City debates ‘felony box’ on applications
As a single mother and full-time student, Barbara Fair worked her way through college and graduate school, obtaining her master’s degree in clinical social work. But due to an arrest from more than a decade ago, city law holds that she must check a box on each employment application she fills out. Immediately and without a chance for explanation, she said, her opportunities for employment dissipate.
“All my credentials, life experiences and community service mean nothing if the employer relies on a criminal record as a measure of character,” Fair said.
Fair told her story...
That's an important point. But why should an employer be forced to hire a criminal? There are different levels of felonies. Maybe the boxes should allow an applicant to indicate what level of felony they were convicted of? At the very least an employer should be allowed to know if the felony in question was a violent or a non-violent crime. If you're a freshman at Yale do you want the University hiring workers with assault or rape convictions?
Yale students don't mind felons, it's apparently the union workers at Mory's they fear in the dark of night.
If a President or a Governor can be a crook and be rehabilitated, why can't a mother of three?