Incarcerated individuals, or an individual who has been convicted of committing a crime, are a group of people that have been neglected and discriminated against after they have completed their sentences. Often times, these ex-offenders are thrown into society without any resources or the ability to be able to rebuild and provide for themselves thus segregating them for the rest of America. This paper will focus on certain aspects of life that ex-convicts face social inequality and discrimination in regard to housing, being employed, and voting rights. Ex-offenders usually have a harder time in these certain aspects due to their criminal record as well as the discrimination they face when being considered. Re-entry for ex-convicts are dependent on two main aspects, housing and employment. When applying for housing, the biggest struggle that formerly incarcerated individuals face are based on landlords and the housing authority that deny applicants without even considering the fact that these individuals have paid their dues and have made up for the crimes they have committed. Employment is also hard for ex-convicts because of the laws that are in place for background checks and the biased attitudes that employers often have towards individuals with a criminal record. Voting rights are also another aspect in which formerly incarcerated individuals face social inequality. Since these rights are taken away from ex-convicts, it results in ex-offenders not having a say in the community that they live in and the laws that affect them thus creating this inequality between them and non-convicted individuals. This paper will address these three topics in depth and how detrmimental this discrimination towards ex-convicts that are trying to rebuild their life after paying their dues to society for the mistakes they have committed.
Having proper housing after being released is a big factor that keeps ex-offenders out of prison. In the article written by Jessica T Simes, she touches upon how housing is associated with reducing the risk of arrest six to twelve months after reentry. Simes also writes about how if individuals move away from their former neighborhood, this increases their chances of not re-offending thus improving their life chances and having access to housing at all improves the outcome as well (Simes). One of the most detrimental effects of getting convicted is the ability to secure housing after completing a sentence. Ex-offenders often aren’t able to afford housing in the private market so they often turn to public housing or reaching out to their families in hopes that they will accept them. In 1988, Congress enacted the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. One of the consequences was that public housing has to issue leases with the condition that if any tenant engages in a drug related activity or if they have a guest who engages in any illegal drug activity whether it is on or off the establishment grounds, they would be subject to eviction (Schneider). This implication makes it so that the landlord is able to evict without even needing proper proof, meaning that even if there is an accusation that is brought to the attention of the landlord, he would have ground to evict the tenant. For example, it is well within the rights for a landlord to evict a whole family in public housing if a guest of the tenant was even suspected of being around drugs. The discriminatory effects of this law are quite adverse to what the government expects of ex-offenders.
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Public housing authorities often have a lot of authority when deciding who to accept as a tenant. Federal law permits these landlords the discretion to bar any applicant who has any sort of criminal record. It allows them to develop policies based on three types of criminal activity: 1) Any drug related activity 2) violent criminal activity and 3) criminal activity that poses a threat to the health, safety, and welfare of any other residents (Schneider). The third category is the most discriminatory due to the fact that it provides the ability for many authorities to interpret this as broadly as they desire and essentially deny anyone who has a criminal record. For example, as Schneider mentioned in her journal, one housing authority has developed a policy denying any applications if they were convicted of something as minor as a civil disobedience charge within the past ten years. This means that they are able to withhold a place to live for people that were arrested for taking part in a political protest that happened nine years prior to them searching for a place to live. Another housing authority denies housing for petty crimes such as shoplifting or not paying for video rentals. For example, an African American mother was denied on the reason that she had shoplifted chapstick from a small drug store four years prior to her applying for housing (Schneider). Although these crimes are not actually predictive of applicants behavior especially if it was a long time ago, housing authorities are still able to carry out this type of dicrimination towards ex-offenders.
A study carried by the National Institute for Justice proved that recidivism, or the tendency of a felon to reoffend, mostly happens within the first three years of being arrested. They found that for a person who was convicted of robbery at 18, the percentage of them reoffending drops below the general population for a person of that age at 7.7 years. Individuals that are arrested for aggravated assault, their risk of reoffending drops after 4.3 years and those for burglary after 3.8 years. They have also discovered that the rearrest rate for individuals that are older drops even more dramatically. The study also exposed that for all types of crimes, those that are not arrested within their first year of being out, the recidivism rate drops drastically and after seven years, a formerly convicted individual possesses the same amount of risk of committing a new offense that a person without a criminal record possess (Durose).
