Three City Governments Open Employment Possibilities to People with Criminal Records

Leading by example, Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago are adopting policies to lower the employment barriers that people with criminal conviction records often face.

These cities, like all other areas of the country, are confronting the reality that up to 97 percent of the people sent to prison in the “war on crime” are eventually released (650,000 people will be released from state and federal prisons in 2006); that they usually return to their home communities; that they always need a job to earn a living; and that 60 percent of employers will simply not hire a person with a conviction record. All three city governments’ new policies deal with blanket hiring bans and aim for fair employment standards for their own hiring and that of private employers.

Boston’s new city ordinance, to take effect July 1, 2006, prohibits the city government and the estimated 50,000 vendors doing business with the government from conducting criminal background checks until they find the applicant to be “otherwise” qualified for the job. Then and only then may the employer obtain criminal conviction information, and, if the applicant has a conviction history, the ordinance directs the city and its vendors to look at more than the fact of conviction in making the final hiring decision. The ordinance instructs the employer to make the final hiring decision “based on all the information available to the City, including the seriousness of the crime(s), the relevance of the crime(s), the number of crime(s), the age of the crime(s), and the occurrences in the life of the Applicant since the crime(s).”

San Francisco’s board of supervisors revised, on October 11, 2005, the city government’s hiring procedures so as not to discourage people with conviction records from even applying for government jobs and to consider them fairly for government employment. The new procedures, effective this month, remove the inquiry about criminal conviction history from the city government’s initial employment application form. The new procedures consider conviction history only after they identify an applicant as a serious employment prospect. The new procedures apply only to city government employment.

Earlier this year Chicago issued guidelines for all city government agencies on hiring decisions when applicants have conviction records. The guidelines require city agencies to take into account the age of a person’s criminal record, the seriousness of the offense, evidence of rehabilitation, and other mitigating factors. The city government hiring policy revisions to give people with conviction records a better chance at getting city government jobs are part of Chicago’s response to a two-year study by the Mayoral Policy Caucus on Prisoner Reentry. The study, out last January, is entitled “Rebuilding Lives, Restoring Hope, Strengthening Communities: Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration and Building brighter Futures in Chicago.” The study recommended local and state initiatives on employment, health, family, and community safety issues surrounding prisoners reentering their communities.

In announcing the report and the policy change, Mayor Richard M. Daley hoped that the city government’s example would encourage private employers to be more open to hiring people with conviction records. “Implementing this new policy won’t be easy, but it is the right thing to do,” he said in response to the report. “We cannot ask private employers to consider hiring former prisoners unless the City practices what it preaches,” he added.

For more information, contact Margaret Stapleton at 312.368.3327.