Edit: Thank you everyone for the incredible wealth of insightful suggestions. To anyone who wants to continue the conversation, I'd appreciate your pinging me at richard@70millionjobs.com with your continuing ideas, so we can stay in touch. Many challenges lie ahead for us, but your help will keep us on the right track.
Again, on behalf of all the folks with records trying to get on with their lives, and myself personally, thanks again for your incredible support. Richard
-------------------------------------
Hi HN,
My name is Richard Bronson and I'm the founder/CEO of 70MillionJobs (https://www.70millionjobs.com). Our website is the Internet's first job board for 70 million Americans—1 in 3 adults—with criminal records.
I'm something of a domain expert in this area because I myself have a criminal record. In the early 1990s, I worked on Wall Street and some of what I did was illegal. For a time I was a partner at the infamous Wolf of Wall Street firm, Stratton Oakmont (Scorcese film). I ended up with a 2 year Federal prison sentence. I was guilty.
I experienced first hand how difficult it was to get on with life after going through the "system." I served as Director at Defy Ventures, a great non-profit in the reentry space, but was interested in a scalable solution to ex-offender unemployment and resultant recidivism. I felt a new, for-profit, tech-based approach was necessary, so I launched 70MillionJobs. We're seeking "double bottom-line" returns: make money and do social good.
Like most job boards, our business model is based upon employers paying to advertise their jobs. We expect additional revenue to come from municipalities, who spend tens of billions of dollars annually, when someone is rearrested.
You might not be surprised to learn that most formerly incarcerated men and women are petrified to discuss their background with prospective employers. So we created a "safe haven" where all parties knew the score, and applicants could relax knowing that jobs being offered were with companies that accepted their pasts.
Since many of our applicants don't have a laptop or easy access to the Internet, we send out text alerts they can easily respond to. Because most of these folks have limited work experience and limited formal education, we plan on building a video resume platform to accompany their resumes. In person, many of these folks are respectful, bright and personable, so this will show them at their best.
With lower entry barriers for tech startups, one would expect to see more startups that fight for a better world, instead of startups who fight for selling your data faster, or detecting your face better to overlay a duckface on top of it.
This is why seeing a startup like yours makes me hopeful.
Wish you best of luck!
Do you need a remote full-stack programmer?
Is this a list of curated companies? Or is there something that you're parsing out that denotes this acceptability?
The companies hiring are at somewhat of an advantage (they can hire anyone, the employees have more limited options). How do you ensure they get a fair offer, and not, like migrant labor, receive a below market offer? Would the marketplace effect here help prevent that? (edit - looking at the website, duh, it looks like you've solved this - awesome - and found good companies.)
Your revenue model is based on companies laying to get access to these prospective employees - how do you get past the stigma (without breaching q1 above)?
I like the municipality revenue model - it would be awesome to see them as "reverse recruiters" we're they pay every time someone gets a job.
As an employer, I want to hire the best people so my company can be successful. Why would I hire anyone from your site when there are plenty of other candidates elsewhere?
Do you think people will try to use your site to disqualify potential hires (i.e. use it as a do-not-hire list so those registered with the site can specifically be avoided)? How will you prevent this from occurring?
Why would a company that doesn't care about criminal records advertise with you? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to advertise on a generic job board, take the best resumes, and sort out criminal history issues as they arise?
Does your site allow employers to see what a job seeker's crime was, or any other info related to that that other job boards wouldn't provide?
Not to be obtuse, but what incentive would an employer have to hire someone with criminal records?
1. is there any extra liability for the employer if they knowingly hire someone formerly incarcerated and they commit a crime while working for them.
2. aren't some kind of tax credits for hiring formerly incarcerated incarcerated people.
3. is it only w2 or do you allow 1099 opportunities.
So many people deserve a chance to redeem themselves from being 'branded', yet are denied the exact opportunities that would allow them to do so. This problem goes back a long, long ways.[1]
Anything you can do to help is great. Best of luck!
In purely economic terms, I'm willing to bet some people with criminal records are willing to work for less than someone with the same qualifications and a clean record.
One thing I wonder about is if folks in our industry would be more willing to have an felon of some variety working with them than somebody who's been tarred with the racist/sexist/conservative label?
That's interesting; would be curious to hear if there's another side of the story as well.
These guys spent 5 years grinding it out at whatever shit job would hire them just to spend 2 more in school + working with the hope of getting a simple rack & stack job, all because of some mistake they made in their late teens/early twenties. It was the exact same story 3 times, and all involving drug offenses.
It really gave me a different perspective on the situation. I don't think these 3 people should've been sidelined for 7 years. They could've been productive members of society well before that. Keeping them out of the skilled/professional workforce is painful.
This could be a huge untapped pool of candidates, as long as companies are willing to take the risk. I hope it takes off.
Hell, Hans Reiser wrote a great filesystem and he murdered his wife. John Draper and Kevin Mitnick would probably both be good hires for certain roles. Steve Jobs could've been easily arrested for drug use.
Does that mean that employers know what offenses were committed, and how long ago? Or does it just mean that they know that the candidate has been convicted of something, but figuring out whether that's a liability to the business or not needs to be discussed?
Not associated with that company but one reason to hire a convict is that you get a pretty decent tax break[0] out of it
Good luck and i hope you're successful!
In USA once you got criminal record, by default it stays for rest of life with you. Implications of that may be even more severe than actual punishment.
On the other hand in most of the European countries criminal records are limited and after X years they disappear and you can't legally discriminate based on that.
Some ppl will do something stupid at some point in their life and get a criminal record. Not giving them another chance is a major problem and actually can cause a lot of damage for everyone.
I would love to hear from company founders about what factors they use to discover this information in their external job listings that are not on jurisdictions like this.
Source: http://www.millerlawgroup.com/publications/alerts/San-Franci...
Whether/how the math works there I dunno, it just occurred to me as another possible factor.
