Carly

Carly is a student at a community college, and her teacher wrote me this week asking for advice.  Carly has a conviction for prostitution from over eight years ago.  Yet to this very day most apartments, especially the ones she can afford, will not accept her as a tenant.  For the past month, she and her two children (ages 6 and 8) have been living in one motel room.  It has cost her $1,000, and she is running out of money.  She does not have a job – the conviction also goes against her when applying for jobs because it is classified as a “sex crime” even though it involved consenting adults.

Wiping tears from her cheeks, Carly met with her teacher recently and relayed her deep desire to continue to move forward with her life.  She has been involved with a faith-based job training program and now attends church regularly.  She is trying to keep her life turned around, but it’s really hard when she has no money, little to no chance at affordable housing, and no job.  Oh, and the unrelenting stigma of being a “sex criminal” with a sentence that seems like it will never end. 

Carly’s story represents thousands, maybe even millions, of other single mothers trying to make it on their own, to turn their lives around and keep them on track for their children. Yet the overwhelming baggage of a past that won’t go away, a criminal record for which they have already paid their debt to society, keeps tripping them up, knocking them back down, and relentlessly shaming them.

We need people of mercy to stand up, fill the merciless gaps, with courage and conviction and compassion.  Much like Carly’s teacher, right where you are, exactly where you find yourself every day, open your eyes, fill your heart with mercy, and you will see again. 

And Carly will be there waiting. 

“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” Psalm 27:14

Our Lord Jesus said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35

Day 23

Finding Home Again

When the formerly incarcerated take their first steps outside the prison walls, we have already seen that they have enormous obstacles finding stable employment.  Now add to that the significant barriers to finding a place to live.  Not only can they not afford anywhere to live without a job, but most housing is virtually unavailable to them.  Discrimination in public and private housing alike is perfectly legal, and quite prevalent.

Beginning in the 1980s with President Reagan and the War on Drugs and continuing into the 1990s with President Clinton’s “tough on crime” capitulation, public housing laws and policies increasingly allowed for legal discrimination against people with criminal records.  Today, public housing agencies enforce policies that exclude applicants and evict tenants with even the most minor criminal backgrounds.  Not just the formerly incarcerated and ones with criminal records are excluded.  Public housing agencies can even bar people with only arrests and those simply believed to be using illegal drugs or abusing alcohol.  These harsh exclusionary practices led the Human Rights Watch to declare, “Just about any offense will do, even if it bears scant relation to the likelihood the applicant will be a good tenant.” *see No Second Chance: People with Criminal Records Denied Access to Public Housing, p. 46. This is a fantastic resource about the denial of housing.

“No-fault” clauses may be the most controversial and unfair.  The “One Strike and You’re Out” policy (this is President Clinton’s baby) requires every public housing lease to stipulate that if the tenant, or any member of the tenant’s household or any guest of the tenant, engages in any drug-related or other criminal activity on or off the premises, the tenancy will be terminated.  Knowledge of or participation in the illegal activity is no longer required.  The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the “no-fault” clause because the eviction of innocent tenants was inconsistent with the legislative scheme.  The U.S. Supreme Court, however, reversed.  The “legality” of discrimination runs deep indeed.

So according to the U.S. Supreme Court, people can be tossed out of their homes due to no fault of their own.  William Lee and Barbara Hill, evicted because their grandsons smoked marijuana in a parking lot near their apartments.  Herman Walker, evicted after police found cocaine on his caregiver.  Perlie Rucker, evicted following her daughter’s arrest for possession of cocaine several blocks from her home.

As a result of these fears of “no-fault” policies, thousands of the formerly incarcerated end up homeless.  Vulnerable families have nowhere else to go if not public housing, so they exclude even their own kin who return from prison. A McCormick Institute of Public Affairs study found that nearly a quarter of the guests in homeless shelters had been incarcerated within the previous year.  In California a study estimated that 30-50% of individuals under parole supervision in San Francisco and Los Angeles were homeless.  *see Preventing Parolee Failure Program: An Evaluation

Yet, research shows that supportive housing for returning citizens substantially increases the likelihood a person with a criminal record will obtain and retain employment and remain drug- and crime-free.  The use of state prisons and city/county jails will decrease if we provide stable housing to people with criminal records.

