This October I had a chance to visit with and hear from colleagues from across the Fair Chance employment field at convenings in Chicago, Phoenix, and Denver. It was a wonderful reminder of the passion and leadership driving Fair Chance reforms around the country, and the momentum that exists for this work. The sessions, led by the Corporate Coalition of Chicago, Valley of the Sun United Way, Arouet, and the National Reentry Workforce Collaborative, brought together employers, policymakers, reentry organizations, and leaders who shared their own stories of navigating the job market with a conviction record. After an inspiring month, and a few days of reflection, three themes stood out to me:
The narrative is changing. After almost a decade in this work, we now have a vocabulary to talk about the rationale and importance of inclusive employment practices. Increasingly, people from across the workforce and business ecosystem are talking about Fair Chance employment from a talent lens, using strengths-based language. The more this perspective permeates our conversation, the more obvious it will become to see jobseekers with past convictions as a solution to companies’, industries’, and regions’ workforce challenges.
Our background screening process needs remediation and reform. The enormity of the population that is disqualified or disadvantaged due to their conviction history – and the system of workarounds that we have put in place to address this – is a stark reminder of our broken background screening system. When background checks became normalized in the latter part of the last century, we failed to build corresponding industry standards on how, when, and why to use them. The Fair Chance field is now doing the remedial work to repair this failure. Because the industry was built to maximize information, employers are now burdened by having to make candidate-level decisions about thousands of different backgrounds, essentially guessing as to whether a previous conviction might have an impact on future job performance. With no clear standards or guidance in place – even within regulatory frameworks – about what specific convictions to green light or review, decision-makers will continue to over-index on disqualifying great candidates. I am encouraged by our collective recognition of the challenge, and hopeful that research and funding will make its way away from the margins of the problem and toward substantive reform.
Technology has a chance to expedite forward progress. One theme of the events was the integration of technology to help implement better policy. We heard from Easy Expunctions and Rasa about the promise of technology to support faster and broader record sealing and expungement. We heard from tech platforms that drive education and workforce preparation during incarceration to reduce the barriers to transition back to the workforce. With the expansion of data and technology in the field, I hope that we can better normalize best practices in Fair Chance employment and disrupt background screening processes that have operated without a substantial increase in nuance or sophistication for half a century.
Big thanks to the organizers, speakers, and colleagues who made October an inspiring month and I look forward to building on many great ideas and partnerships that have emerged!
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