In a study done by Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law performed in 2011 in Illinois, they examined housing policies and found that out of the 300+ housing authorities, a lot of them had policies and rules denying housing to people with criminal records and this included arrest records and conviction records regardless of when they were committed (Tran). This type of discretion that is given to housing authority only attributes to discrimination and the inequality that formely incarcerated individuals face. The Public Housing Authority (PHA) does however does provide a way for applicants to prove that they should be able to at least considered rather than being banned right away. This gives ex-offenders the opportunity to show that they have changed and no longer are a risk. However, many applicants are unaware of this right to present evidence and appeal their denial. This lack of understanding by individuals and the lack of education provided by the PHA is also a big factor as to why this inequality exists amongst formerly incarcerated individuals. Not only that, but often times PHA refuses to consider the evidence provided by applicants. For example, in Indiana County, a mother who had applied in order to avoid being homeless with her child was denied on a prior conviction for drug paraphernalia. She came back with extensive evidence that included documents of her completion of substance abuse treatment, parenting classes, negative drug test, and referrals. Regardless of all the evidence that she had presented, PHA still refused her housing showing that even though these programs exist, they are still discriminatory and are reflective in how little consideration they actually give thus resulting in PHA and housing owners having the ability to deny housing on their own terms (Tran). These broad yet overly restrictive policies need to be replaced so that housing authorities are providing providing housing for individuals, even those with a conviction record to help them become productive members in the community they live in.
Incarcerated individuals often have a hard time transitioning back into the labor force after serving time due to employment laws and employer biases. Incarcerated individuals often face discrimination when applying for a job or a position due to the simple fact that they had to serve time.
A study by Harry J Holzer, Steven Raphael, and Michael A. Stoll, all professors at acclaimed universities, surveyed over 600 employers in LA on how willing employers were to hire ex- offenders. They surveyed these firms at random and gathered information of the many characteristics of the firm. The professors also inquired about the most recent job and its responsibilities that did not require a college degree that had been filled. The survey resulted in over 40% of employers indicated that they would probably or definitely not be willing to hire an applicant with a criminal record for a job that didn’t require a college degree (Hozier). One reason that they found was that employers often believe that a criminal history indicates an untrustworthy employee, someone who would steal, break the rules, etc. thus opening them up to negligent hiring claims. They found that the employers were willing to hire were only in certain sectors such as manufacturing, construction, transportation; lower level jobs. These sectors often pay minimum wage or slightly above depending on the position often leaving incarcerated individuals unable to support themselves or their family. This discrimination of employers having biased attitude towards ex-offenders is a result of the inequality that incarcerated individuals face.
Another barrier that ex-offenders face to getting employed is the laws and regulations that are put in place to stop them from getting jobs. For example, Pennsylvania has legislation in place that has a long list of crimes that stop a person from working for a school and also increases the length of the ban from five years to life essentially deterring ex-offenders from getting certain jobs. Another example is a federal statute that declares that ex-offenders who are convicted of a drug offense must have their license suspended for at least six months (Flake). This often obstructs incarcerated individuals who may be applying for a job that requires them to drive or even if the job is out of reach for public transportation. Some of these laws are unreasonable especially if they do not pertain to the crime the individual has been convicted of. These laws often add to the inequality and discrimination that incarcerated individuals face after already being punsihed and serving time.
Even after being employed, incarcerated individuals face other types of discrimination such as wage inequality. In the article written by Kecia R Johnson, and Jaqueline Johnson, they did a study in which they examined whether incarceration has an impact on earnings between ex-offenders and non-offenders. Through the calculations and the data that they acquired, they found that a 20 year old man who has been incarcerated will experience a 14.1% reduction in hourly wages and this number increases over time (Johnson). In another study, the authors compiled data from 1988 to 2001 including data about earning records, demographics, and education from individuals that were released from Washington State Prison. They found that there is a negative effect of prior incarceration on post release wages of about a 4.5% wage penalty after being released from prison The study shows that low risk offenders often face the largest negative effect of post release wages and that they do bounce back to pre-incarceration wages very slowly over time (Petit).
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