After aldermen approved a landmark prison reentry law, advocates headed off to spread the word — to ex-cons in need of a job and to the 13,000 city vendors directed to give them a second chance.
Holding signs of support, dozens of criminal justice activists converged on City Hall Tuesday night, where aldermen approved the so-called “Ban the Box” ordinance — the third of its kind in the nation — by a vote of 22 to 1. Click here to read the ordinance.
“We’re going to hit the barber shops, the hair salons, and let everybody know that Ban the Box went through,” Tyrone Weston, leader of the city’s Street Outreach Program, said after the vote. His program is currently reaching out to 453 young men, about half of whom are ex-cons, to help them find alternatives to a life of crime.
The “box” the ordinance refers to is the section of the job application in which people are asked to mark whether they’ve been convicted of a felony. The new law removes that box from applications so that ex-offenders won’t be automatically refused jobs that they may be qualified for. It also directs all city vendors to adopt a similar approach to hiring people for jobs on a city contract. Click here and here for background.
On the aldermanic floor, Fair Haven Alderman Joey Rodriguez said the bill would address a pressing concern in New Haven: helping out the 25 prisoners per week who are released onto city streets.
When ex-cons reenter society, Rodriguez said, “most are presented false hopes and rejection resulting in, again, a walk down the wrong path.” He applauded the new law for giving them a fair shot at landing a job.
The one “nay” vote came from Quinnipiac Meadows Alderman Gerald Antunes. He said the proposal was fine for the city, but too burdensome for small city contractors. Those small businesses should be allowed to screen for criminal records up front, he argued, so that they don’t waste staff time interviewing candidates whom they’re not going to end up hiring. He added that his constituents have urged him to vote against the proposal.
Before the bill’s passage, Hill Alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks sought to correct misconceptions about what the law is.
“Most of us have been getting negative feedback” on the new initiative, she said at a briefing by the corporation counsel before the vote.
“We need to recognize that we are not just arbitrarily saying, ‘To heck with it, hire anyone,’” she said.
“There is a level of confusion in it,” agreed West River Alderman Yusuf Shah. “People are taking it to another level.”
Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden clarified the process. The law directs the city to remove the box and to refrain from asking applicants about their criminal history during job interviews. If the city decides to offer an applicant a job, then the human resources office will do a criminal background check. If a conviction shows up, then the applicant will return for a subsequent interview to determine whether or not that background renders him or her unfit for the job.
The new process doesn’t limit the city’s ability to screen its candidates, Bolden said. It aims to make sure that for ex-cons, “the opportunity to work in city government has not been foreclosed entirely.”
New Haven is the second city in Connecticut, after Norwich, to remove the felony box from city applications. New Haven took the law a step further by directing city contractors to follow suit. It’s the third city in the nation to enact such legislation, according to the DeStefano administration.
The law will apply to an estimated 13,000 vendors.
Those vendors will not be required to ban their boxes per se, Bolden said. By his reading of the law, companies could keep their “box,” as long as they adopt a hiring process that does not unfairly discriminate against ex-cons.
The law does not apply to vendors with the Board of Education or the city police department, said Kica Matos, director of the city’s Community Service Administration.
Her office will now undertake the task of reaching out to those contractors and getting them to sign sworn affidavits that their hiring process is in compliance with the new law.
As Matos works with vendors, activists like LaResse Harvey will be spreading the word throughout Connecticut.
Harvey (at left in photo at the top of this story) is the statewide policy director of A Better Way Foundation of Connecticut, a not-for-profit advocacy group that works on drug policy and prison reentry issues. The group has long supported this type of initiative, she said.
She said law would help by giving a second chance to an ex-con, for example, who might have had a drug charge or an assault in their youth, but has cleaned up his life and moved on.
Success in New Haven, she said, will build momentum for getting similar legislation passed in Hartford and Bridgeport — and one day, on the state level, she said.
Meanwhile, Weston and his crew will be hitting the streets, spreading the word to ex-offenders in need of a job.
Weston said he hoped the new law would show ex-cons that “if you keep knocking on doors, some door is gonna open.”
“Now,” he said, “it’s up to the people that’s out there, to start knocking on doors.”
Heck...as long as the city does a background check before making an actual job offer, I'm OK with it.