Given that former sex offenders are usually excluded from these programs, I pose this question to those who favor exclusion, "How long are you willing to pay welfare for those you exclude from these programs?" you know that is where they end up, draing your pocketbook......
9-3-2009 Indiana:
Finding a re-entry program can be a problem
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - An accused serial armed robber said he went on a crime spree because he'd just gotten out of prison and was broke. Social workers say his story of repeat offense is becoming more common.
Experts say more than 60 percent of people in jail or prison are repeat offenders. There are plenty of re-entry programs available to help them get jobs and housing. The problem is finding a program.
Joey Bluestein, 21, was just released from prison for a robbery conviction. But he's now back behind bars facing a laundry list of felony charges. Police said he admitted to robbing six Marion County businesses since mid-July.
"I needed the money," said Bluestein. "The government isn't trying to help me. Maybe if they helped felons, we wouldn't be in this situation."
Bluestein said he tried applying for jobs, but didn't get any offers.
Michael Woods isn't surprised. Woods works with an ex-offender program called Pace/OAR. He said it's difficult for most felons to find work without professional help.
"A lot of times, they come out and present themselves as ex-felons," Woods said. "They ask, 'Do you hire ex-felons? I'm looking for a job.' Well of course the answer is 'no.' So we teach them how to market themselves as a person with skills."
The Department of Corrections said it doesn't provide offenders with programs that can help them readjust to society. They said it's actually up to the offenders and the community to find out what's out there, so they don't end up back behind bars.
"There wasn't a program for me," Bluestein said in a jailhouse interview. "The only program I knew of was what my parole officer signed me up for and that's substance abuse program."
Woods said there are programs for every ex-felon to help them find housing, job training and employment. It just takes work to find one since the non-profit groups have little money to advertise.
Pace/OAR and Indiana Helpers are two programs that help ex-offenders and homeless people find work.
Indiana Helpers has more than 1500 programs listed that can help offenders in every area of re-entry. ..Source.. by Liza Danver
September 3, 2009
IN- Ex-offenders struggle to find work
August 16, 2009
AL- Motel garners cluster of sex offenders
8-16-2009 Alabama:
____ sees himself in his motel's clientele.
As an answer to the whisper campaign and public contempt hurled at his business, the manager posted an atypical sign out front.
"Sexual predators may rent a room from time to time. The law does not require them to notify management to rent a room at any hotel anywhere and we may be unaware of their presents (sic). This is an adult community only."
That is what greets guests at Shady Court Motel on East 12th Avenue in Sheffield. It's a series of older, white standalone units separated by sparse grass, just off Sheffield's main drag.
For years, it has been a vacuum for released sex offenders, as it is the listed address for nearly a dozen, according to the Alabama Department of Public Safety.
Colbert County authorities say 12 sex offenders live there now.
The motel's manager knew of seven.
Included in the motel's community are some arrested for sexually abusing children, raping teenagers and sodomy, according to the sex offender list.
"It's real hard for them to find a place to live," said ___, who at first refused to give his name because of the stigma associated with sex offenders. "It puts a big target on their back. They have to live somewhere, though."
He, too, knows the difficulty of starting over.
He is on the sex offender list - something revealed only after he was asked.
On Friday, ____ delved into the challenges of re-entering society after committing a sexual crime.
"It's made my life a living hell," the motel manager said. "I have worked so hard to get back up. But I can't even go to the grocery store without fear of someone coming up to me. It's on my driver's license. There's a whole lot about (the list) that's just not fair."
____ said he has refused applicants whose crimes he believed were too violent.
"I turn them away if I can," he said. "I like to keep it to no more than five (convicted sex offenders) around here if I can."
There are more there now. And when people ask, he just points to the sign, not mentioning he is one of the "sexual predators" in the community.
He differentiates himself from others, saying he wants more rigid categories to label sex crimes - and restrictions that come with them.
He was arrested in Cullman County in 1991 for first-degree sexual abuse of a 7-year-old girl.
Now, in a way, he's a de facto law officer.
The influx of sex offenders at his motel comes with increased police attention. Colbert County Assistant Chief Deputy Mike Aday said Starnes reports any problems he sees with his residents. Aday said ____' information has led to arrests in the past.
