Pubdate: Tue, 10 Jan 2012
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/lettertoeditor.html
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura
Note: Alfred Blumstein is a professor of urban systems and operations 
research at Carnegie Mellon University. Kiminori Nakamura is an 
assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice at the 
University of Maryland, College Park.

PAYING A PRICE, LONG AFTER THE CRIME

IN 2010, the Chicago Public Schools declined to hire Darrell Langdon 
for a job as a boiler-room engineer, because he had been convicted of 
possessing a half-gram of cocaine in 1985, a felony for which he 
received probation.

It didn't matter that Mr. Langdon, a single parent of two sons, had 
been clean since 1988 and hadn't run into further trouble with the 
law. Only after The Chicago Tribune wrote about his case did the 
school system reverse its decision and offer him the job.

A stunning number of young people are arrested for crimes in this 
country, and those crimes can haunt them for the rest of their lives. 
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson's Crime Commission found that 
about half of American males could expect to be arrested for a 
nontraffic offense some time in their lives, mostly in their late 
teens and early 20s. An article just published in the journal 
Pediatrics shows how the arrest rate has grown - by age 23, 30 
percent of Americans have been arrested, compared with 22 percent in 
1967. The increase reflects in part the considerable growth in 
arrests for drug offenses and domestic violence.

The impact of these arrests is felt for years.

The ubiquity of criminal-background checks and the efficiency of 
information technology in maintaining those records and making them 
widely available, have meant that millions of Americans - even those 
who served probation or parole but were never incarcerated - continue 
to pay a price long after the crime.

In November the American Bar Association released a database 
identifying more than 38,000 punitive provisions that apply to people 
convicted of crimes, pertaining to everything from public housing to 
welfare assistance to occupational licenses. More than two-thirds of 
the states allow hiring and professional-licensing decisions to be 
made on the basis of an arrest alone.

Employers understandably want to protect their employees and 
customers from risk. Yet at the same time, there is a growing public 
interest in facilitating job opportunities for those who have stayed 
crime-free for a reasonable period of time. The weak economy and a 
rethinking of the logic of mass incarceration - driven in large part 
by budget pressures - have also brought attention to the situations 
of ex-offenders like Mr. Langdon, who face the collateral 
consequences of conviction long after their involvement with the 
criminal justice system has ended.

Federal authorities are beginning to pay attention.

Last April, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. urged state attorneys 
general to review laws and policies "to determine whether those that 
impose burdens on individuals convicted of crimes without increasing 
public safety should be eliminated."

It is well established that the risk of recidivism drops steadily 
with time, but there is still the question of how long is long 
enough. By looking at data for more than 88,000 people who had their 
first arrest in New York State in 1980, and tracking their subsequent 
criminal histories over the next 25 years, we estimate the 
"redemption time" - the time it takes for an individual's likelihood 
of being arrested to be close to that of individuals with no criminal 
records - to be about 10 to 13 years.

We also found that about 30 percent of the first-time offenders in 
1980 were never arrested again, in New York or anywhere else.

Employers could apply their own judgments around those estimates, but 
the real problem is the state and local rules - often embedded in 
statutes - that restrict employment or licensing for the rest of the 
individual's life. In New York, former offenders can be forever 
denied licenses for certain jobs, ranging from beer distributor to 
real estate broker.

Such "forever rules" - which fall heavily on minorities, who are 
particularly likely to be arrested - are inherently unfair.

We propose that the "forever rules" be replaced by rules that provide 
for the expiration of a criminal record.

We believe it is unreasonable for someone to be hounded by a single 
arrest or conviction that happened more than 20 years earlier - and 
for many kinds of crimes, the records should be sealed even sooner.

The state, as well as private employers, should face a heavy burden 
to demonstrate the need for any rule that imposes consequences on 
someone who has remained crime-free decades after a single offense. 
Yes, there are legitimate exceptions for high-security positions in 
law enforcement and national security - and there can be exemptions 
in particular cases; banks cannot afford to hire someone convicted of 
financial fraud.

A number of states have placed limits on the availability of stale 
criminal records.

Under a law that will take effect in May, Massachusetts will limit 
employers' access to information about convictions to 5 years for 
misdemeanors and 10 years for felonies. And the new law will protect 
employers from due-diligence liability suits if someone they hire in 
accord with these restrictions commits a further offense.

Policies that encourage employers to hire people who made a mistake 
in the past but have since rebuilt their lives would not only help 
those people, but also our economy and our society.

With unemployment so high, we need to make it easier, not harder, for 
people to find jobs. And by embracing the principle that having paid 
the price for crime, there should be a limit on the time they are 
made to suffer, we would be giving true meaning to the ideals of 
rehabilitation and redemption.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom