Reasons Mount for Companies to Hire Ex-Criminals
If you have or hope to have a job, there may be an ex-criminal in your future, whether you like it or not. Facts suggest you should probably like it.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has begun to fight companies that refuse to hire people if they have been convicted of a crime, according to reports from the Associated Press and the Society for Human Resources Management. The EEOC makes sensible exceptions: you don’t have to hire someone convicted of embezzlement into an accounting position. But unless the crime directly relates to the job, the EEOC says refusing to hire the person on the basis of the crime alone may amount to illegal discrimination. Because certain groups are more likely to be convicted of crimes in this country, criminal records could be used as ways to avoid hiring people in those groups. “Having an arrest record should not be used as a blanket exclusion from employment,” the EEOC says flatly. Some U.S. states have made such blanket bans illegal.
Adding the threat of legal action to the mix makes hiring a best candidate who happens to be an ex-criminal a rational choice. Jacob Blass of Ethical Advocate says only 7 percent of ethical violations are committed by people with prior records of misbehavior, and other sources report similar figures for crimes. That means all those people you hire who don’t have records are greater crime risks than those who do. People hired despite their records will know they’re being watched, and on the positive side, be grateful to you for hiring them. They have extra motivation to both do well and do good.
There are issues of the “greater good” here as well. Say a drug addict who resorts to mugging to support her habit completes her legal obligations and cleans up, but nobody will hire her. Eventually she has two choices to support herself: welfare, or crime. The pressures of unemployment will make it harder for her to stay clean. A relapse could lead back to medical services at government expense. Any citizen who pays taxes or likes to take a walk at night has practical reasons for supporting the rights of people who have “done their time.”
Of course, every major religion (and the Humanist Manifesto) implies an inherent belief that people who fall off the right path can get back on. Corporate policy makers who create blanket bans against formerly lost sheep may be breaking a higher law than that of the United States.
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