I must admit I haven't ever thought about these numbers but it strikes me as insanely high. How can this be explained? Is it a feature of just America or is it reproducible in other countries as well?
With the unemployed persons per job opening at such a low present level (~11-12 year low), I bet you see a lot of employer interest.
"Have no convictions for any felony, perjury, false statement, or domestic violence. No DUI convictions past ten years. Other arrest histories are reviewed on a case-by-case basis."
I love the idea, but it needs a bit more work.
This will be legal employment, so hopefully the abuses resulting from migrant employment won't happen, but the salary they are getting will be below the "normal" market price, at least for a long time - and this is a good thing, since they would otherwise not be hired at all.
I guess this is more of a feature request but... It would be great if you could filter out job postings that were likely just scraped or aggregated from other places!
Nice work btw, a great start for a much needed service
"... that almost a third of men [in Britain] have a criminal conviction by the age of 30, according to the Home Office. Research on men born in 1953 showed that about 30 per cent had clocked up a standard list offence - one that is dealt with by the courts but excludes minor motoring offences - by their thirtieth birthday. Research in Scotland points in the same direction, suggesting that about 25 per cent of men have a record by age 24."
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2002/apr/14/workandcareers...
I find it extremely admirable. Best of luck with your approach.
[0] See for example this archived blog post: https://web.archive.org/web/20150222003545/http://www.timpso... or a search for "Timpson ex-offenders" https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=timpson+ex-offenders
Two thoughts:
1) "systematic screwup of law in the USA" is a pretty good description; another might be "massive market opportunity"
2) "startup trying to [take advantage of market inefficiencies created by] systematic screwup of law in the USA" is also a pretty good description of drug traffickers of all kinds. (I'm not passing judgment; just making an observation. The meta observation is that you can't cheat reality, so when law gets out of whack the gap between Ideal and Actual creates an inefficiency, which savvy entrepreneurs can profit by bridging).
First, use more cheerful/positive messages/visuals. It was a joykill when I checked out your website and there's a sad guy placing his hand on the forehead. Show what's possible. How successful people can be once they get a job.. rather than their current state (unemployment). Don't focus on the current stat, focus on the future desirable state.
Also, you need to put more focus on the jobs. List featured jobs to draw people in. Just list some jobs below the search. This will engage the user to explore the site.
The parent is confusing criminal record with incarceration duration. The UK has nearly just as high of a criminal record ratio among adult men for example. The difference is the US assigns far longer incarceration times for the same crime vs the UK. Further, Europe as a whole has a higher crime rate than the US does. [1]
70 million jobs has plenty of room for international expansion accordingly.
"[2011] Contrary to common perceptions, today both property and violent crimes (with the exception of homicides) are more widespread in Europe than in the United States, while the opposite was true thirty years ago. We label this fact as the ‘reversal of misfortunes’."
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1889952
The way Americans have the capacity to acknowledge something intrinsically fucked up about their society, and see it as a business opportunity regardless is something I both admire, and despair over.
This is a great idea with a nice social cause. Also,from a business perspective this is a good niche and large scale. Aside the mission and the targeted niche, how do you expect/plan to diferentiate in your product offering?
https://jobboardhq.blob.core.windows.net/assets/prod/2ttp/lo...
here's a direct link to FB's open graph debugger with your site already loaded into it: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/sharing/?q=https...
Moving on, the actual reasonable conclusion here is to be smarter about what we deem a criminal act or not.
Why is getting caught smoking a joint something that can ruin your career for a decade, while drinking a beer on the sidewalk is a wrist-slap?
You have no idea what you are talking about.
> On the other hand in most of the European countries criminal records are limited and after X years they disappear and you can't legally discriminate based on that.
This is something that varies state by state in the United States. In general, misdemeanors can be removed from your record faster than felonies and if they could they'd put a big red 'A' on your chest for sex crimes. Some places will clean your record automatically and some will requre you to contact the courts. But again, varies state by state, or even county by county.
Proceed to bullshit.
Minor fine goes unpaid because this month the electric bill is more important.
Leads to more fines.
Leads to license suspencion.
Leads to driving while license suspended.
Leads to license suspension.
Leads to driving while license suspended.
Leads to felony jail time.
Don't get me wrong, there are choices made at each stage of escalation, and often all that's needed is to show up to court, dressed in your sunday best and respectfully explain situation to the judge, and the chain can be broken, but being poor leads to a lot of suboptimal decisions that could make it difficult or impossible to deal with any of this until there is no choice, and a felony conviction often ends up as the escalation that can't be putoff any longer.
There is no evidence that's true. People still take drugs in countries with the death penalty.
Someone with criminal record has something to prove, so will be grateful for the job and work hard.
in any case, best of luck! it's important work to be doing.
as a society, we should do everything possible to help people who make mistakes and want to get back on the happy path. (as a side note, i think punishment is way out of whack. we need more carrot and less stick for low-level offenders, and more stick and less carrot for white-collar crimes that affect many more lives, though it seems like you got a fair amount of stick in your case.)
Anyways, this is a great idea, I hope you succeed!
"Find talent everyone else is missing."
Honestly I find how this country treats those with a felony record absolutely disgusting. The "Are you a convicted felon?" is a scarlet letter that never seems to disappear. While this might've originally been well-intentioned, IMHO it perpetuates criminality as I suspect what other choices do a lot of former felons have?
There was (is?) a campaign in Massachussetts to retroactively pardon a felony conviction for Mark Wahlberg. Apparently this makes it difficult to, say, get liquor licenses and so forth.
Personally I"m 100% against a commutation for the rich and famous. What we should be doing is freeing people from this stigma, particularly when the crime was a long time ago, especially nonviolent and likely not relevant to your job.
FYI Mark Wahlberg's felony conviction was violent and pretty egregious actually as it was IIRC a racially-motivated attack on a Vietnamese man.
The net cast by law enforcement has not gotten smaller since then.
