How a Criminal Record Keeps Americans Jobless For Life

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-criminal-record-keeps-americans-jobless-life



Luis Rivera had some peace of mind for about five months, from late fall of 2010 through early spring of the following year. That’s the closest thing he’s seen to financial stability in more than twenty years.
 
“I got hired for a wonderful job. It was a clerk/porter/doorman position at a high-rise classical building in the East Village,” he recalls wistfully. Rivera, 44, has a wife of twenty-five years and three teenage daughters. They live up in East Harlem, where the Puerto Rican–born New Yorker grew up and has spent much of his life. He’s ferociously proud of his marriage and children; his back straightens and his tone turns serious when he talks about his family, like a man who’s managed to achieve something he’s been told he can’t accomplish. Yet looking back on those five months as a jack-of-all-services for wealthy downtown hipsters, Rivera still gets excited about an opportunity that tore him away from home at all hours.

“When they needed somebody, they would call me in the middle of the night and I would say, ‘Yes!’ Because I needed a job. And the pay was excellent,” he brags, pointing to his $17 hourly wage for part-time work. “I was next to be hired in a position there permanently.”

The new position held promise that Rivera could finally work just one legit job—on the books, with steady hours and a steady paycheck—rather than hustling to piece together part-time informal work, as he’s done his entire adult life. But that promise hadn’t yet been realized. He was still at the mercy of his employer’s whims. If they called, he worked; if not, he didn’t. So when the superintendent of a building across the street mentioned that his crew was looking for part-time help as well, Rivera put in his name. While applying, he was honest to a fault.

[malaise]

1. Not if you're a politician

or a banker

[xchrom]

2. ain't that right. nt

[Drahthaardogs]

3. Some of these guys need to really work on getting their records expunged.

It is their best solution. People are always going to be biased against ex-convicts. I do not see that changing.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. Or the law regarding reporting needs to be changed.

Here in the UK (under the provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act) a criminal conviction becomes "spent" after a certain length of time and doesn't need to be declared to prospective employers (except for certain jobs where it IS required, regardless), immigration officials, et cetera. This doesn't include violent or sexual offences, or any offence that resulted in a custodial sentence. But someone like Mr Rivera wouldn't have to declare his previous record.

[alc]

5. That's not the real problem

If I have 1 job and 2 people apply who are identical in all ways except one has a record, I think I should be able to pick the one without the record (or the one with the record if I think it was educational and the experience could be a positive)

If I have 2 jobs, they are both getting hired.

I'm ok with any 20-some-year-old who's thinking of committing a crime knows that getting caught means employment opportunities will be hurt for the next 40 years. In fact I'd rather have things like that be a bigger deterrent than the threat of prisons (and lock people up less often for less time). You're part of society, and if you break that contract (by committing a crime) you get less back from society. It sucks, but people who haven't committed a crime can't find work and I'm going to feel more sorry for them - even 20 years later.