As with every New Year’s Day, many new laws went into effect throughout the country that will have a large effect on society as a whole. In California, this included the Fair Chance Act, AB 1008, which will make it easier for former convicts to be hired for work and escape the prison cycle. The new law makes it illegal for employers to ask about an applicant’s criminal history up until a conditional offer is made. This means that when companies are looking for new hires, they’ll only see an individual’s qualifications, not their criminal history. Once the applicant is interviewed and offered a position, employers can then perform a background check, and the applicant can accept or deny the offer. The need for this law comes from the fact that many former convicts are unable to find work because they aren’t considered for positions that they may be extremely qualified for. Most employers look at applicants’ criminal backgrounds as a way to “weed-out” candidates, and the struggle to find a job leads former convicts to recommit crimes in order to make a living. More than two-thirds of released offenders eventually return to jail, according to the National Institute of Justice.
So, what is the prison cycle?
The prison cycle works like this:
- An inmate commits a crime, gets sentenced, and serves time. While serving time in state and federal prisons, inmates are sometimes given access to on-site education programs and trade schooling. This is a good idea as far as providing inmates with skills they can use in the workforce, but the issue is that they are not very likely to even get hired when released due to their criminal convictions. This makes the programs and schooling almost pointless.
- Said inmate gets released after serving their sentence, and is left with whatever money is in their commissary account (often $100 or less), which then must be used to find transportation, food, a place to stay, etc. Many inmates are released only to find themselves alone with no contacts, which can very easily lead to homelessness.
- Because of their criminal records, employers deny former inmates work, which often results in them returning to illegal methods of earning money, like drug dealing, theft, and more.
- The never-ending cycle continues.
America currently has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world; while U.S. citizens only makeup 4% of the world’s population, they make up 22% of the world’s incarcerated individuals. These stats are largely due to the fact that America isn’t very good at criminal rehabilitation, something that would drastically lower the number of incarcerated individuals we have. However, this law proves that America’s reluctance to rehabilitate former convicts may be changing.
Photo: Kevork Djansezian / Getty