Let's face it, America sucks in a ton of ways and the biggest crooks are bankers and people in finance--they stole billions and got away with it over and over again. So nothing else quite compares except maybe whatever goes on with the CIA and drugs.
If you're an ex-con who will eventually get his record expunged, is there any risk to participating in a job board like this? I'm guessing it is pretty small, and the advantages presented by the site will be worth it. Still, it's ironic that eventually users will probably be in a position (after expungement) where it is not in their interest to use the site anymore. I wonder if, when this site is successful, it will eventually want to team up with a more conventional job site to move some of those users over. Just a thought.
Of course, some people are so selfish and impulsive not much will deter them, but at least they're off the streets where they can make life miserable for the rest of us.
I'd be fine with hiring people previously incarcerated for drugs offenses and other minor crimes.
However, there's no way I'm hiring any rapists or pedophiles, or other such scum.
But for the sake of argument, let's say you shutter your car. You can spend a ton of time walking to, and waiting on, public buses, time you can't use to study for a degree, or be with your kids. Maybe you rely on a friend's car, but then you miss out on last-minute shift opportunities, and your friend's transport problems become your problems, too, so if they're sick, you miss a shift and risk getting fired.
You're so out-of-touch, I'm surprised you didn't just say "Let them Uber to work, then."
That said, local newspaper stuff is a horrible source of information. "Mr. Doe was charged with the entire book" routinely turns into a plea deal for the smallest charge on the list.
This is standard HN moderation. When a subthread veers away from the original topic and also toward something more generic or ideological, we moderate the subthread as off topic. That caveat is important, since off-topic tangents can also be whimsical and sometimes more interesting than the original discussion. But on HN, 'generic' and 'interesting' are incompatible, and the generic stuff tends to take over the concrete if you let it (+10x when the material is flammable). Therefore we don't let it.
In other words, if these folks were earning more, someone else wouldn't be doing that job, so the overall earning that the set number of jobs would support wouldn't change one way or the other from the tax revenue point of view.
(Not advocating for or against these folks being able to work at their full potential, just trying to look at the tax revenue argument objectively).
But you're welcome here if you can argue your point instead of throwing out one-liners.
People MAY be offended. Just a suggestion.
This generates economic activity across the entire chain, enriching everyone along the way. All of these people end up paying more taxes. Collectively the increase in activity can cause retailers, suppliers, and manufacturers to hire to keep up with demand further feeding the cycle.
IIRC the research shows ex-cons are far less likely to re-offend in the future if they land a good job. How many kids looking forward to $130k/yr jobs would choose to join a gang instead?
There's also the deadweight loss of criminal prosecution and jailing offenders. It generates a few legal and prison guard jobs but most of the taxes spent in the criminal justice system don't contribute constructively to society the same way building new bridges, subway systems, or funding science research does.
I also agree that once the sentence has been served, people should not be punished any further, except where the occupation requires a clean record. e.g. I would be OK with pharmacies requiring no arrest for drugs etc. as a condition for employment, or drivers without DWI convictions etc.
I guess my point is: its not a purely economic decision. Sure you're losing tax revenue, but that's because you're:
1) Protecting society from a person who has demonstrates some lack of understanding/acceptance of its rules.
2) Cause significant discomfort/pain to the perpetrator of the crime so that they realize the consequences of breaking the law and hopefully never do it again.
It's been 20 years, she's married to a good guy and has a baby... yet that black mark still comes up on her record.
I was a homemaker for a lot of years. I also happened to be too sick to hold down a job during that time, but homemaker sounds so much better on a resume.
Find a preferably true and accurate description that is palatable to employers. Then realize it is tough all over at the moment. LOTS of people are having trouble getting hired at all.
Nothing I said disputed that.
The US has about 4.4 percent of the global population and about 22 percent of the global prison population. So either we are seriously fucking up as a country and incapable of producing decent human beings, or our entire justice system is broken.
Something needs to be done differently at the systemic level that doesn't involved holding every individual fucked over by the U.S. personally accountable for being crushed under the wheels of the goddamn system.
Nothing I said suggested otherwise.
I'm curious - while I agree that it also benefits the municipalities to help former criminals reintegrate into productive society, through what channel do you see expect this revenue to come? I know some tax breaks exist for hiring ex-cons, but dishing out funds to a service like this would be entirely new, right?
On the other hand when someone boldly ignored certain moral rules, will the person continue to do so? I think it's pretty serious when someone else had to suffer because of that.
Note that that's not an exclusive or; both can be true, and it's even plausible that there's a positive feedback loop between the two—that is, we have worse people because of our massive imprisonment, and can't get political support to end mass imprisonment because people correctly fear the near-term results given the way in which those in in prison are socialized (and even often preferring more imprisonment from perfectly legitimate fears of the way many people not in prison are socialized due to our mass imprisonment system.)
Which isn't to say we shouldn't bite the bullet and end the system, but just that we'll have lots of near term problems when we do and lots of political difficulty in actually doing it.
This is from G.K.Chesterton, around 1907, "The Perpetuation of Punishment":
https://books.google.it/books?id=QtWvMclbR9YC&pg=PA504H7CQ#v...
Claiming that there is a set number of jobs and the overall earning wouldn't change with more productive labor is suggesting a zero-sum game.
We are looking into gubernatorial pardon (Arizona has a decent process) but not holding my breath.
That is the fundamental question of the sentencing phase of a trial (which is why if you’re unfamiliar with criminal trials, that they’re basically “retrying” a defendant they’ve already found guilty might seem weird), and I agree with the other commenters that it should stop there. Holding people back from regular employment directly causes recidivism. Unemployment and crime are correlated. You can’t just pull people out of society because they erred once, and this is why convictions with priors are worse than without; that question is being answered for you.
You want fewer people in prison and safer communities? Let felons work, fire them when they don’t, or they’ll get the money in other ways. It’s genuinely as simple as that. Beside the DUI crowd, half the minimum security inmates I spent time with were there for check fraud, petty theft, and other crimes to feed themselves or their kids. Many had priors, sometimes several, making one guy I met who had passed a $750 bad check stare down the barrel of a ten stretch.