"He's one of them that doesn't give me any problems," Aday said of ___, who is among 100 sex offenders in Colbert County. "We greatly appreciate the help he gives us."
State law requires sex offenders to live at least 2,000 feet away from schools, day care centers or other havens for children. They must also stay 1,000 feet away from their victim.
Offenders also must report to authorities every six months and register when they move or change employment. If offenders move, authorities have to first make sure the new residence meets standards.
It's these rules, Aday said, that funnels so many to Shady Court. He said it's far easier to find housing in rural areas but few choose that route.
"It's a place they know they can get into right away," he said of the motel.
He added that a handful also go to a nearby motel.
Though boarding convicted sex offenders brings public scorn, it's also guaranteed business.
"It's a catch-22," he said. "These are among the most stable people we have here. They pay rent on time, but we don't want to be known as the sex-offender palace."
There isn't much sympathy for Shady Court from neighbors, with the general consensus favoring demolition.
"I hate that place," said Dolores Lansdell, who owns the house closest to the motel. "They should all burn."Kelly Muston, who monitors sex offenders for the Lauderdale County Sheriff's Office, believes stricter restrictions are needed, such as dictating distance between a sex offender's home and a bus stop, which has been included in other states' laws.
"They put themselves in that position when they committed that crime," she said, adding she couldn't say if convicted sex offenders can change their mindset, as ___ claims.
Lauderdale County has 80 sex offenders, she said; there are 45 in Franklin County, according to the sheriff's department there.Clearly Muston knows little about sex offenders -or how the human mind works- even though she sees them regularly. An unwillingness to discuss the crime is not denial, its normal human behavior, crimes like many thing in life are personal. While registries make the criminal record public, nothing forces the offender to talk about it for the rest of their lives. Many folks have done far worse and moved on, sex offenders are not allowed the same.
In context, that makes one sex offender for every 547 people in Colbert, 684 people in Franklin and 1,114 in Lauderdale.
Muston said denial is rampant among those she deals with.
"Some have this attitude of 'I did my time; it's over, let me move on,' " she said. "That doesn't mean it ended for the victim. That's something the victim has to live with for the rest of their life."
Meanwhile, ____ is still trying to run his business, which he admits "isn't exactly a four-star hotel."
He leads sexual addiction meetings in the parking lot and gives his number in case someone needs an intervention.
A couple of people always show at the meetings.
____ said he hasn't been behind bars since his arrest nearly 20 years ago. He said he's proof sex offenders can change.
"It's an ongoing process," he said. "You have to be brutally honest with yourself about what you did. I'm not going to make no excuses for it. It was absolutely horrible. But luckily, I don't have those thoughts anymore."
He's now engaged. His fiance knows about his past, he said. "I'm not a monster out there trying to hurt somebody," Starnes said. "I'm just trying to live and make things right with God and myself. I never want to go back to that person I was." ..Source.. by Brian Hughes, Staff Writer
July 22, 2009
'Redemption' in an Era of Widespread Criminal Background Checks
7-22-2009 National:
One of the stated goals in President Barack Obama's crime and law enforcement agenda is to break down employment barriers for people who have a prior criminal record, but who have stayed clean of further involvement with the criminal justice system. To understand how many people are affected by some of these barriers, we only need look at the widespread computerization of criminal history records in the United States.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, more than 80 percent of U.S. employers perform criminal background checks on prospective employees.[1] Add two additional factors to that equation — advances in information technology and growing concerns about employer liability — and we can begin to understand how complicated the issue of employing ex-offenders has become.
The numbers leave no doubt that we have reached a broad penetration of criminal history records into the fabric of our society:
* In 2006, nearly 81 million criminal records were on file in the states, 74 million of which were in automated databases.[2]
* Another 14 million arrests are recorded every year.[3]
What does this mean for employers? And what does it mean for ex-offenders who need a job?
Consider a 40-year-old male who was convicted of burglary when he was 18 years old and has committed no further crimes. Every time he applies for a new job, he tells the potential employer that he was convicted of a felony; even if he does not state this up-front, the employer is likely to do a criminal background check. In either case, he probably will not get the job because many employers are unwilling to hire an ex-offender.[4]
This situation prompted us to ask the question: Is it possible to determine empirically when it is no longer necessary for an employer to be concerned about a criminal offense in a prospective employee's past?