Access to decent, stable, and affordable housing is a basic human right.  Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right to housing as part of the right to an adequate standard of living. However, in the U.S. this basic human right can be and is consistently denied to people simply looking for a second chance. “I’m trying to do the right thing; I deserve a chance,” declares a forty-one-year-old African American mother after being denied housing because of a single arrest four years prior. “Even if I was the worst criminal, I deserve a chance.  Everybody deserves a chance.”  *see Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, p. 148, quoting No Second Chance, p. i.

“…but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,”  Jesus tells his followers in Matthew 8:20.

Jesus knew, and God knows, what it is like to have no home.  Do we?  And if we choose to follow this criminal, homeless, poor Jesus, how will we respond when our eyes are opened to the truth?

Adam

The following excerpt is from William Stringfellow’s My People is the Enemy.  This book, Stringfellow’s “autobiographical polemic”, has been and continues to be one of the most realistic yet hopeful accounts of the lived experiences of the poor, and a work that continues to challenge and inspire me constantly.  If you work with the poor and oppressed, I strongly suggest you read some of Stringfellow’s work.  My People is the Enemy is a great one to start with.  This is one of my favorite passages.  Let’s call the boy Adam.

“The Word of God is present among the poor as well as among all others, and what I have called earlier the piety of the poor reveals the Word of God. The piety of the poor is prophetic: In a funny, distorted, ambiguous way it anticipates the Gospel. This is confirmed every day in East Harlem. There is a boy in the neighborhood, for instance, who is addicted to narcotics and whom I have defended in some of his troubles with the law. He used to stop in often on Saturday mornings to shave and wash up, after having spent most of the week on the streets. He has been addicted for a long time. His father threw him out about three years ago, when he was first arrested. He has contrived so many stories to induce clergy and social workers to give him money to support his habit that he is no longer believed when he asks for help. His addiction is heavy enough and has been prolonged enough so that he now shows symptoms of other trouble—his health is broken by years of undernourishment and insufficient sleep. He is dirty, ignorant, arrogant, dishonest, unemployable, broken, unreliable, ugly, rejected, alone. And he knows it. He knows at last that he has nothing to commend himself to another human being. He has nothing to offer. There is nothing about him that permits the love of another person for him. He is unlovable. Yet it is exactly in his own confession that he does not deserve the love of another that he represents all the rest of us. For none of us is different from him in this regard. We are all unlovable. More than that, the action of this boy’s life points beyond itself, it points to the Gospel, to God who loves us though we hate Him, who loves us though we do not satisfy His love, who loves us though we do not please Him, who loves us not for our sake but for His own sake, who loves us freely, who accepts us though we have nothing acceptable to offer Him. Hidden in the obnoxious existence of this boy is the scandalous secret of the Word of God.

It is, after all, in Hell—in that estate where the presence of death is militant and pervasive—that the triumph of God over death in Jesus Christ is decisive and manifest.

The Word of God is secretly present in the life of the poor, as in the life of the whole world, but most of the poor do not know the Word of God. These two facts constitute the dialectic of the Church’s mission among the poor. All that is required for the mission of the Church in Harlem is there already, save one thing: the presence of the community which has and exercises the power to discern the presence of the Word of God in the ordinary life of the poor as it is lived everyday. What is requisite to mission, to the exposure of God’s Word within the precarious and perishing existence of poverty, is the congregation which relies on and celebrates the resurrection.”

Little Easter 4

Radical

Earlier this week a friend shared some concerns with me that I might be viewed as a bit too radical for this part of the world.  So I struggled with this notion of being “too radical”.  For several hours I was feeling quite sullen and deeply conflicted.  Was I doing more harm than good?  Was I really too radical?  If so, what could I do to right the ship?  So many thoughts were going through my mind, and my heart was troubled.  And then some things happened that renewed my mind and transformed my spirit.

First, let me set the stage just a bit further.  There is some concern that my Lenten discipline might ruffle some feathers of the local legal community, perhaps giving them the wrong impression of myself and/or produce a slightly negative reputation.  The friend had fine intentions, wanting us to think through the long-term effects of my “personal convictions”.  I can understand this sentiment.  I have had to discern on several occasions whether I should wear the orange uniform, participate in some event, or go public at a certain place.  All of this discernment is necessary so that I do consider in a non-legalistic way the effects my personal spiritual discipline will have, not just now but in the coming months and years.  These concerns from and about the legal community really got to me.