Think about this: upon my conviction I lost the ability to both vote and leave the country. I have both back now (with effort), but even looking at this situation macroeconomically, what is that saying about even first time offenders?
The tickets had something else in common. Brownsville, the South Bronx, East Harlem, Bed-Stuy (at least eight years ago, when the ticket was issued), all of them are neighborhoods with large black or Hispanic, and very small white, populations. It was then that it became clear to me: the reason for the tickets wasn’t that these Lisa Davises were petty criminals.
If you are the wrong color and live in the wrong part of town, you get criminalized for existing. Then when something does go really wrong, you can be railroaded.
Derreck Hamilton* was a black kid guilty of minor bullshit who spent years and years in prison for a murder he did not commit (because some asshole cop was out to get him and he got railroaded). So, acting like not sending poor, non-whites to prison for basically existing somehow will make life scarier is basically racist bullshit. Or perhaps simply clueless about how things work in this country.
* http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/20/derrick-hamilto...
The prison sentence is the punishment for the crime. After people are let out of prison they should be reintegrated into society.
Thanks for your effort in the reentry space! The struggle for returning citizens is real and constant and I love seeing things like this on HN. At one point I worked for a company apploi.com that had a similar business model but targeting a different demographic. I would love to share some things I learned from that experience. I also started a similar venture corestaffing.us that is hyper-focused on the Baltimore/Washington area. Let me know if you are interested in chatting!
I'm sorry what alternative are you offering? We live in a society where driving is most necessary for those who can least afford it. I think you may grossly misunderstand how difficult life is for people struggling to get by.
You are right, that poor choices can lead someone to a scenario where there are no good choices though. Most of this chain can be broken by just taking some time to take care of their life, but that is not always as simple as it sounds. Right now I personally have societal+familial+work obligations that total 17+hrs daily and I'm lucky to get 6hrs sleep, 3 uninterrupted. I am not poor, and I'm lucky to have a very flexible job, so I could take time to deal a minor fine so it didn't escalate past early court escalations, but I'm not sure I'd be able to trivially take time off to deal with a court appearance if I had a more demanding job, I don't have a lot of flexibility elsewhere to borrow from.
Never forget that it's easy to judge someone's actions from outside, but in their same mental state and reality constraints, you may make the same decisions.
Here are some examples:
1. A former felon is unable to work a low paying job at a library, because they have a background check. Someone else takes that job - but only if they couldn't find a higher paying job. In this case tax revenue doesn't change.
2. A former felon has a unique skill (e.g. manufacturing specialty welding machines), that it is impossible to find someone to replace. That business opportunity goes by, and in this case tax revenue decreases.
oddly enough, it happened in Massachusetts of all places, a state i expect to take this sort of hateful crime more seriously. maybe it would nowadays. that particular violent attack happened a while back.
regarding licensing: the rumor i heard (for what it's worth) was that Wahlberg recently wanted to become certified as an actual officer on a local auxiliary or reserve police force for some new show he was planning. but, as a convicted felon, he is not eligible.
I browsed my State and saw jobs for physicians, pharmacists, and even a school psychiatrist.
Have you met the guys behind https://pigeon.ly/?
Are there any other problem areas related to the criminal justice system that you are not addressing, that you think a startup could help with?
That's exactly what "zero sum" means.
I do think you ought to remove the phrase, "...but despite having paid everyone back..." That phrasing comes off to me as a bit of a justification for what you did and seems to indicate a feeling that you should not have been sentenced. I don't know if this is your intent or if indeed such a belief is justified. It may be off putting to some.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/...
The US has about 4.4 percent of the global population and about 22 percent of the global prison population.
The numbers are more startling using a different measure in the report: the prison population rate. Criminologists say this is a reliable way to compare incarceration practices between countries.
The United States had the highest prison population rate in the world, at 716 per 100,000 people. More than half of the countries and territories had rates below 150 per 100,000. The United States had a much higher rate compared to other developed countries: about six times Canada’s rate, between six to nine times Western European countries, and between two to 10 times Northern European countries.
So, I will suggest you work hard to frame it as "Many American citizens have a criminal record for the crime of being an American citizen. The system is broken and many people with criminal records really don't deserve to have them at all."
In other words, don't tell them "give a criminal a second chance." Tell them that many people with criminal records simply shouldn't have them and you are making a terrible mistake to hold that against them, both in practical terms by cutting out talent from the hiring pool for specious reasons, and in moral terms because you are denying someone an opportunity to recover from having been shafted by a broken system to begin with.
FYI: I'm a copywriter by trade.
I think that what you are doing is a good thing an applaud you for it.
do you have methods in place or planning to filter jobs with such restrictions as not all states adhere to the same rules.
great idea btw
if i'm reading that right, they're suggesting that European incarceration policies/rates/sentences (or something) are too lenient (?). so, Europe has the opposite problem when compared to the US?
People like that are not part of this conversation.
That's a very interesting approach, but I believe a hard sell to potential employer. As true as it may be, an employer is more likely to appreciate the individual who says this is my background, this is what I learned and this is my vision of my own future...rather than, it's not my fault, I'm a societal statistic.
In fact, despite the ideas of US prison overcrowding and for profit drive conviction rates...I'd argue the opposite, that it's very likely the employer has already hired individuals who have committed various "crimes" and could but simply don't have records.
I know it's stance but all you need to do it look at the number of reported crimes (serious, not victimless like many would argue about drug possession) and the total prison population.
Example:
prison population = ~ 2.2M inmates
Every year in the US 60,000 children are sexually abused; ~220,000 adults sexually abused or raped; ~19,000 military members experience unwanted sexual contact. [1]
US prisons only seem over crowded until you see the number of violent crimes in the country, it basically works out to a sexual assault/rape every 90 seconds, it's pretty disturbing.
