Served your time in prison and looking for a job? You're out of luck

Few ex-prisoners in the US manage to secure employment after their release – a prior conviction automatically disqualifies them. Homeboy Industries is working to change that

When Vance Webster was released from prison three years ago, he was determined to find a job, his first ever, and finally get his life off the ground. He was 45 years old and had been in prison since he was 16, serving out a 25 to life sentence for being an accessory after the fact to a gang-related murder and robbery. Vance applied for hundreds of positions, did over 80 interviews and finally, almost miraculously, got a job in a warehouse. Seven months into that job, a supervisor told him he was being let go for having lied on his application. He had failed to tick the box that asked if he had been convicted of a felony in the past seven years. Although he pointed out that he hadn't actually committed a felony in 29 years, he was fired and the job he'd fought so hard to get was gone and, so it seemed, was his shot at a decent life.

Every year, approximately 650,000 people are released from prison with their time served and their debt to society supposedly repaid. For most of them, however, even the most minor of crimes can result in a life sentence of unemployment. In most states, every job application form has a box that asks if you have ever been convicted of a crime. It's safe to assume that when an x marks the spot, most of the applications will not make it past the first round. In addition to this huge hurdle to gaining employment, former prisoners are routinely denied access to welfare, public housing, educational funding and, of course, the right to vote. Marilyn Austin-Smith, a member of All of Us or None, a campaign for post-prison employment, said it best in a recent radio interview:

"They're stopping you from feeding your babies, stopping you from making a living and they wonder why there's so much crime in the world."

In California, where Vance is from and where gangs thrive in low income neighborhoods, the recidivism rate is close to 70%. Vance could well have ended up on the wrong side of that statistic if a little organization with big aspirations calledHomeboy Industries had not found its way onto his radar. Homeboy Industries is the brainchild of Father Greg Boyle, who realised that the answer to crime in the economically disadvantaged neighbourhood that is his parish was not more prison time, but more jobs. He quickly realised how reluctant many employers were to hire anyone with a criminal record, so he decided to find ways to get them working himself. With the help of a small donation from a movie producer, Boyle took over a rundown bakery. Now, 20 years later, Homeboy Industries has an operating budget of $14.8 million andemploys nearly 400 people its bakery, the Homegirl Cafe, its Tattoo Removal parlor and other enterprises. It also has its own line of products (such as Homeboy Salsa), which is the best-selling item in the deli section at the Ralph's Supermarket Chain.

When Vance walked into the Homeboy offices, he was given a job immediately and that job has changed his life. Within three years, he has worked his way up through the chain of command to the Leadership Committee and now spends his days enabling other "homeboys" to escape the trap of poverty and crime. Not everyone is so lucky, however. As outlined in this report by the National Employment Law Project called "65 Million Need Not Apply" there are far more people with criminal convictions looking for jobs than Homeboy Industries and organizations across the country like them can possibly accommodate. The recession is making things worse of course, but so is another factor that has emerged in the recent past: the rise of online criminal databases. This ease of access to criminal records on the internet makes it impossible for people to ever escape their criminal past, even when their convictions are decades old.

Lawmakers across the country are slowly starting to realise that sentencing people to a lifetime of unemployment, in addition a stint in prison, is not the smartest way to go about reducing crime. Many jurisdictions have implemented "ban the box" measures on job application forms for public sector jobs. But only two states so far, Hawaii and Massachusetts, have banned the box for job seekers in both the private and public sector. This does not mean that a beleaguered employer will suddenly find themselves with a dangerous criminal in their midst; criminal background checks can and do happen further along in the process. It simply means that a prior conviction does not automatically disqualify an applicant. According to Homeboy's Emily Skehan, this is actually good news for employers. Some of the industries they work with, like the Iron Workers Union, now only hire homeboys because they tend to make stellar employees.

"They know how much they have to lose, she says, "for them it's not just a job, it's their chance at life."

Sadly, our current policies and practices ensure that millions of people are denied that chance. This is unfortunate, because many people who end up in the criminal justice system endure childhoods that read like horror stories of deprivation and neglect, but in the "homeboy" world are nothing special. Vance was rendered homeless at the age of 12 after witnessing his mother being beaten into a coma by an abusive partner. He slept on the rooftop of a local McDonalds and survived on leftovers the restaurant staff gave him. He spent his teenage years in and out of juvenile detention, before copping his 29 year prison term. Yet now, at age 48, he is living an exemplary life. The potential to do so was always in him, it just required a little kindling.

Many other homeboys could benefit from a little kindling too. A far better approach than our current one of heaping disadvantage on those who have already had more than their fair share.

Isa 42:22- But this [is] a people robbed and spoiled; [they are] all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore.

Psa 25:20- O keep my soul, and deliver me: let me not be ashamed; for I put my trust in thee.

2 Esdras 2:20  Do right to the widow judge for the fatherless give to the poor defend the orphan clothe the naked