So now dispirited, I received a phone call from a good friend later that afternoon.  He was calling for something totally unrelated to all of this, but little did he know how timely his call would be for me.  So after he unexpectedly got an earful from me, he quite wisely stated, “But Kent, you will never hear these concerns or statements from those who actually suffer.  The poor and oppressed aren’t concerned about you being too radical.”  Amen, brother, amen.

So I began again at that moment to remember that I am not doing this for the powers that be.  I am wearing the orange prison uniform for the powerless and voiceless.  On their behalf, I am using what power I have to speak truth to power, in love and grace, with a call for our collective confession and repentance and transformation.  The cries of the powerless matter more to me than the concerns of the powerful. For I trust in God’s unfailing love, and my heart rejoices in our Lord’s salvation (Psalm 13:5).

And then the Spirit of Life didn’t stop there.  The next morning I got a call from the front desk of Mission Waco’s Meyer Center for Urban Ministries, where I work, that said a woman and her son insisted on seeing me.  They were waiting in our all-purpose area.  So I drudgingly walked across the building and down the stairs, all the while thinking, “I hope this doesn’t take too long and isn’t too difficult; I am tired and have too much to do today!”  And then I turned the corner and saw the faces of this mother and her son light up with smiles that warmed me to my core.  “I saw you on TV, sitting on those courthouse steps”, exclaimed the mother [I couldn’t tell her it was just the steps of our building, ha]. “I just had to meet you and bring my son to talk with you.  This is as exciting to me as if I was meeting President Obama!”

Whoa, hold up a second.  President Obama.  I doubt that.  It’s just me, Kent McKeever, lawyer for the poor, minister to youth, father, husband, stumbling and bumbling sinner.  It’s just me.  But in these moments together and as I reflected on the experience, I began to allow this meeting of spirits to remind me of what matters most.  I don’t share this story with you to assert or suggest that I am as important as President Obama!  But maybe I was to this woman and her son.  You see, this mother’s son had just been released from prison.  He had been sentenced to 30 years for aggravated robbery.  The weapon that “aggravated” the robbery was a belt.  A BELT!  But now he was free and turning his life around after years in bondage to addiction and injustice.

Maybe my radical expression of God’s Grace and Love — the Hope of a different way of living, a faith that is willing to be “too radical”, a vision and act that confronts the culture of death we live in with the Way, the Truth, and the Life we know through Jesus and the Spirit of Life — maybe this radical expression was just radical enough.  Especially for the poor and oppressed.

God’s love is radical.  God’s grace is radical.  The hope we have in Jesus and the Life of the Spirit is radical.  My journey is not about me or my radical personal convictions.  This journey is about how I might understand and express this radical God through a radical faith in a radical confrontation with the powers of death in our world with the radical truth that Life and Love win. Why wouldn’t I want to be a radical messenger of Hope and healing to a mother and a son needing to hear a word of Grace?!  Why wouldn’t I be radical if I truly believe God loves me and you and God’s whole beautiful broken world?!

Yet in the same breath, why is my journey considered so extreme, so different, so disconcerting to some, and yet hope-filling to others?  It pains me that in living out our faith as followers of Jesus, my acts are not just considered the norm.  We come from a long line of radical mothers and fathers of our faith.  Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Rahab, Isaiah, Amos, Peter, Nathanael, Mary, John, Paul, Timothy, Lydia, Francis, Catherine, Gustavo, Martin, Theresa, Oscar, Dorothy, William, Bryan, Gary, and on and on and on.  Why is living out a radical faith in Life and Love so gosh darn strange?  Why are Christians sometimes the first and often the loudest in efforts to discredit, quiet, and counter a radical faith in Hope and Grace?  Can we truly say these words and mean them if we are not willing to be “too radical” — “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel; it is the power of God for salvation…”?!

