a stick with which to beat indigenous Australians for having been 'savage' (thus implicitly deserving of the 'civilising' process comprising land theft, exterminations, rapes, etc). Yet truly belonging to a community is among the most fundamental of human needs, social beings that we are. And here's the rub: once speared, aboriginal offenders had paid for their crime, and were still fully part of their tribe, with all the requisite privileges and obligations. There were other technical mitigations of the apparent severity of the punishment (eg. the spear head used was specifically designed for the purpose, smooth and covered with antibiotic agents to reduce damage & infection), but more crucially: the punishment was executed within a context that said: "you'll pay for your crime, and it will be a painful price, but you're still one of us". Employment, for better or worse, is a lynchpin fetish of our current social arrangements, central to full community membership. Denying it is tantamount to community expulsion: a truly savage punishment.

Banthum 9y ago
It's not a punishment, though. Employers' motivation is not to exact retribution. It's just people not wanting to associate with others who are more likely in the future to commit dangerous or destructive acts, because they fear being victimized. They rightly believe that if this person committed such an act in the past, they're more likely to do so in the future, as compared to someone with no such record. If you pretend the motivation is to punish the other, instead of to avoid being victimized, you'll never be able to understand this behavior and thus will never be able to change it or adapt to it.
- crispinb 9y ago
  Perfectly fair point. But there are 2 levels of analyses here, which have different uses. If you're a US felon trying to make a life, thinking of employers' motivation as being to punish you would be inaccurate and probably counter-productive. I don't quite agree with your characterisation of employers' motivation (I think corporate management is as uninformed, irrational, and prone to post-hoc rationalising of unthinking reflexive behaviour as is any other sector of society), but that's a side issue here. If you have a criminal history, and want to get back on track, you have to deal with potential employers as you find them. If you're instead concerned about policy & intent on analysing the system as a whole, employers' reluctance to hire is absolutely part of the criminal disciplinary system, interacting with many other parts (eg. cultural attitudes towards criminality, levels of legally required disclosure of criminal history, legal classification of crimes, etc, etc). In a society (for example) without permanent public records of criminal convictions, or where they are rapidly expunged, and with no duty to disclose criminal history, ex-cons de facto receive less punishment. Whether the more or less punitive system offers the best balance of goods for society is a topic for debate, but that employer reluctance to hire acts as part of the punishment system is just a fact, regardless of employer motivation.

lr4444lr 9y ago

Recent studies have shown that those with records often emerge as an employer's best hires. Unlike others, people with records have no sense of entitlement and truly appreciate the opportunity they've been afforded. Typically, they reward employers with great loyalty, which translates to much greater retention (the true bane of HR professionals). Citations, please? That is a highly counterintuitive result.

vidarh 9y ago
Citations would indeed be great. But why is it a counterintuitive result? If someone with a record faces a much harder time getting hired, then doesn't it make sense if they take extra care to hold on to a job once they have found someone willing to take a risk?
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  Because the criminal mind, as I had learned in psych., has a very inflated sense of entitlement and views opportunities as how to take advantage of others. Now you might rightly reply, "America has a mass over-incarceration problem. Not everyone in prison has those psychopathic tendencies". Even if we grant that for the sake of argument, and assumed that people in the general population of never-incarcerated fail to fully appreciate their freedom and lack of a record, I would still expect the significant number of ex-felons in the former group to bring down that population's aggregate measure in "employer's best hires" well below that of the general population. I'd also ask about the traumatic effects being in a prison itself might have on the psychological well-being so-called targets of an unjust incarceration system who don't belong there. Again, I'm sure there's a profile of the reformed convict who's learned to value every breath of life of freedom with appreciation and gratitude. I'm just not convinced this is the norm to the extent that they'd typically outstrip employees who did not go through the system. That's why it's counterintuitive to me. Now I'm ready to say I've been all wrong about this. But I want to see data.
RBBronson123 9y ago
Unlike many people in the job market, those with records generally have no sense of entitlement. They are used to taking orders and fearful of screwing up. For certain jobs, these are great attributes. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/05/06/why-former-felons-may-be-good-employees/?utm_term=.26e2cd57b2b5 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/05...

nicolashahn 9y ago

Does 70MillionJobs currently have a need for developers?

RBBronson123 9y ago
Not currently, thanks.

sureaboutthis 9y ago

I would think not getting arrested for breaking the law is the best thing one can do. I have never been arrested. I don't know anyone in my family or group of friends who have ever been arrested. I do notice that, among younger people, getting arrested for something is almost a matter of course. A fact of life. That is the real problem in my opinion.