Most people would probably agree that there should be some point in time after which ex-offenders should not be handicapped in finding employment. The question is when, precisely, should this occur? In the case of our hypothetical 40-year-old, when should a prospective employer no longer consider a burglary that was committed more than two decades earlier if the job applicant has stayed clean since then?
Currently, employers have no empirical guidance on when it might be considered safe to overlook a past criminal record when hiring an ex-offender for a particular job. Employers generally pick an arbitrary number of years for when the relevance of a criminal record should expire: five or 10 years, for example. It goes without saying that different types of employers will have different sensitivities about the potential employee's criminal record. Those serving vulnerable populations like children and the elderly would be particularly sensitive to a prior record involving violence, while a bank hiring a teller would be particularly sensitive to property crimes. A hiring crew for a construction company might be far less sensitive to most prior records.
The point is that determining when a potential employee's criminal record may no longer be relevant has, to date, been an arbitrary exercise. Although considerable research has been done on how to forecast possible criminal behavior, no empirical basis has been found for deciding when a person's record is stale enough for an employer to consider it no longer useful or relevant.[5]
Until now.
The National Institute of Justice funded our study to "actuarially" estimate a point in time when an individual with a criminal record is at no greater risk of committing another crime than other individuals of the same age. Although our research is ongoing — and our findings, discussed in this article, are preliminary — we have created a model for providing empirical evidence on when an ex-offender has been clean long enough to be considered, for employment purposes, "redeemed." An in-depth discussion of our findings and research methods appears in the May 2009 issue of Criminology.[6]
What We Have Known for Years
It is well known — and widely accepted by criminologists and practitioners alike — that recidivism declines steadily with time clean.[7] Most detected recidivism occurs within three years of an arrest and almost certainly within five years.[8] But is it possible to identify when the risk of recidivism has declined sufficiently to be considered irrelevant in hiring decisions?
In our study, we obtained the criminal history records of 88,000 individuals who were arrested for the first time in New York state in 1980.[9] First, we determined whether they had committed any other crime(s) during the ensuing 25 years or if they had stayed clean. Then we compared this data against two populations:
1. People in the general population who were the same age.[10]
2. People of the same age who had never been arrested.
Our goal was to determine empirically at what point in time the risk of recidivism for people in our study group was no greater than the risk for our two comparison populations.[11] To do this, we plotted data curves to determine when the risk of re-arrest for individuals in our study group:
* Dropped below the risk of arrest for same-aged people in the general population.
* Approached the risk of arrest for people who had never been arrested.
We believe that our analysis provides the criminal justice community with the first scientific method for estimating how long is "long enough" for someone with a prior record to remain arrest-free before he or she should be considered "redeemed" by a prospective employer.
Determining the Hazard Rate
Our analysis was based on a statistical concept called the "hazard rate." The hazard rate is the probability, over time, that someone who has stayed clean will be arrested. For a person who has been arrested in the past, the hazard rate declines the longer he stays clean.
To determine the hazard rate for our study group, we looked at two factors:
* Age at the time of the 1980 (first) arrest.
* Type of crime.
We then compared these hazard rates, as they declined over time, to people of the same age in the general population. For these data, we used the arrest rate (the age-crime curve) from the Uniform Crime Reports, maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In the above figure, we show the hazard rate for 18-year-olds when they were arrested for a first offense of one of three crimes: robbery, burglary and aggravated assault. The figure shows that for robbery, the hazard rate declined to the same arrest rate for the general population of sameaged individuals at age 25.7, or 7.7 years after the 1980 robbery arrest. After that point, the probability that individuals would commit another crime was less than the probability of other 26-year-olds in the general population.
The figure also shows our analysis for burglary and aggravated assault. The hazard rates of people who committed burglary at age 18 declined to the same as the general population somewhat earlier: 3.8 years post-arrest at age 21.8. For aggravated assault, the hazard rates of our study group and the general population of same-aged individuals occurred 4.3 years post-arrest or at age 22.3.
