President Obama announced Nov. 2 a new executive order to reduce hiring discrimination against former convicts, according to MSNBC.
Applicants for positions in the federal government will no longer be required to check a box on their applications if they have a criminal record.
MSNBC reports,
About 60-to-75 percent of former inmates cannot find work within their first year out of jail, according to the Justice Department, a huge impediment to re-entering society.
Research shows the existence of a criminal record can reduce an employer’s interest in applicant by about 50 percent, and that when white and black applicants both have records, employers are far less likely to call back a black applicant than a white one. As a 2009 re-entry study in New York city found, “the criminal record penalty suffered by white applicants (30 percent) is roughly half the size of the penalty for blacks with a record (60 percent).”
Obama’s move also comes in the wake of a growing movement for criminal justice reform – from broad calls by groups like Black Lives Matter to a specific campaign on ban the box that ranged from half the Senate Democratic caucus to civil rights groups to artists like John Legend.
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