All we want is "proportional unemployment," not preferences.
“We” are people with criminal records.
We are the people for whom in a "normal" or "typical" economy (remember those?) unemployment rates can range from 25% – 70%, depending upon our relative levels or lack of education.
We are not "ex-offenders," "offenders," "ex-cons," "cons" or the like, because those labels define us by the crime, not by what we are: people.
We are also not "returning citizens," as some of my colleagues now say. We don’t return to citizenship. If we’re citizens before our convictions, we don’t lose our citizenship afterwards – even if we lose the right to vote. That’s losing a right of citizenship; not citizenship.
And for those who are citizens, we’re legal citizens. That’s no swipe at the people who are here working without the right to do so. It’s just a fact.
We are 65 – 70 million Americans. We are roughly three times larger than the mid-20th Century African-American community who brought about the Civil Rights Act (even when the now pejorative terms like "Colored" or "Negro" predominated our lexicon).
We are about twice as many people as there are Americans without health insurance.
We are approximately 20 million felons – about the same number as America’s alleged illegal alien community.
We are the 800,000 or so who are released annually from state and federal prison.
We are the 2-3 million are incarcerated at any given time, many if not most for non-violent crimes.
We are 9 million who are released annually from local jails.
We are the people on whom taxpayers spend more money for prisons than for schools.
We are the people who on balance don’t commit more crimes if we have jobs. We are the people who once out of the criminal justice system for 3-5 years with jobs, are statistically no more likely to be arrested or convicted for a crime than people who lack a criminal record.
We are the people about whom employers wise enough to hire us say are the best workers they have, and the workers with the lowest attrition rates.
We work for cheap, and in most states it’s perfectly legal to pay us less money for the same work that someone who doesn’t have a criminal record gets paid.
The lack of a criminal record says nothing about the character, work ethic or potential of the person who doesn’t have one. But there is no such thing as an "ex-felon." We have the "F" always, absent a pardon from the President of the United States or our Governor, even if we’ve long ago paid our dues by serving our sentences, and even if are lucky enough to work and pay taxes – and child support.
In Canada, after ten years out of the criminal justice system, for many crimes a pardon is an administrative process, and a right. Not here.
Here, in America, it’s been said recently that our criminal justice system is the new Jim Crow. There is a good book out about that now, but I disagree with its thesis, because not all people with criminal records are African-American. But if our criminal justice system is the new Jim Crow, then we felons are all the new African-Americans.
Felony and the collateral consequences of conviction know no race or class boundaries. It’s true more African-American men are prosecuted and convicted than any other demographic. But the consequences of felony in employment, housing and other discrimination are the same. We white-collars don’t have our own networks and social connections to reintegrate us and help us with reentry. The prejudice is as virulent – it’s just different.
All felons have stigmatized identity, the degree is all that varies. We all walk around with a sense of otherness that can invade our psyches and damage our futures beyond words. The shame we must conquer is extraordinary. The anecdote is employment, almost always.
Most people have a “background.” Not everyone’s background is memorialized. So, next time someone like me comes knocking to convince you to hire a person with a criminal record, please don’t be so quick to judge and remember that all we want is "proportional unemployment."
Hire one of us and see what happens. You’ll want to hire another.
And so it goes.
Posted on November 1, 2010
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