Individuals who were arrested for robbery at age 18 had to stay clean longer than those who were arrested for burglary or aggravated assault to reach the same arrest rate as same-aged people in the general population.
We also looked at the effect of the arrestee's age at the time of his first arrest in 1980. We examined the hazard rates for three ages of people in our study group — 16, 18 and 20 years old — who were arrested for robbery in 1980. Based on the criminal histories of these people, we found that individuals who were first arrested when they were 18 years old had the same arrest rate 7.7 years later as a same-aged individual in the general population. In contrast, those whose first arrest occurred at age 16 crossed the curve for a same-aged individual in the general population 8.5 years later, and individuals who were first arrested at age 20 crossed their curve 4.4 years after their first arrest.
Thus, our analysis showed that the younger an offender was when he committed robbery, the longer he had to stay clean to reach the same arrest rate as people his same age in the general population. We also performed the same analysis for the first offenses of burglary and aggravated assault and found similar results.
Comparing Hazard Rates to the Never-Arrested
As noted earlier, our study also compared hazard rates to people who had never been arrested. Needless to say, the hazard rates for people in our study group (because they had been arrested) would never be the same as the hazard rate for people who had never been arrested. But it is reasonable to expect that an ex-offender's hazard rate gets close enough — the longer he stays clean — for an employer performing a criminal background check to determine acceptability for a particular position.
The higher an employer's risk tolerance — that is, the closer a prospective employer would have to get to the hazard rate of the never-arrested — the longer an ex-offender would have to stay clean.
How Robust Were Our Results?
Our preliminary results are limited to people who were arrested in New York state in 1980. Our next step will be to determine if the data hold true at other times and in other places. For example, we want to see whether we get similar results if we draw upon a sample of people who were arrested for the first time in 1985 and in 1990 because these years were quite different from 1980 in a number of important ways:
* 1980 was a peak crime year due to demographic shifts of baby boomers aging out of the high-crime ages.
* 1985 saw a "trough in crime rates" before young people were recruited to sell crack as older crack sellers were sent to prison.
* 1990 was near a peak before the beginning of the crime drop in the 1990s.[12]
If we find that the hazard rates for exoffenders in these years are similar to what we have found in our preliminary analysis, the usefulness of our hazard-rate analysis method would be strengthened.
Note that our analysis looked at any crime as the marker for when a second arrest occurs; we would also like to examine the relative risk of a specific second crime because, as we stated earlier, different types of employers have different risk tolerances for particular crimes.
We also want to test our risk-analysis model with data from different states. Although it is possible that variations in local populations and arrest practices may affect the results, we anticipate that they would be reasonably close.
Another aspect of future research will explore the possibility that some of the individuals in our study group who looked clean in New York state might have been arrested in another state. We will access FBI records to determine if an individual with no further arrests in New York may have been arrested in New Jersey or Florida, for example.
Public Policy Implications
We believe that our preliminary findings and ongoing research offer an opportunity to think about when an ex-offender might be "redeemed" for employment purposes — that is, when his or her criminal record empirically may be shown to be irrelevant as a factor in a hiring decision.
People performing criminal background checks would find it valuable to know when an ex-offender has been clean long enough that he presents the same risk as other people in the general population. Employers also might be more likely to use this type of analysis if there were state statutes protecting them against due diligence liability claims when they adhered to reasonable risk-analysis findings.
We also believe that our findings could play an important role in policy discussions about the maintenance of and access to criminal record databases. Considerable policy control rests with those who oversee state criminal history repositories. These decision-makers could establish policies that prevent repositories from distributing records that are determined by hazard-rate analysis to be no longer relevant. Or repositories could seal or even expunge old records if they are deemed, based on such an analysis, to be no longer relevant to assessing future risk. Such policy decisions would inevitably vary from state to state and be driven by other relevant considerations, but policymakers may find valuable guidance in our research findings and methods for considering such decisions.
For example, officials who manage repositories of criminal records could inform prospective employers (and others who access criminal history records) when such records are "stale" — that is, when a recidivism risk analysis demonstrates that a prior arrest or conviction is no longer meaningfully relevant. Pardon boards, too, could use this type of analysis to decide when to grant a pardon to an applicant.
