Commentaries
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 Jesus Forgives, Do We? Ex-Offenders and EmploymentHow long does it take for an ex-offender to pay his debt to society? Longer than you think! Listen Now | Download
In 1985, Darrell Langdon of Chicago was sentenced to probation for possessing half a gram of cocaine. It was his last run-in with the law. He got his life in order and has been sober since 1988. A happy ending? Well, despite 25 years as a law-abiding citizen, there are still people who want to punish Langdon for his crime. Langdon learned about the vindictive nature of American criminal justice in 2010, when he applied for a job as a boiler room engineer in the Chicago Public Schools. Under Illinois law, sex offenders and those convicted of violent crime are barred from working in public schools. While that sounds reasonable, the law also bars people convicted of non-violent offenses, in particular drug offenses. Thus, Langdon, who had turned his life around after being convicted of a relatively minor offense, was told his prior conviction made him ineligible for the job. But his story does have a happy ending: Dawn Turner Trice of the Chicago Tribune wrote about Langdon’s plight, and lawyers at a legal clinic took up his case. As a result, public school officials took a “second look” at Langdon’s application, issued the necessary exemption, and hired him. For his part, Langdon was grateful, not bitter: he told the Tribune “I will be one of the best boiler room engineers they’ve ever had . . . They won’t regret this decision.” While Langdon’s story turned out well, that’s not the case for many ex-offenders. In a recent New York Times op-ed, criminologists Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura wrote that millions of ex-offenders “continue to pay a price long after the crime.” This is true even though they, like Darrell Langdon, have served their sentence and amended their lives. The record of previous convictions, no matter how old, follows ex-offenders around like a scarlet letter. Even when there is no legal impediment, easily-obtained public records make it possible for employers to discriminate against them, no matter how minor their offense. And thanks to the “war on drugs,” the problem is only going to get worse: millions of men, disproportionately African-American and Latino, are going to be rendered unemployable. Blumstein and Nakamura’s recommendation is one Christians should get behind: permanent bars against employment should be replaced with “rules that provide for the expiration of a criminal record.” For instance, a Massachusetts law limits “employers’ access to information about convictions to 5 years for misdemeanors and 10 years for felonies.” Likewise, private employers should have to prove “the need for any rule” that discriminates against “someone who has remained crime-free decades after a single offense.” This isn’t being “soft on crime” or “indifferent to public safety.” It’s acknowledging that rehabilitation is not only possible, it will be rewarded. People — like Christians — who know what it is like to be forgiven should understand. Jim Liske is the CEO of Prison Fellowship.
Further Reading and Information
CPS reverses itself, gives job candidate a 2nd chance Paul Among the People Why punish ex-offenders with a voting ban?
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Comments:
I guess now a days the employers have so many candidates to choose from that they tend to get picky about everything. Meanwhile I am unable to provide for my family as my former employer disputed my unemployment claim and my disabled wife's disability claim was also denied. I should mention that she held a responsible job for over 37 years before she was diagnosed with severe degenerative arthritis and fibromyalgia. She had appealed her disability claim via an attorney but it could take many months if not years before there is a decision on that. We are surviving on God's grace but are facing eviction and our car being repossessed. Please pray that we get some income soon. I have started my own business for graphics and printing but no new order is coming in even though my prices are low and quality is guaranteed.
Remember the famous poem by Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
These are your fortunes as spoken in 1937... Cavet my friends, for God hates a spiteful heart.
One day they will come for all of us. Will you be prepared to stand in judgment? I will
Moral laws, at one time, also reflected irreversability and as such they acted as breaks to evil and as an incentive to adhere to moral codes and social mores.
Modern man believes that we can abandon age old restraints and it is much to our discredit. Social disintegration is upon us because we have abandoned the cause and effect inevitableness that once held us together.
Cruel? Perhaps, but this has nothing to do with forgiveness and everything to do with the setting of social boundaries that both restrain the wicked and teach a lesson to those in temptation. When consequences are lax temptation is harder to resist, when there is no effect from the cause morality evaporates.
As a Marine I saw a number of examples of the justice system applied to men I firmly knew to be innocent. At the time I was infuriated at the injustice. In retropect I see the goal and I am less eager to challenge the rightness of what ocurred.
Simply put at a point in time a leader (at flag level) saw a need to set an example, to demonstrate that consequences resulted from either bad behavior or some other form of indiscipline. In order to protect the whole an individual was prosecuted. Fair? Indeed not! Right? Indeed not? Necessary? Ah, there's the rub. I thank God I was never put in a position to make that kind of call. In a military society, where a general can give orders that might result in hundreds of deaths, is it not also logical that he direct that a few be sacrificed to courts martial so that the whole is preserved? Wrestle with that concept, as I have, and the answer eludes with agonizing adroitness. If sometimes the innocent must suffer how much more the guilty?
At one time teenage pregnancy was so vulger an assault on society that young men and women showed restraint. No more! With the consequences so minor the behavior is encouraged. Compounding the problem are the many abortions that are now done to undo the failure at self-restraint. The one sin leading directly to the far more heinous one.
God set the standards in the Torah. The Lord God of heaven provided the basis for irreversibility of many sins. To argue otherwise is to argue with God Himself as reflected in His word.