Ultimately, my prayer is that acts such as my own will be the norm for followers of Jesus. I do not want to be “too radical”.  I want “too radical” to be the way we all live as faithful followers of Jesus.  In this way, maybe each one of us will find the one person we will excite with Hope and fill with Love so that we will truly be more exciting to them than meeting President Obama [_______________].  [I fully realize that President Obama may be the last person some of you may want to meet, so feel free to insert your own “celebrity” into the blank.  Ha]

“Everyone felt a sense of awe because the apostles were doing many signs and wonders among them. There was an intense sense of togetherness among all who believed; they shared all their material possessions in trust. They sold any possessions and goods that did not benefit the community and used the money to help everyone in need. They were unified as they worshiped at the temple day after day. In homes, they broke bread and shared meals with glad and generous hearts. The new disciples praised God, and they enjoyed the goodwill of all the people of the city. Day after day the Lord added to their number everyone who was experiencing liberation.“  Acts 2:43-47, The Voice

RADICAL IS OUR WAY OF LIFE.  SO TOGETHER LET’S LIVE RADICALLY IN GRACE, WITH HOPE, FAITH, AND MOST OF ALL, LOVE.  

 

 

 

Clifford

Clifford’s story is from Stories of ACLU Clients Swept Up in the Hearne Drug Bust of November 2000

In March 2001, Clifford Runoalds, 33 years old and the father of seven, returned home to Bryan, Texas to attend the funeral of his 18-month old daughter. Before the service began, local police summoned him from the church and handcuffed him. He pleaded with authorities to let him see his daughter’s body one last time before she was buried, but he was denied.

While in police custody, Clifford was told he was needed to testify in the trial of Corvian Workman, a Hearne resident who was arrested during the November 2000 drug taskforce sweeps. The District Attorney wanted Clifford to admit that he had witnessed Corvian selling drugs to an informant. Clifford was told that the transaction, and his participation, had been recorded on audiotape.

Knowing he was innocent, Clifford asked to hear the tape, but the DA refused. Instead, the DA offered to help Clifford with his parole if he testified that he had witnessed the drug deal. But, if he refused to say what the DA wanted, he would be prosecuted for being part of the drug deal. The day after Clifford refused to testify as requested, he was indicted on felony drug charges and held in jail for one month until the District Attorney dropped the charges.

At the time of his arrest, Clifford was building a new life for himself. As a young man, he had served time in prison and did many years of probation. But in his new home in Silver Springs, he had secured a permanent job and an apartment. He even had plans to have his five-year-old son come live with him. Clifford felt that he was finally getting past the problems of his youth and starting to live on his own. However, that all changed on the day of his daughter’s funeral.

As a result of his arrest, Clifford lost his job, apartment, furniture and car. Clifford currently lives in Bryan and works nights with the Labor Ready program.

“We are told by drug warriors that the enemy in this war is a thing — drugs — not a group of people, but the facts [and stories] prove otherwise… Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino.”  Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, p. 98

“There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man…”  Luke 10: 30-32

Day 22

Hey friends.  I took a little time today to streamline the blog site.  I added a page with links to stories, a “realities” page with summary of statistics and other comments on the situation we find ourselves in, and a Facebook “like” link and list of posts on the right side of the blog site.  

The numbers of readers have dwindled quite a bit over the last week.  For those faithful readers out there, thank you!  And help! One of my main purposes in this journey is to share the true stories and realities of the poor and oppressed.  To accomplish this goal, I need your help.  Please continue to share (best option!), like, post, tweet, and simply discuss these stories and lived experiences of those in chains.  And please send me comments, stories, resources, and anything and everything else that may be relevant to how we can work together to observe, inform, reflect, advocate, and transform.  

With this said, I hope that the updates to the blog may help encourage more readers, leading to greater awareness and resulting in transformational compassion, mercy, and love.    

Thank you for what each of you do to usher in the abundant Life and Beloved Community that we all so deeply and desperately long for…whether we know it or not.  

In humility, loving mercy, and doing justice, be strong and courageous as more than conquerors with our God who is Love.

Martin

From Mercy

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”  Martin Luther King, Jr.