Where to From Here?
At a meeting of the American Society of Criminology in the early 1970s, one of the panelists argued against computerization — that was just then beginning — of criminal history records. Computers, he maintained, didn't understand the Judeo-Christian concept of "redemption." Another panelist challenged him, stating that paper records certainly did not understand that concept ... but at least computers could be "taught."
Our research is looking at what we might "teach" those computers.
As we said at the beginning of this article, our research is ongoing and needs much further robustness testing to ensure that findings apply more universally, beyond our study group of first-time 1980 arrestees in New York. Nonetheless, we believe that these findings represent the first empirical evidence on "redemption times" and how these could affect policies aimed at enhancing employment opportunities for ex-offenders.
NIJ Journal No. 263, June 2009
NCJ 226872 ..Source.. by Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura
February 24, 2009
Running a Business After Doing Time
2-24-2009 National:
THIS year, nearly 700,000 people will be released from state or federal prisons. They will join the worst economy in decades, many of them with limited education and little or no legitimate employment experience. And a criminal record will make it that much harder to find a job.
Yet newly released prisoners need to work, not just to support themselves or their families, but also because having a job correlates with staying out of trouble. One study, in December 2006, found that 89 percent of people who violate the terms of their parole or probation were unemployed.
In the past few years, several programs have been introduced to teach prisoners, who may have problems finding traditional employment after their release, how to work for themselves.
“We try to help these guys realize that the skills they already possess from illegal ventures have real value in the business world,” explains Catherine Rohr, founder and chief executive of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, based in Houston. “Major drug dealers are already proven entrepreneurs.”
The program, usually called P.E.P., works with men incarcerated in Texas and spends about $15,000 on each graduate. Last year, it raised $2.5 million from private sources. Ms. Rohr, a graduate of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, started P.E.P. in May 2004, when she was 27. She said she left a $200,000-a-year job in private equity when her Christian faith led her to embark on a life of service.
Prisoners accepted into the five-month P.E.P. program attend class for 35 hours a week. Curtis Hogue, a former securities analyst, teaches an intensive M.B.A.-style curriculum, with lessons in finance, accounting, marketing and sales. Several dozen executives and business students volunteer as guest lecturers or as judges at a competition for the best business plan.
A few days each week, Ms. Rohr teaches a course on character development. She stresses what she calls “consequence trails” and encourages students to recognize the suffering and pain unleashed in the wake of bad decisions.
Ms. Rohr says she believes the focus on character is essential. Without it, the program might, as she puts it, “take an old dope dealer, equip him with a skill set and help him to become a better dope dealer when he gets out.”
P.E.P. also sponsors comprehensive post-release programs for its graduates in Houston and Dallas. Services include housing, free or low-cost dental and medical care and an evening entrepreneurship school taught by volunteers who also serve as professional mentors.
Since the program’s inception, 441 men, roughly a quarter of whom had been incarcerated for violent crimes, have graduated. Just over 8 percent have returned to prison — nationally, the recidivism rate exceeds 25 percent.
A low recidivism rate can be a misleading measure of success, warns Shawn Bushway , a criminologist at the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany. Prison-based work programs can be effective, he explains, but their success may say as much about the cross-section of participants as the programs themselves.
Ms. Rohr happily acknowledges cherry-picking the most talented prisoners who want to change their ways. She says that P.E.P. accepts only about 20 percent of its applicants. Moreover, fewer than half the students accepted last year graduated from the program. Most graduates put their business skills to work for someone else, but 57 men have begun their own businesses. These range from painting and automotive repair to catering; 32 of the 57 businesses are still operating.
One of the entrepreneurs is Nathan Dangerfield, owner of Promised Land Lawn Service in Houston. Mr. Dangerfield, who was released from prison in October 2006, after serving 21 months for possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, started the business in March 2008. A low-interest $2,000 loan and a $500 seed grant, both from P.E.P., financed the company.
Mr. Dangerfield, who has two part-time employees, declined to disclose current revenue, but says he hopes to gross $250,000 this year by expanding the number of commercial customers. He consults weekly with a mentor he met through P.E.P. Mr. Dangerfield calls the program “the best opportunity I could have had at a second chance.”
