The Informant

• Proposed lawby Rina PaltaDownload

Courtesy of the City and County of SF

Right now, about 1% of the adult population in the U.S. is in prison or jail. The vast majority, 95%, will not spend the rest of their lives locked up, but will return to their home communities. So the question for community leaders is, what becomes of these individuals when they return home? San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi says many end up going back to jail or prison:

You look at the fact that for every four people the DA arrests and prosecutes, three out of four are ex-offenders. So something has gone wrong on the back end, where we’re not able to tackle the repeat offender rate, the recidivism rate in a more vigorous way.

Part of tackling that problem is addressing two big obstacles ex-offenders face when they get out of prison: finding a safe place to live and legal employment. Mirkarimi is expected to introduce a new law next month that would help ex-offenders get access to jobs and housing in San Francisco. Above is a piece I did examining the issue and the proposed law. Transcript after the jump.

RINA PALTA: Cornelius Ross owns an upholstery service in San Francisco’s Mid-Market District.

CORNELIUS ROSS: I’m a second-generation upholsterer. My parents ran the business in San Francisco for 65 years.

Ross isn’t hiring right now, but he says if he were, he wouldn’t turn someone away just because they have a criminal record.

ROSS: We’re not here to interrogate people. I believe that a person comes with skills. Their personal life and really what they do is their personal business until it affects this business. It doesn’t take long to figure out a person.

Around the corner, Claudio Veras has an autobody shop, and he feels the same way:

CLAUDIO VERAS: ‘Cause if they’re out, they already paid for it, right?

Restaurant owner Maria Baltazar wasn’t quite as emphatic.

MARIA BALTAZAR: It depends on what kind of charges they have.

Of the 20 or so business owners surveyed in the Mid-Market area for this story, no one said they flat out wouldn’t hire someone with a criminal history.

But those employers were asked to give their opinion on the record. Check the want ads, and they show a different picture.

Michelle Natividad Rodriguez is an attorney with the National Employment Law Project. At the moment, she’s perusing the job ads on Craigslist. Rodriguez stops on a posting for a water restoration technician.

MICHELLE NATIVIDAD RODRIGUEZ: Our client is a mold removal, emergency water removal, air duct cleaning, fire damage clean-up and restoration, for handling new water damage claims…

She notices one of the job requirements.

RODRIGUEZ: It says, “Must have clean criminal background,” and in parentheses it says, “No felony convictions.”

Postings looking for a bartender and a dog-walker each say “no criminal record.” Apparently, these sorts of postings are common. Rodriguez co-authored a recent study that looked at Craigslist job postings in five major cities over a four-month period. Her team found at least 300 ads that essentially shut out applications from people with criminal histories or felony convictions.

RODRIGUEZ: Basically they’re saying if you have a felony conviction, don’t even apply. Even saying “clean criminal background” is a problem. Certainly, when I look at this, I’m thinking they’re probably in violation of federal law.

Federal law says that such blanket bans on hiring someone with a record violate equal opportunity laws. But they’re still common. And, with the proliferation of background checks, everything from a felony conviction to an arrest that didn’t result in any charges can come to an employer’s attention.

JESSICA FLINTOFT: Since 9/11, there’s been many, many more commercially-run background checks done. It’s become standard practice.

Jessica Flintoft of the San Francisco Reentry Council, says this is a big problem, simply because of how many people these background checks affect.

FLINTOFT: We know that one in four people in California have a criminal record. We know that it’s much higher for African American people, for Latino people, particularly men.

Flintoft, along with members of the San Francisco Reentry Council, Human Rights Commission, and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, helped author a new proposed ordinance that would place restrictions on when employers can consider a person’s criminal history. The ordinance would also extend these restrictions to landlords considering tenants with criminal records.

FLINTOFT: And what we’re asking for is not to have set-asides for ex-offenders, not to force employers to hire ex-offenders. But for employers to give people a fair shot.

There are exceptions for certain jobs and housing that legally require clean backgrounds. But for the rest, the ordinance would ask employers to wait until later in the process to run a background check. Then, it would be up to the employer or landlord to decide whether or not that person’s record would make them a safety concern or interfere with their ability to do the job.

FLINTOFT: So we’re really asking, putting the onus on landlords and employers to have a rational basis for their policies so they can’t just fall back on some prejudice that they may have.

Eliminating those prejudices is something the city of San Francisco has been working on for years.

DOUGLASS SMITH: We are slowly making roads into the problem.

Douglass Smith is a program coordinator for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department. For the past six years, he’s helped host this annual job fair for people coming out of prison and jail.

SMITH: What we don’t have is buy-in from the community. It’s taken us five years to engage the Chamber of Commerce. The next step will be going to small businesses within the Chamber and working out relationships with them. Start-up companies that are new. For instance, San Francisco Soup Company made a commitment to hire some of our people today.

Smith says community members should care what happens to folks coming out of prison and jail as a matter of public safety.

SMITH: If we can’t give them an opportunity to get gainful employment, or a course to follow, they will return to the course they know best, which is crime.

JUSTIN BILLINGTON: I have a very long arrest record. Lots of burglary. Everyone in here pretty much has an arrest record.

Justin Billington is here looking for a job in the service industry. He says two things stand in his way: a pretty short work history, and his arrest record.

BILLINGTON: If I was looking for somebody, I’d probably throw the application away, too. I mean, you don’t want a thief working for you.

On the other hand, Billington says, a lot of people make mistakes.

BILLINGTON: As long as they’re making an honest effort to change their life, I think they shouldn’t be judged for it.

If San Francisco passes this non-discrimination ordinance, it’ll join at least a dozen other cities and the state of Massachusetts, which all have similar laws on the books.

In San Francisco, I’m Rina Palta for Crosscurrents.