WASHINGTON (AP) — More than half a million people leave U.S. prisons each year, but with jobs, housing and mental health services scarce, many are soon back behind bars. On Monday, President Barack Obama will call for breaking that cycle of incarceration by helping former inmates successfully re-enter society.
With his visit to a drug treatment center in Newark, New Jersey, Obama aims to boost his ongoing push for overhauling the criminal justice system. In rare bipartisan fashion, Congress is considering legislation cutting sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, but Obama will seek to force attention to the plight offenders face once they’re finally set free.
“Everyone has a role to play, from businesses that are hiring ex-offenders to philanthropies that are supporting education and training programs,” Obama said in his weekly address.
Without new laws, Obama is limited in what he can to do. For example, Obama has asked Congress to “ban the box” — shorthand for prohibiting the government and its contractors for asking job applicants about criminal histories on applications. It’s an issue resonating in the Democratic presidential primary, with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley all supporting steps to help those convicted of crimes find employment.
Using his own authority where possible, Obama will announce he’s asking the government personnel office to wait until later in the hiring process to ask about criminal histories — a step most federal agencies have already taken, the White House said. The Obama administration will also clarify its “one strike” rule that prevents many people with arrest records from living in public housing.
At Integrity House, a state-funded drug and residential treatment center, Obama was to be joined by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Obama also planned to host a roundtable and deliver a statement at Rutgers University’s law school.
Aiming to seize some of Obama’s limelight, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie planned his own events Monday on community policing and criminal justice in Camden.
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With the dismal U.S. job market, ban the box helps a little. It’s a start.
The prison system we have shuld be a huge resource rather than the economic black hole it is. Prisoners could be evaluated and taught basic skills to bring them up to at least a G.E.D. level before release. If prisons actually served to correct the deficiencies that made crime a better alternative than honest work, they would be a lot more productive than the recidivist loop they are now. My gut feeling is that the huge industry of police, prosecutors, courts, prisons, parole and probations officers requires and provides itself with a steady source of criminals.
The concept of giving forgiveness to people who have paid their debt to society should not just apply in really old cowboy movies. If we are going to call it a corrections system it should produce people who are actually ready to rejoin society. The length of incarceration should be only as long as necessary to repair the inmate’s employment potential.
One really does have to wonder how much of recidivism is personal flaws, and how much is that inability to get a good job with a criminal record.
On the other hand, revolving doors are important for businesses that want to facilitate the re-entry of their clientele. With the present state of the hugely profitable prison industrial complex, post-incarceration barriers to employment are not a bug in the system, but a feature; the grease for the revolving door.
Christie standing in Obama’s limelight is like a rat prodding a lion, it doesn’t accomplish anything.
The President is on the right track and searching for ways to get the ball rolling. Leave it to President Obama to think outside of the box, by banning the box and thinking beyond just the unfair sentencing.
The for profit prison system is an easy target to go after if not easy to get rid of. Start dismantling that and changes will come naturally.
Employers abuse every piece of irrelevant information they get about an applicant. Race, age, gender, and sexual orientation have all been abused. Some employers try really hard to abuse religious affiliation. So of course a record of incarceration that probably has nothing to do with job qualifications will be abused.
I worry about all the information collected on people on the internet; their life story on facebook, their buying decisions, what they read. We may see a whole new class of discrimination, say not hiring people who read liberal blogs. We could also see a resurgence of old prejudices using surrogates like, say, not hiring people who buy ethnic products that correlate with race.
So banning the box makes a lot of sense, and should only be the start in making sure business does not get one shred of data on an applicant that is not relevant to job qualifications.