ANOTHER P.E.P. graduate, Jeffrey Doucette, began Save the Day Restoration and Carpet Care, in Wylie, Tex., in December. He was released from prison in January 2008, after serving 42 months for drug dealing, and says P.E.P. gave him not just business knowledge, but also honesty and integrity. “If I don’t clean the spot of carpet behind a door, I can’t live with myself,” he said.
Many in the corrections business are wary of entrepreneurship programs, according to Deborah Mukamal, director of the Prisoner Reentry Institute at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Entrepreneurs must thrive in unstructured environments, and many ex-offenders do better with more structure, she says. In addition, failure rates among new companies are high.
Ms. Mukamal nonetheless commends P.E.P. and similar programs, like the Coffee Creek Prison Project in Wilsonville, Ore., and the Workshop in Business Opportunities in New York, which offers a course to introduce inmates to the basic concepts of owning a business.
“These are new, bold ideas,” she says, “and there are too many people going into prison and coming home not to try new ideas.” ..Source.. by Leslie Berlin
November 19, 2008
MI- COLUMN: Sex offenders aren't the only creeps reading your Facebook
11-19-2008 Michigan:
As if we need to tell you time and time again, be careful what you post on the Internet.
The Interweb is such a glorious technology that every scandalous picture, every nipple slip, ahem "wardrobe malfunction," every suggestive motion you make with a friend, while intoxicated or not, is available for viewing by the peering eyes of perverts all around the globe. Through the wonder of the Internet, these people can obtain your phone numbers, home address, work address, class schedule, blogs, worst fears and feelings.
The Interweb is such a glorious technology, in fact, that not only the world's sex offenders and pedophiles can pry into your social and personal life, but the information is up for grabs for the worst scumbags you'll ever encounter: Your potential employers.
Yes, indeed. Employers are now using your Facebook pages, MySpace pages, whatever other social networking sites you may be affiliated with in order to get a vague idea of your character. So, unless you believe that your Peter Griffin quote generator, skanky club photos and countless misspellings and glaring grammatical errors in your interests will win over your potential boss, it may be best to give these sites a bit of a touching up.
I must say I was slightly curious as to why it was made such a big deal sometime last year when Facebook implemented access to everybody's pages on Yahoo! and Google, as well as every other major search engine. It now makes sense to me.
On one hand, the Internet is a public forum, and anybody with access is, in turn, privy to any information posted online. It is the ultimate medium of free speech. It allows anyone to post whatever they want and remain anonymous, and it's supposed to be protected by the First Amendment. So long as it's legal, anyway.
Of course, there's always the option to keep MySpace and Facebook accounts private, limiting the possibility of creepy employers to pry in and see what you're doing and thinking while away from the workplace. But these sites are hardly the accurate representation of character that a human relations department expects them to be.
If my Facebook were to be gazed upon by a future supervisor (rather, keeping my fingers crossed for a future editor), it would depict me as a smart-alecky, insolent, womanizing drunk with some clear homosexual tendencies. And while it is all true to an extent, the cameras only seem to be on me when I'm at my most hedonistic. While those close to me would likely call me (if I'm lucky) caring, soft-spoken and an all-around likeable guy, whereas somebody looking to hire me would probably see me as somewhat of a maniac. I do list "chainsaws" and "The Devil" as two of my interests, after all.
The one neat thing about social networking Web sites is that they give you the ability to give off an image that doesn't necessarily live up to the person, and all in good humor. However, nearly all of my superiors, past and present, seem to have no sense of it.
It makes about as much sense to me as using a credit record to judge someone for financial responsibility, or immediately labeling somebody as a junkie for failing a drug test. And employers, if not one or the other, often use both, making them about as key to the hiring process as a cover letter and a resume.
But, the times are a-changing. It's a possibility to track anything and anyone via the Web, and anyone with a computer will at some point be inclined to do so. In order to fend off perverts and lowly employers, it seems the only logical course of action is to completely remove yourself from the radar and delete your Facebook accounts. Or failing that, clean it up a little. Your friends will forgive you regardless. ..News Source.. by Dan Smith
July 27, 2008
Employers lean toward ex-cons over sex offenders
7-27-2008 National:
You're considering hiring someone with a criminal record. Risky enough. So which is probably more or a risk: an older man who committed a violent crime and then served a 20-year sentence, or the 20-something drug offender?