Great concept and great start!
To build on this: disallowing them from becoming productive members of society means that they're that much more inclined to revert to a life of crime.
Also: I did not suggest a man call himself a homemaker. So, I am not sure what the point of your comment is.
As such the profits wont be able to keep up with VCs expectations if they invest 100s of millions of dollars. OP has a great first mover advantage and knowledge of the market, and they can capitalize that but the idea isn't worth billions.
Anyone also surprised at the scope of positive and admission-comments?
Anyway, best of luck!!
http://www.rochellestevens.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/01... has a very slightly better summary (at least enough to prove I'm not making it up).
Some employers care about any criminal record at all, while others care about felony convictions only. The website itself only mentions "criminal record" and "formerly incarcerated".
Perhaps it would be prudent to make filtering easy for "misdemeanors only" jobs and "former felons wanted" jobs?
https://www.70millionjobs.com/page/Certification
I see nothing but some share buttons, the standard header and footer, and a blank white page. There's a Sumo login tab that slides out of the scroll bar if you mouseover near the top right corner.
It's perhaps only caused by the Show HN DDOS/hug of death, but better to learn now than later that the Sumo Listbuilder popup takes at least 30-60 seconds to load. I only waited long enough to notice it because I had to disable UBlock and reloaded watching the Network tab of the dev tools.
That is not the same group you are referring to.
>Percent of sentenced prisoners under the jurisdiction of state or federal correctional authorities, by age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin, December 31, 2015
446,700 white male prisoners 501,300 black male prisoners 301,500 hispanic male prisoners 122,400 other male prisoners
Which means male adults of color (925,200) make up more than double the male white adult (446,700) state/federal prison population.
[0]https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p15.pdf
The more disturbing statistic being that 1,745/100,000 black adults are incarcerated, compared to 317/100,000 white adults.
Female incarceration rates do not follow this same trend identically according to the data, and they make up only ~7% of the total correctional population.
As long as they aren't an ongoing threat to anyone, they deserve a job. In fact, having a job will make most of them less of a threat to society. "I need my job" is an excellent reason to behave. "The system has fucked me and it makes no difference what I do, I remain fucked" is an excellent reason to quit bothering to try.
Are they now? Tell me, which political party is planning on decriminalizing drug offenses?
I ask because we have a student in our CS academy who is in a very similar situation.
In fact, if attitudes are changing fast enough, you'd expect political parties to be notably behind the curve.
That's bullshit.
Attitudes regarding whether people should be jailed for substance abuse, and whether people are permanently morally tarnished for same, are loosening over time in the same way that gay rights, etc, have.
Just because it isn't the dem's top campaign promise doesn't mean it isn't making progress.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/08/01/cory-...
Correct me if I'm wrong but the bill you mentioned only seems to deal with marijuana, which I don't think is how most people get drug felonies.
Ummm.... This sounds like a huge rationalization. "I'm sorry for breaking in and robbing your house. Despite giving the money back, I ended up going to jail."
So... I don't believe that "these attitudes are changing quickly."
That's why I used numbers for sex crimes only, but more broadly we have ~2.2M inmates and 1.2M reported violent crimes per year, throwing out all non violent offenders it would still be hard to conclude our prisons are overfilled unless All cases had a max sentence of 1 year.
1 - https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu... (top of page 9)
I would imagine that agricultural jobs would be low-risk for those types of employers since those with criminal records are unlikely to be interacting with customers or exposed to high value inventory. Both of which are characteristics of a job that would give employers pause about hiring someone with a criminal record.
The change in wording may be illegal, but good luck proving that to anyone who cares.
We aren't "making progress" when 90% of people surveyed want to physically put me in a cage for years for having a few hits of LSD in my pocket, or for selling steroids to gym buddies.
Suggesting the Democrat party wants to decriminalize drugs and drug offenses isn’t entirely accurate. Some people in both parties would like to see that happen.
States with vast Democrat majorities haven’t decriminalized drug offenses. Some states have to some degree, but you have to ask, when Democrats has the White House, House and Senate, they could have acted, but didn’t – even when they had a super-majority.
My point isn’t that Republicans are better, but the Democrat Party has had chances, but they failed to act, so the parent comment is correct – no party is actually doing anything when given the chance – just a few isolated people.
If any of your members are experts at embedded systems / firmware / cryptography, send them my way!
Right now the demographic make up of companies don't match the population, that's true, but these companies do tend to match the demographics of trained programmers. The difference in demographics is from people choosing not to enter tech. If you want to fix the problem, work on training pipelines into tech.
The best way to summarize our different viewpoints is probably "Wanting Equality of Opportunity vs. wanting Equality of Outcome". And-- you assume that if the outcome of tech-demographics is different than the population, then it must be due to racism/sexism. There are other cultural and socio-economic factors that influence the demographics of tech.
Another example of positive-racism-- being a white dude visiting China, I got into night clubs without paying. :-/ But cab drivers also consistently added 50-100% onto the fare.
The REAL problem, however, is the quality of jobs available to felons. If this board is filled with nothing more than labor and call-center jobs then, you've only solved part of the problem. The true goal is to connect felons with sympathetic employers in ALL manner of jobs. There is nothing like a felony to destroy a person's sense of self-worth and the system is completely rigged against a felon. This is bigger than a technological problem. It is a problem of humanity and forgiveness.
You'd be surprised. Lots of weed? Cash? Baggies? Scale? Intent. Felony. Civil forfeiture (State of California v. A bag of $25,000 in cash). Go directly to Chino. Do not pass go.
It's usually the intent to distribute that ends people, and that does happen a lot with marijuana. Simple possession is easier to wiggle out of these days, depending on where you are and if it isn't much. Over a half ounce of marijuana in Virginia used to be a few years in prison (not sure if it still is). I'm carrying over a half ounce on my person right now and it'd be fine. Jurisdiction sucks.