MARTIN

Martin does not know his father. He grew up on the side of town where most of the boys did not know their fathers.  Martin is a 20 something year old black male living in a place where more black men are sent to prison than to college, a place where people with his color of skin are sent to prison at 5 times the rate of a white person just like him charged with the same crime. *See Justice Policy Brief on TX Imprisonment & Race

Martin is sent to prison for the first time before he is 20 years old for delivery of cocaine. He is not any kind of big time dealer, just a street level kid selling drugs.  He was lured into the drug business by the promise of “big money” and a sad perception of “success” that he feels he cannot reach going down any other path. He is sentenced to 8 years the first time he goes down, and he does his time.  Martin is released back into the free world, but now he is a convicted felon, the prospects of getting a job for a black man who is a convicted felon with no education are even worse than before.  He works at a car wash for a while, but the work is not consistent and he again falls back into the circle of low level drug dealers. He sells small amounts of cocaine, marijuana, and he learns to cook crack.  One evening he gets a call from one of his usual buyers and he meets them in a dark parking lot outside of a gas station.  Little does he know it’s a “set up” and he is being recorded by the local drug enforcement unit.  He does the deal, and minutes later he is back in handcuffs in the back of a cop car.

One of his suppliers bonds him out of jail within a few days, and he is back on the street again. Now he is “beholden” to the supplier, even more than he was before, he has to go back to selling to pay for his freedom. He walks outside the local food mart in his neighborhood, a neighborhood known for narcotics sales and prostitution…the local cops drive by, roll down their windows and say “Martin! When we gonna see you back in cuffs! Won’t be long.”  Within days, Martin is arrested again for delivery of cocaine.

I was appointed to represent Martin after the first drug deal….and then several more arrests and charges came after that.  Every time, somehow, someone would make Martin’s bond, I’ve always been suspicious that it was whoever was above him in the drug chain.  And regardless of what I told him would happen “with the next one,” and even though he knew he would just end up back in jail awaiting a lengthier prison sentence than before, he would get out and go back to selling drugs and pick up another pending charge.

Eventually Martin had so many pending felony drug charges that no Judge would agree to set a bond to release him.  After years of representing Martin, I went to visit him in the jail.  Martin was in a state of mind I’d never seen him before. Martin who is a very bright, and usually cool, calm, and collected young man was beside himself with fear and anger. He told me that he’d just received news that his girlfriend was pregnant, with a son.  A son that would grow up without his father just like he did. Martin was facing 25 years in prison to life for numerous drug crimes — non-violent drug crimes. He was angry, he pounded his fists against the glass window between us, he screamed, he cursed, he called me names and yelled out.  He needed to be angry with the world, with me, with himself.  He cried and he screamed. I cried.  I sat there and tried to get him to calm down, eventually I left shaken and knowing that I would have to try to communicate with him another day.

I’ve spoken to friends, family, and colleagues about Martin and his breakdown that day. Much to the surprise of many of my friends and family who hear this story, Martin was and always has been one of my favorite clients – he is a talented musician, a bright young man – who in different circumstances, with different guidance, might’ve gone to college to be something other than a drug dealer.  Martin will most likely never get that chance to be anything outside of the walls of a prison and his total breakdown in front of me in the jail was just an outpouring of him realizing that his life was essentially over. As I watched this usually “tough” young man completely unravel in front of me, my heart broke – there was nothing I could say to him to “make it better” in that moment, there was nothing I could do “to make it go away.”

Many people would look at Martin’s circumstances and they would harp on Martin’s “choices” and that he “made his bed” and he just has to live with his choices now and “lay in that bed.” To a certain point, I have to agree that Martin has made some poor choices, but what breaks my heart and seems completely unfair is how his choices were not the same choices that I had growing up….you see I had two parents who loved me at home, I did not hear gunshots outside my bedroom window as a child, I did not grow up knowing that more people like me would end up in prison than anywhere else, I did not grow up seeing drug deals in my local park, I did not struggle to get jobs to help my mom pay her rent and I could not help her pay the bills, so I finally gave up and starting selling like everyone else I knew…no, that was not my world. I had different choices, much easier choices. And we can talk about choices and consequences, and I think Martin should face some consequences for some of his poor choices, but I must disagree with the level and severity of the consequences and the life ending punishment he now faces.

It pains me that we are not trying to solve this problem.  It hurts my heart that more of us are not trying to figure out a solution for how Martin’s son will not end up just like him.  Why do we just sit back and stare in hate and judgment?  It angers me that many of us think we are on a “level playing field” because that is simply NOT TRUE.  I have to be honest that one of the things that briefly drove me away from my own community of faith for a time several years ago was some of the hate and just the spirit of unforgiveness that I felt surrounding the Christian community.  I don’t mean all Christians, but it saddens me to see the stigma that is sometimes is attached to the Christian community.  A spirit that is not one of love and forgiveness, but rather of hate and judgment.