Go for the older man, according to Episcopal Social Services, a New York nonprofit providing services to people convicted of crimes.
"Violent offenders tend to be the better risk for an employer, because he's done his one big sentence. He's not going to do it again," said Anne Williams, a director at the agency.
She also said the formerly imprisoned generally make excellent employees.
"Individuals who have been imprisoned are highly motivated," Williams said. "The work ethic they get in prison is very strong. Employers can save on training costs."
Prisons often provide vocational training, and many prisoners earn advanced degrees while doing their time.
But sex offenders and arsonists are off-limits to Episcopal Social Services' employment services. Many jobs, including those dealing with "vulnerable populations" such as the elderly and young children, are also not permitted for people with criminal records.
Employers can get a federal tax credit of up to $2,400 a year for each formerly incarcerated employee, if he or she is less than a year out of prison. ..News Source.. by Tali Arbel
June 22, 2008
SCARLET LETTERS AND RECIDIVISM: DOES AN OLD CRIMINAL RECORD PREDICT FUTURE OFFENDING?
2006
Research Summary:
This research explores the issue of old prior records and their ability to predict future offending. In particular, we are interested in the question of whether, after a given period of time, the risk of recidivism for a person who has been arrested in the distant past is ever indistinguishable from that of a population of persons with no prior arrests. Two well-documented empirical facts guide our investigation: (1) Individuals who have offended in the past are relatively more likely to offend in the future, and (2) the risk of recidivism declines as the time since the last criminal act increases. We find that immediately after an arrest, the knowledge of this prior record does significantly differentiate this population from a population of nonoffenders. However, these differences weaken dramatically and quickly over time so that the risk of new offenses among those who last offended six or seven years ago begins to approximate (but not match) the risk of new offenses among persons with no criminal record. ..Source.. by MEGAN C. KURLYCHEK and ROBERT BRAME, University of South Carolina -and- SHAWN D. BUSHWAY, University of Maryland
May 29, 2008
The Reintegration of Sex Offenders: Barriers and Opportunities for Employment
February 2007:
Abstract:
The process of reintegration of offenders after release from prison, or during a community sentence, is a key aim of criminal justice policy. This article provides details from recent research that investigated the barriers and opportunities to employment for sex offenders. The authors describe the barriers that are faced by sex offenders and the anxieties that employers experience when employing sex offenders. The authors conclude that the approach taken by the State is less than reintegrative and serves to increase the barriers and reduce the opportunities for employment for sex offenders. ..Full Paper.. by KEVIN BROWN, University of Manchester - School of Law; JONATHAN W. SPENCER, University of Manchester - School of Social Sciences; JO DEAKIN, University of Manchester - School of Social Sciences
July 19, 2007
Can Employment Programs Help Ex-Prisoners Successfully Reenter Society?
July 2007:
Each year, more than 600,000 people are released from prison and seek to rejoin their communities. The obstacles to successful reentry are daunting, starting with the challenge of finding stable work. Indeed, two-thirds of released prisoners are rearrested, and half are reincarcerated within three years. In recognition of the enormous human and financial toll of recidivism, there is new interest among researchers, community advocates, and public officials in prisoner reentry initiatives, particularly those focused on employment.
What’s the Relationship Between Crime and Employment?
Although the relationship between crime and employment is complex, most experts seem to agree on a few things. First, a large proportion of former prisoners have low levels of education and work experience, health problems, and other personal characteristics that make them hard to employ, particularly in a labor market that offers fewer and fewer well-paying opportunities for individuals who lack postsecondary education. For example, 40 percent of inmates in state and federal prisons have neither a high school diploma nor a GED, 31 percent of state inmates have a “physical impairment or mental condition,” and 57 percent report that they used drugs in the month before their arrest.[1] ..more..
The above paper summarizes this July 2006 report: Employment-Focused Programs for Ex-Prisoners by Dan Bloom