I agree, it's disgusting, but that's the status quo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F89eycANUrQ
I definitely feel that American prison policy leans way too far on the side of moral judgement and retribution than rehabilitation. In my personal opinion, anyone who has served their term has already paid for their mistakes and we, as a society, should be more concerned with helping them get back on their feet than with further punishing them for their mistakes.
I also think the practice of denying former felons the right to vote is completely ridiculous. So if you commit a felony at 18, you can't vote even when you're a 100? What kind of sense does that make?
Implying that it's "positive" doesn't do any social justice but incites the us vs them, 0 sum game train of thought.
Uh, I'm not sure where this hostility is coming from. Just because someone responds to your comment doesn't mean they're disagreeing with you. I was just adding the context for anyone who sees your comment and interprets it narrowly as thinking that putting 'homemaker' on their resume gap is a useful way to explain it away without understanding the pitfall for 50% of the workforce.
Edit: Well I need to get off my horse because it seems to be similar here in the UK as well: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2002/apr/14/workandcareers...
I am quite open about my gender. Lots of people recognize that I am female. Those that don't can easily determine my gender by clicking into my profile. I have zero reason to believe people will interpret my remark to mean that men should call themselves homemakers.
The first step to improving any of this is changing deeply held beliefs by our society, and many days it feels like an impossible task.
[1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-m-granholm/debunking-...
I understand why you preferred to make more money, but what made it necessary?
I agree with the your overall comment, but this part is setting up unrealistic expectations. You should be asking "How many kids looking forward to $30k/yr jobs ..."
Median salary across the US is about $30k, or up to $50-70k (with corresponding cost of living) in a few rich cities. Anything above that is a good-paying job for most of the population, criminal record or not.
Don't get me wrong...I think what you're doing is great, but I think "ban the box" laws that allow criminal histories to be hidden from prospective employers are the thing that's really going to make a difference. Because hiring managers can always find fault with a candidate, either consciously or subconsciously, and playing it safe with hiring decisions is often in their personal interests, even if it's not the right thing to do.
I'd say once a man hits 40 or so, they have better shit to do with their lives.
As others have mentioned, our prisons are not predominately filled with people of color (although, I'm sure many people would believe that to be). A bit more diversity would definitely be nice ;)
http://thedollop.libsyn.com/228-boston-busing-1974
http://thedollop.libsyn.com/229-boston-busing-1975
It sounds more like a bad disaster movie than recent American history.
America is a country that enjoys persecuting people. Even better if they "deserve" it. A country once built on second, third, fourth chances, has now dedicated itself to the proposition that the tiniest mistake should destroy your entire life.
I am pleased to see that sometimes, we take a micro-step back the other direction. But I have seen no indication that the swing will ever go the other way. How could it? What lawmaker would ever advocate being softer on crime? What company would encourage what is "illegal"? And when the entire conversation is controlled by those who will never encourage those points of view because it would be unpopular, your average American will never have the conversation on any other terms either.
These smart, awesome people never get to be "trained programmers" because attitudes like this allow casual, often unintentional behaviors to ruin their days.
Claiming this is a funnel problem is short sighted. We definitely need people in the funnel, but we also need to ensure they have an amazing time as they integrate into tech culture.
I think sites like 70MillionJobs are dedicated to the proposition that they change for the better. Do you agree?
I firmly believe people change. Sorry, I know they do. And regardless of the nature of the change, it is fair to say that 10 years on, most people are not who they were before. Beyond about that mark, any prison sentence is nothing more than vengeance.
Is there evidence I'm missing? Besides my willingness to ask for evidence? :]
Once knew a guy online that had done something stupid when he was a teenager. He was a big, scruffy guy and altogether would've been a hard sell to an employer. But he was exceptionally smart and funny - would make a great colleague - and I bet many employers would've overlooked him.
It warms to my heart to see jobs that are more open to people with previous convictions - they're some of the most loyal and hardworking people I've encountered.
Keep up the great work!
"Doing the right thing and second chances" doesn't count in this case because it's rare when talking business and isn't dependable.
One possible incentive, (and this is a bit concerning), is employers looking for people who can be paid less and abused more because they don't have many options.
Maybe I'm just in test-writing mode, but, if there's a bug, we ought to be able to write a test for it. If there is bias in tech, we ought to be able to see it in data. Maybe we need to look at 1st-job hiring rates? Maybe we need to look at people who drop out of tech after their first year and don't return? But I haven't seen it. I'm not asking you to do this data analysis, I just figured that... there are a lot of people examining this, and it should have been uncovered by now.
How have you experienced racism, sexism or ageism in tech?
If your goal is to signal that you despise that party, then by all means keep using it here, but it seems closer to the kind of substantive discourse that HN encourages to avoid it.
What's your plan when the number of people with criminal records reaches 80 million, 90 million, etc? Have you already acquired the other domain names?
Only exception government jobs....
To me the -an suffix on Republican seems to suggest the word is about a person where as the word Democratic seems like it is an adjective so Democrat in my mind just gives it a more personified feel.
Conservatives may use Democrat derogatorily but it's still a useful term and in my opinion shouldn't be banned outright from discourse. Maybe I'm missing the context you were speaking of though.
Don't forget that many violent criminals commit more than one crime.
I think this is a terrific idea and can see the need. Do you foresee any difficulties obtaining VC? Just a bit curious given the in depth background checks they complete on founders. I hope that you get the funding that you may need for growth because I think this meets a tremendous need.
Kudos to you for making the changes you have made and then using that to help others.
Here's a relevant piece from the Los Angeles Times.
'One example: Google's own data showed women were promoted less often than men because workers need to nominate themselves. Women who did so got pushback. Based on her studies, [Joan C.] Williams [law professor, UC Hastings College of the Law] found that women are rewarded for modesty and penalized for what men might see as "aggressive" behavior. Google began including female leaders at workshops to coach everyone — men and women — on how to promote themselves effectively. The gender difference among nominees disappeared, Williams said.'