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” The “as I have loved you” part is the heart of what I dream for in my own soul and mind, but often fall so short of, myself included.  I think of the loving Father God I know who opened His arms and with eyes of total compassion said, “I know what you’ve done, I know all of your screw ups big and small and you are forgiven and I do not love you any less.”  The Father of the Universe knows the darkest places and sins within me, and HE loves me despite MY greatest sins, and does not want to give up on me.  I pray that as Christians we not lose sight of loving those we might think are “least deserving” of our love and forgiveness.  And I pray that we LOVE them with more love than we think they deserve because that’s exactly how our God loves us.  Perhaps if we approach drug crimes and their punishment with eyes of love and compassion, then maybe just maybe, we will realize that the harsh punishments that once seemed “just” are in fact the opposite.  Perhaps then we will come up with a creative solution that does not involve building more prisons and so many sons growing up without their fathers for generations. Let us forgive, let us love, let us love like our wonderful God loves us….a depth of love and forgiveness that is unending.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35

Day 21

Not Enough

Fair Chance Hiring Policies and Ban the Box Campaigns are fantastic starts. However, they are just not enough. We cannot allow for the successes of these efforts to mask the deeper realities that continue to haunt those with criminal records and plague our society in general. Here are just a couple of reasons, of many.

Racialization of the Box

The unemployment rate for blacks is about double that among whites, as it has been for the past six decades.  *See Pew Research

Over one-third of young blacks in the U.S. are out of work.  And the jobless rate for young black male dropouts, including those incarcerated, has been 65%.  *See Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America, p. 90; Bureau of Labor Statistics data; and CNSNews

Studies indicate that white ex-offenders may actually have an easier time gaining employment than African Americans without a criminal record.  *See Devah Pager, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration, pp. 90-91, 146-147

The association of race and criminality is so pervasive that some scholars suggest that black males may suffer more discrimination, not less, when particular criminal history information is unavailable.  *See Devah Pager, Marked, among others

We live in a racialized society.  We must admit our complicity, confess our silence, and repent.  Turn away.  Removing a box on an application is not enough if we don’t remove the boxes that separate us and devastate our hearts and minds and the soul of our society.  This de-racialization, or a bit more simply the freedom to live in the Beloved Community, is no simple task.  However, we are more than conquerors through our God who loves us.  All of us.  And the world will know us by our love.  Love that conquers all that stands in its way.  Go out today as more than conquerors, my friends.  It is the only way for all of us to truly Live.

 

Do We Believe in Clean Slates Anymore?

Even if we get rid of the “box” and provide for Fair Chance Hiring policies, the criminal record still remains and the dehumanizing stigma persists.  Eli Lehrer writes, “This doesn’t mean that ex-convicts should necessarily have to carry the stigma of an offense around the rest of their lives. In this case, the United Kingdom’s practice of allowing offenses to become “spent” deserves a close look in the U.S. In the UK, offenders that behave well can consider jail/prison time “spent” after seven or 10 years of good behavior. Once a sentence is spent, it isn’t mentioned in publicly available records and, for most purposes, it’s considered a non-issue. Recent criminal history can still be asked about and considered, however.”  *see “Ban the Box” Goes Too Far… and Not Far Enough for a perspective questioning the effectiveness of “ban the box” policies.  Although I do not agree that “ban the box” policies will not effectively accomplish much positive change for applicants with criminal records, I am fully supportive of policies that go much further in allowing for criminal records to become “spent”.

Why wouldn’t we wipe the slate clean after years of good behavior?  Is that not what we would want for ourselves?

 

Finally, simply removing a box on an employment application does not address the myriad other ways that people with criminal records encounter legal discrimination.  Over the next couple of days, I hope to paint a picture of the widespread, never-ending legal discrimination and dehumanizing stigma attached to the 1 in 4 American adults with criminal records.  We must be creative, courageous, compassionate, and comprehensive problem-solvers as we confront and transform these pervasive structural and systemic evils.

