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Congratulations All of Us or None!<br><br>
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<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-felon12oct12,1,2068369.story?coll=la-headlines-california" eudora="autourl">
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-felon12oct12,1,2068369.story?coll=la-headlines-california<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3>A Call to Let Felons Start Fresh<br>
San Francisco supervisors urge deletion of the question about prior
felonies<br>
from public job applications.<br>
By Lee Romney<br>
Times Staff Writer<br><br>
October 12, 2005<br><br>
SAN FRANCISCO — Elected leaders here Tuesday took a step unusual for<br>
politicians: They sided with felons.<br><br>
With no debate, supervisors unanimously urged the city and county to
delete<br>
the question about prior convictions from public employment
applications.<br><br>
The resolution is not binding. And it does not prevent employers
from<br>
conducting criminal background checks or asking about prior felonies
during<br>
job interviews.<br><br>
"It's very important, because it gives you an opportunity to sell
yourself<br>
to the employer," Robert Bowden, 42, an ex-convict who has been out
of<br>
prison for seven years, said after the vote. "It gives you another
option<br>
other than going back to what you did…. If they want us to be
productive<br>
members of society, they've got to let us back into
society."<br><br>
In introducing the measure two weeks ago, Supervisor Tom Ammiano
stressed<br>
that it would broaden the city's pool of qualified applicants while<br>
reinvesting in ex-convicts who are working to rehabilitate
themselves.<br><br>
The resolution prompted more than 160 letters from members of a San<br>
Francisco political action committee concerned that potential changes
would<br>
hamstring city hiring managers and inappropriately allow certain classes
of<br>
felons into sensitive positions.<br><br>
Others nationwide watched with interest: With the vote, San Francisco
became<br>
the first municipality in the state — and possibly the country — to
grapple<br>
with what advocates say is employment discrimination against a
swelling<br>
population of ex-prisoners.<br><br>
Increasing security concerns since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have
led<br>
to a sharp rise in criminal background checks by employers: Eighty
percent<br>
conducted them in 2003, up from 51% in 1996, according to the Society
for<br>
Human Resource Management. The trend has further weeded former
offenders<br>
from the workplace and prompted some employers to fire otherwise
stable<br>
workers who lied about criminal pasts, advocates say.<br><br>
"If they can get their foot in the door so that at least they can
be<br>
considered … I think that's extremely important," said former
Clinton<br>
administration pardon attorney Margaret Colgate Love, who recently
completed<br>
a study for the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project of state laws
that<br>
affect felons after their release.<br><br>
The vote by the supervisors came the same day that San Francisco Dist.
Atty.<br>
Kamala Harris unveiled a "reentry" program to provide job
training,<br>
education and other guidance to ex-offenders in an attempt to reduce
steep<br>
recidivism rates among California parolees.<br><br>
Dozens of ex-felons packed the supervisors' chambers late last month
to<br>
support the employment application measure. Activists hope the San
Francisco<br>
resolution will become a blueprint for others across the state. One spoke
of<br>
fruitlessly seeking rental housing when his only identification was a
prison<br>
ID.<br><br>
Linda Walker, 47, a Contra Costa County employee who works securing
child<br>
support payments, talked of suffering eternally for crimes she had long
ago<br>
done the time for. Although the former heroin addict with a petty
theft<br>
conviction managed to find a sympathetic manager and land a good job,
she<br>
said she feared having to reveal her felon status each time she
sought<br>
advancement.<br><br>
"There have been many times I didn't apply for a position because of
that<br>
box," she told supervisors when the measure was introduced.
"There are so<br>
many of us who do not seek housing, jobs, loans and the opportunity
to<br>
advance because we don't want to answer that question — because
we've<br>
already paid."<br><br>
Driving the measure is a Bay Area-based group of ex-convicts called All
of<br>
Us or None. Leader Dorsey Nunn has urged public officials to view
the<br>
application checkbox issue as one hurdle in a broader civil rights
movement<br>
for the formerly incarcerated.<br><br>
The scene was more subdued Tuesday as two members of the group showed up
to<br>
watch their measure succeed. Bowden, convicted of drug dealing, now
works<br>
security for St. Anthony's Foundation. He believes he secured the job
only<br>
because the application did not inquire about his felony status and he
could<br>
explain his past in person. He never received a call back after checking
the<br>
felon box on 40 other applications, he said.<br><br>
The debate comes as the public policy problem of a vast felon underclass
is<br>
capturing attention nationwide. There are an estimated 12 million people
in<br>
the U.S. with felony convictions — about 8% of the working-age
population,<br>
and more than 600,000 offenders are being released from prisons yearly,
said<br>
Devah Pager, a Princeton University sociologist who researches
employment<br>
discrimination against felons.<br><br>
Pager hired groups of African American and white young men with
identical<br>
resumes and experience to pose as job applicants. Some were told to say
they<br>
had a drug felony. Her study found that checking the felony box on<br>
applications reduced the white applicants' chance of an interview by 50%
and<br>
the black applicants' by two-thirds.<br><br>
<br>
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