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-women-tech-20150222-st...
I can tell you with 100% certainty that there are felons that vote. I believe the system in our county is not perfect and thus mails out a voter registration to a convicted murderer that served his time and is now free.
some countries even wipe criminal records after some time.
That is insanely stupid, if they're calling it an actual DUI. If you're not Under the Influence... how can it possibly be a DUI?
Ugh... Make up another regulation about open containers, but don't call it a DUI, because it's not, if you're sober.
If someone opened a container, in the backseat, while you're driving, perhaps without even your knowledge, you can get a DUI. Insane.
The issue is more complicated: plea bargains, additive sentencing, predatory prosecution, lack of public defense, and many issues..
You Americans have a lot of things to fix, there is no simple solution.
Just look at the comments on any news article of anyone being arrested. As far as the general public is concerned, they're already guilty and are lucky we even let them keep breathing. Rarely will you read an article about the charges being dropped later, or the person acquitted. Nobody cares at that point.
Nope. This is hyperbole (although not completely unfounded).
My department hired a junior female of color coder of color after she completed a coding bootcamp. She wasn't a diversity hire, she was simply the best person for the job at the time. We legitimately needed to fill the position and luckily the company was willing to take a risk on a junior dev. In her previous short career, she was a public school teacher. She's not a "rockstar", a "ninja", or a 100x programmer (neither am I), but she's reasonably good at programming and is curious and driven enough to teach herself whatever she doesn't know.
BTW, we are an early-stage, funded cybersecurity company with a fantastic product in San Jose, CA.
The only question I have is: why would they? I can see the reason why the job seekers would subscribe to your website but I don't see why employers would prefer it to other alternatives. Actually I can see one: to be able to identify which candidates have a criminal record and eliminate them from their pool.
Registering there as an employer can be an act of good will and generosity but that seems a bit awkward to make them pay for it, no?
BTW, you have to have a very solid security from the beginning. A leak of your database would not only threaten your business but negate most of the good you did.
I don't see how that follows from the parent comment. What do you mean by this?
I'm not talking about murderers or pedophiles or people who just probably don't belong in society at all, but when it comes to people with lesser crimes -- people who got greedy, people who were stupid and stole something, or even were involved with drugs (I'm an advocate for decriminalization), people who can be given a second chance and not resort to a life of returning to old habits.
The organization's URL is: https://thelastmile.org/
Another URL I came across: http://jobsthathirefelons.org/
Anyways, hope you don't mind, but I've added your URL to my article as well. I'd rather see productive ex-cons/former felons contribute to our society and not be relegated to a position at a minimum wage job for the rest of their lives, despite having massive amounts of skills and talents that can be used elsewhere.
OP: Thanks for starting this, good luck, I've been thinking about doing something similar for a while now!
For starters what you can personally do is not purchase or use services from companies you feel are unethical. Explain to your network why for example you won't use Uber or Reddit or whatever other company you're fed up. If you can get enough other consumers to see from your view you'll force these companies to change. This just recently happened with health food junkies, now we have McDonald's at least paying lip service to healthy eating and serving things like kale.
One thing that won't work if you're a tech outsider is shaming people who work in the industry. It's hard to collaborate with people if they feel your tone is hostile.
The population benchmark for "tech hiring" probably should look more like "college graduates" than "people with CS degrees."
Funny thing is that my dad told me I'd never get a job by doing that, but I got one two weeks after my release.
Have a way for parole/probation officers to search for jobs nearby for their charges. My PO was actually a helpful guy, as he figured if I was working, I was more likely to stay out of trouble. Just have some way for them to engage and provide assistance to new parolees.
* random example form googling, but I've seen a few on the topic https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/04/03/race-crimin...
Now almost a year into my current full time job. I've been very lucky and fortunate but the threat of a background check will always look in the distance :/ will keep my chin up though.
There is a tax break for businesses that hire a new parolee. Something like $4-5k tax credit for the first year of employment. Would be good to find out about that and let employers know - help encourage them to hire criminals.
Some do, yes. I shared an office who hired ex-cons who got a huge rebate on wages in our municipality (up to 55%). He had 2 or 3 doing office work. Very pleasant people, not that large of an applicant pool however. If we had been hiring at the time (bootstrapping), I would have definitely taken advantage.
The general rule with Silicon Valley and San Francisco companies is to take everything they say in public or through their carefully worded P.R. with a grain of salt, and actually find out first hand if they practice what they preach hiring outliers with respect to diversity, records/credit/etc, non-Ivy League degrees, etc.
Why should I give an opportunity to someone who has gone out of their way to hurt other people over a similarly qualified person who doesn't view other human beings as objects to take advantage of for their own personal gain?
Not sure I have all the answers but your concept of "the right thing to do" seems fairly unexamined.
"Have you ever been convicted of a felony?"
I would just leave it blank. I figured if anyone asked, then I'd humbly explain the circumstances and I could take my chances from there...
Nobody ever asked, and I went about my life. Obviously YMMV.
Are you sure you've deeply examined that concept?
I'm not advocating for preferred treatment, just a lack of discrimination against ex-cons. The person who never went to prison should still have the advantage of work experience gained during the period that the felon was in prison. Anything beyond that is, in my view, unfair. I personally believe that the current system is designed, largely by lobbying on behalf of the for-profit prison system, to make it difficult for ex-cons to re-integrate into society and encourages recidivism. Society should want these people to be successful, if only so that they are no longer a financial burden.
I also believe that once people have finished serving their time, their right to vote should be restored. If you're expected to pay taxes and follow the laws of society, you should have your say in how public policy is made.
I recognize that my views are predicated on the idea that our justice and prison systems should aim for reform over punishment. Others will have a more vindictive goal for those institutions. I think the "changing attitudes" that I mentioned are people who are being converted from the vindictive camp to what I see as a pragmatic camp that believes a more compassionate approach will reduce crime and reduce the amount of money the state spends imprisoning people.