 

 

Emma

From The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in and Age of Colorblindness, pp.96-7 and PBS Frontline The Plea

“Imagine you are Emma Faye Stewart, a thirty-year old, single African American mother of two who was arrested as part of a drug sweep in Hearne, Texas. All but one of the people arrested were African American.  You are innocent.  After a week in jail, you have no one to care for your two small children and are eager to get home.  Your court-appointed attorney urges you to plead guilty to a drug distribution charge, saying the prosecutor has offered probation.  You refuse, steadfastly proclaiming your innocence.  Finally, after almost a month in jail, you decide to plead guilty so you can return home to your children.  Unwilling to risk a trial and years of imprisonment, you are sentenced to ten years probation and ordered to pay $1,000 in fines, as well as court and probation costs.  You are also now branded a drug felon.  You are no longer eligible for food stamps; you may be discriminated against in employment; you cannot vote for at least twelve years; and you are about to be evicted from public housing.  Once homeless, your children will be taken from you and put in foster care.

A judge eventually dismisses all cases against the defendants who did not plead guilty.  At trial, the judge finds that the entire sweep was based on the testimony of a single informant who lied to the prosecution.  You, however, are still a drug felon, homeless, and desperate to regain custody of your children.”

Regardless of guilt or innocence, is this type of “tough-on-crime” system and its devastating collateral consequences really solving anything?  Or just making things worse?  We need to be people of courageous problem-solving, instead of weak-kneed singleminded-ness.  Will we boldly examine and correct all that stands in the way of life and love?  For Emma’s sake, I sure hope so.

Day 20

Win-Win

       Some employers, rightly so, are concerned about their legal liability when they hire people with criminal records.  Employers can be held liable for the foreseeable acts of their employees within the scope of their employment.  So employers scan an applicant’s history for indicators of future actions.  Thus, criminal background checks.  However, we know that overextended and blanket prohibition hiring policies not only hurt individual applicants but also decrease the applicant pool, weaken our economy, and threaten public safety.

       Thus, in the 2013 Legislative Session in Texas, lawmakers passed a law that limits the liability of persons who employ persons with criminal records. A cause of action can be brought only if the employee was previously convicted of an offense while “performing duties substantially similar to those reasonably expected to be performed in the employment . . .”  But the statute does not completely eliminate liability if the employer knows or should have known about convictions that are sexually violent or what are commonly called aggravated offenses.  Additionally, the Texas House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence has been tasked with an Interim Charge to:  “Study the potential issues involving civil liability for interacting with ex-offenders. In particular, examine the implications of HB 1188 (83R) and the potential expansion of similar protections to landlords.”  This potential legislation could be another significant step in the direction of de-stigmatizing and removing legal discriminations for people with criminal records.

       And there are additional protections against legal liability if the employers follow the guidance from the EEOC.  In a nutshell, employers should perform an individualized assessment of the applicant, including criminal history if necessary.  A targeted screen must include consideration of at least the following three factors:  the nature and gravity of the offense or conduct; the time that has passed since the time of the offense, conduct, and/or completion of the sentence; and the nature of the job held or sought.  If an employer conducts this targeted screen and individualized assessment and thus will most consistently meet the “job related and consistent with business necessity” defense as laid out by the EEOC.

These protections from legal liability should encourage employers to widen their applicant pool, give people with criminal records a fair chance in the hiring process, and benefit communities in many significant ways. Along with the other benefits to employers listed below, employers must be encouraged to hire people with criminal records, for the sake of their business and their community.  It’s a win-win.

Please share these great benefits and opportunities with your employers or explore them yourself if you have control over the hiring process!

Benefits to Employers Who Hire People with Criminal Records, *see HB 1188 Implementation Guide

• Under the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, employers can earn a tax credit of between $1,200 and $9,600 for hiring someone who has been convicted of a felony.
• Under the Federal Bonding Program, employers who hire individuals with criminal records can receive a bond, up to $5,000, that insures the employer against any type of theft, forgery, larceny, or embezzlement.
• As a result of recent legislation, Texas licensing agencies cannot deny commercial, professional, or occupational licenses to individuals who have convictions for Class C misdemeanors or who have completed successful deferred adjudications, thus easing employer concerns about licensing of possible employees.
• Also as a result of legislation, employers can no longer be sued for cause merely because they hire an employee who has a criminal history and that individual commits another crime.