New Law Could Have You Working With Criminals

Posted by: Corey Pepple Posted date: September 25, 2013 In: News



California employers that hire new workers will no longer be able to ask potential employees about their criminal past on job applications if Governor Jerry Brown puts his new bill into action.
Supporters of the legislation have stated that removing the question from applications is needed to prevent Californians with criminal records from being discriminated against. Here’s an idea: if you don’t wanna have trouble finding employment, then don’t commit crimes.
Employers would still be allowed to ask in an interview about criminal record. This measure, known as Assembly Bill 218, would only remove that question from applications.
This bill is part of the “Ban the Box” movement that has sought to make it easier for supposedly reformed criminals to find employment.
“A mistake from the past shouldn’t be a life sentence to joblessness,” Michelle Rodriguez, the staff attorney for Ban the Box said in a statement to the press earlier this month. “This bill gives hope to thousands of Californians who are ready to work but are shut out from employment because they’re automatically screened out from the start.”
Supporters are hopeful that the law will reduce California’s notoriously large prison population. The US Supreme Court ruled in 2009 that the overcrowding in California prisons constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.”
When the Department of Corrections failed to fix the problem, a federal judge ordered California to release thousands of low-level inmates before they served their sentences. Governor Brown said that the Department of Corrections was working on rehabilitation programs to help with inmates’ transition, but as many as 12,000 inmates could be released into society by the end of the year.
The Ban the Box movement has increased momentum in major metropolitan areas throughout the country. Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia have adopted similar strategies.
Benjamin Todd Jealous, the president of the NAACP, told CBS that the government simply has no choice but to review its treatment of former prisoners.
“Americans believe in second chances,” he said in 2011. “We believe that when somebody has paid their debt to society, they deserve the right to earn a living and reunite their families.”

http://freepatriot.org/2013/09/25/ne...ing-criminals/