Obama explains plan to help ex-prisoners get jobs, Ban-the-box
There is no bigger stigma for job seekers than having a criminal record. But it's much harder for an ex-prisoner to stay out of prison if he doesn't have a job.
Several states and cities think they've found a way to break that vicious cycle: preventing employers from asking about criminal records in job applications, a policy known as "ban the box." Today the federal government formally proposed a regulation to "ban the box" for federal agencies — they'll be required to wait to check the criminal histories of job applicants until after they've extended a tentative job offer.
It's something advocates have been asking President Obama to do for a long time, and that he officially announced the government would do last fall. Banning the box is a concrete step toward not just reversing mass incarceration in the future, but also making sure its past victims don't slip through the cracks. But it's also a reminder that fixing discrimination is rarely simple — and that the people who are most victimized by a problem might not be the ones most helped by a solution.
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