A similar thing is happening here in my home state in Australia. The government introduced a new tax on the backpackers that traditionally filled out the fruit-picking workforce. The fruit-pickers cried foul about how the government was now strangling them... but this story has a twist: the fruit-pickers have been treating the backpackers like shit, withholding pay, for enough years for word to get around that it was no longer worth doing.
In short, local residents don't want to do short-term seasonal work under poor working conditions - unskilled agricultural jobs really suck. Not to mention that you're not going to draw city-dwellers out to the farm if they're poor enough to be attracted to that kind of work - who is going to give up their home for short-term work? Only those folks who don't have any roots put down; that is, people who are already travellers of some kind.
Longer-term agricultural work can attract people more easily, since they'll have an ongoing income and can put roots down.
One minor suggestion: review the assets on your website, the second background image[0] for example is 12 megabytes, you can probably compress it to much smaller size.
[0] https://jobboardhq.blob.core.windows.net/assets/prod/2ttp/sh...
If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.
Keep in mind that the exploding US prison population started in the 1990s; 'thirty years ago' is before this happened.
It made my 1.5Lb sale of marijuana (felony) not seem so harmful.
Edit: removed that bit as well as "I went on to build a large financial services firm". Thanks for pointing this out.
Mind playing tricks on us.
And then... Wolf of Wolf Street.
I'll make an insider joke and update my LinkedIn profile for "Stratton Oakmont Chief Compliance Officer"...
Good energy, much love!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line
Yes... Helping people, communities, over the generations.
Am I wrong or all that people can't vote?
Besides, I've met enough terrible people who were smart or lucky enough not to get convicted. Being a felon or not is (almost) no indication as to someone's character, just how adept they are at dodging the law.
It might also make a difference if the crime was committed when they were very young, and they now clearly recognize that it was wrong and something they would not do again. I've never committed a crime or seriously harmed anyone, but there are things I did in my teens/early 20s that it find mortifying at 40.
From an economic standpoint, why IS it a problem? The lack of sense of safety could come with a discount that eventually evens out. I.E. a felon gets an offer with 30% discount, and after a year or so that he proves as normal as any other get his wages back. Not feasible with minimum wage jobs, and one could think this is really unfair, but its better than a straight no.
- It's a myth that these folks will be criminals on the job.
I wasn't trying to imply they were, I was more thinking of a company getting dragged into a witch hunt. Regardless of the population there's always a bad apple just like there's a diamond.
I just read this story and thought it might be interesting for you: http://www.sgi.org/people-and-perspectives/changing-lives-in...
(It's crystal clear that we don't want these people voting, not ever!, because it might shift power centers and it might allocate funds to the needy, etc.)
But we prefer the poor to always feel that they are non-people with a "debt" to society; and automatic debt they pay from the day they are born. The thing is, it starts out that way, and we know it to be true. So, we will always see these incarceration measures as punitive; this validates the current power structure and those who benefit from it. And of course that doesn't "work" (if by work we mean "rehabilitate folks), and of course people end up right back in jail -- our society has figured out a great system to keep these people marginalized forever. Other countries who approach incarceration like rehab (Norway?) see actual positive results from its incarcerated populations---but we clearly aren't aiming for positive results for the poor. We are definitely not interested in this data or we would be doing something about it. Heck, it's cheaper for taxpayers! But we don't want it to be cheaper for taxpayers; we (when I say we, I mean those who voices are heard loudly- the wealthy) want profit to those in power while at the same time, ensureing their power endures because they really don't want to deal with the bees escaping from that jar they have shaken for centuries. "We" hate the downtrodden in this country, "we" certainly don't want them to have a first chance, let alone a second chance. When "we" realize this, those of us who care about this and who definitely don't want to be a part of this kind of a "we" will need to speak out and unify. But too many are unable to see the machinery at work making this kind of awareness more difficult, too many buy into a meritocracy that awards them accolades when it does. I would think engineers and scientists, many of them would have an urge to be skeptical of the criminalization of poverty.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/consequ...
No. Your attitude here is the crappy one. Without being called out, a community will never grow. It's entirely appropriate to call out a community for the issues it has. And yes, the HN community has a HUGE problem with not recognizing sexism and racism in the industry. Far too many are willing to take the, "I don't see it, so it doesn't exist" point of view, which not only means that things won't improve, but means that they will likely get worse, as those who are doing the bad things are noticing that they can get away with it.
If you don't want people to take snipes at your community, maybe you should look at why people are taking snipes at it, and work to be better.
It's better to have the tone of people owning up to their actions and then moving forward rather than saying the US is just giving out criminal records like candy and it's not anybody's fault.
IMO it's an important point that needs to be better understood. I wrote about it recently at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14917723 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14912821 if anyone's interested.
(Regardless of which nation, obviously.)
And to the person who mentioned that my tone might be aggressive or somehow unpleasant: people have been saying that to the marginalized when they yelp in pain for centuries. Of course, no one wants to hear about how and whom they are actually hurting. They would rather those people play nice and exhibit a welcoming tone. I don't recall anyone worrying about their tone with respect to marginalized groups in tech. They rudely shoot them down, for the most part. That is why women leave tech in droves. And it ain't enough for us to shake our tiny fists by "not buying products" or whatever from these companies. (although, feel free to so) I'd rather the community know that there are actual people within their ranks who call bullshit. I'm sure there are the formerly incarcerated (remember Aaron Swartz would have been among these, as would Snowden, and Assange- so let's not forget about those people being considered "criminals" as well- just a reality check) women, people of color, veterans, and people over 35 in tech who read these threads and don't feel comfortable jumping in. I write here for them, hoping that one day, they will feel supported and comfortable speaking out.
At least in my neck of the woods (Western Europe) it's (relatively) easy to find programming work as a contractor/freelancer, and as far as I can tell employment history doesn't matter, at least not in the 'web' space of programming.
