Ta-Nehisi Coates has asked for a post on the economics of hiring felons.
The obvious common-sense fear is that ex-convicts will steal from you. But a conviction also signals other undesireable traits. Criminals tend to be poor, yes, and have bad educations. But they also tend to have appalling impulse control, often accompanied by substance abuse problems and/or mental illness. The hourly wage of most criminal enterprises is extremely low; with the possible exception of the drug trade, if they could do something else, it's likely they would. Criminals clearly display a certain lack of respect for others. And prison doesn't improve them.
Mark Kleiman has done some sterling work on ways to deal with the impulse control problem--close monitoring of parolees with small immediate punishments, rather than rare but severe punishments. In this way, you try to move groups of felons to a new, lower crime equilibrium, and then switch monitoring resources to the next group.
However, it's very hard to prevent crime if criminals have no other way to support themselves, and it's devastatingly hard to get a job with a prison record. One way to look at hiring ex-felons is as a collective action problem. The individually rational decision is not to hire a felon. But as a group, this makes us worse off, because when you have no future outside of prison, inside doesn't look so bad.
There's also the moral dimension. I don't know about you, but I've made a fair number of spectacular moral and economic mistakes in my life. Middle class kids, though, have margin for error. It's all very well to talk about how poor kids could pull themselves out of it if they did X, Y and Z, and I happen to believe that this is correct. The problem is that the first slip a poor kid makes is usually his last--as John Scalzi said, "Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old." One of the really, really great things about America is that more than almost anywhere in the world, you get to start over. But that's not true for idiots who committed crimes more serious than drinking too much and flunking out of school.
But it's pretty hard to ask individuals to lean into the strike zone and take one for the team. Collective problems do require collective solutions. These aren't perfect, but here are a few off the top of my head:
1) Reduce the number of crimes to things like assault, so that poor kids have as few opportunities as possible to make those sorts of permanent mistakes.
2) Less prison. Prison is awful for us as well as the prisoners. I'm not saying we shouldn't punish kids who rob liquor stores, but we could try to think of ways that don't involve shoving them into a metal box with a lot of other criminals. Here's where Mark Kleiman's ideas have a lot of merit--use intensive monitoring instead of warehousing. There's a lot of garbage that needs picking up on the streets of American cities; this is one example of something that would be a better use of low-level criminal time then staring at bars.
3) Tax breaks for hiring ex-felons, say for the first two years of employment. It will cost us more money up front, but less money if the felons stay out of prison--prison is extremely expensive, not only in the direct cost, but also because it makes criminals about as socially and economically unproductive as possible. Add a bonus for anyone who gets a sizeable promotion/raise, or skills training. Yes, this will be in part a boondoggle. So are prison building projects ardently supported by the prison guard's unions.
4) Small bonuses for the criminals themselves (or perhaps a reduction in monitoring) for things like getting their GED or staying clean for a year.
This is not perfect; the poor, and the criminals, we will probably always have with us. But it would be a hell of a lot better than what we have now.
Having worked at Legal Aid, I have to say that this post is a little misleading. No doubt poor kids are a more likely to get arrested than upper middle-class kids, even for similar conduct, but there's a long way between getting arrested for the first time and being in prison for a felony. You really do have to do bad things (and usually a lot of them) for the latter to occur. So it's just not true to say that a poor kid's first mistake is his last.
Incidentally, some attempts at numbers three and four are being made, although not in the way you describe -- for example, the Prisoner Reentry Initiative is in its third year, IIRC, and the Department of Education runs a similar program called the Life Skills for State and Local Prisoners Program. I wrote two or three proposals for the OJP program.
As for number two, a criminal law prof named John Strait said that the desire for punishment (longer sentences) and rehabilitation (shorter sentences, usually) is a perennial issue, with one side cresting as the other troughs. He said he's been through two complete cycles so far and that we're at a crest of longer sentences at the moment.
Incidentally, some attempts at numbers three and four are being made, although not in the way you describe -- for example, the Prisoner Reentry Initiative is in its third year, IIRC, and the Department of Education runs a similar program called the Life Skills for State and Local Prisoners Program. I wrote two or three proposals for the OJP program.
As for number two, a criminal law prof named John Strait said that the desire for punishment (longer sentences) and rehabilitation (shorter sentences, usually) is a perennial issue, with one side cresting as the other troughs. He said he's been through two complete cycles so far and that we're at a crest of longer sentences at the moment.
"Prison is awful for us as well as the prisoners"
Are you sure? It seems to correlate with a big drop in crime. Nevertheless, if there are more effective solutions, I'm all for them. Especially if they're cheaper.
"small immediate punishments, rather than rare but severe punishments"
Like f'rinstance?
Randomized drug tests and an immediate short stay in the poky for failure, f'rinstance.
In addition to tax breaks, could the law be changed to reduce liability to companies who hire ex-convicts who have gone through some kind of vetting process? Think of the potential liability cost incurred by a business from its own employees as well as from the general public for hiring a convict who may go on to commit another crime on company time. Also, what about a lower, time-limited minimum wage for certain ex-convicts? Perhaps these two things would encourage a business take a chance on certain ex-convicts with limited costs to the government.
Fuck the poor. Fuck criminals. If they deserved to live, they would have trust funds.
They should be shot like dogs, and their bodies sold to recover the cost of the bullets.
Good luck reducing the size of the criminal code. It's already illegal to make a misstatement of any kind to a federal official. The more laws there are to break, if only inadvertently, the more ways to get troublemakers.
Do you think they want you to obey the law?
My girlfriend's job leads to dealing with people who are not always in the best financial or social positions. Data is not the plural of anecdote, but she's always claimed that the ex-cons are the most polite and respectful, while the normal folk are the pains in the ass.
re: Less prison
Well, there was that 'bring back lashing' post from last week...
To the people who favor less punishment and more rehabilitation:
How many felons have you known and would you hire them? Would you let them pay to room in your home?
Who should assume the risk of associating with them even if there was no legal liability to the employer?
I have known a few and some were not dangerous (to me), but they all had attitude, mental health, drug or alcohol problems. I would not want them around the weak, unaware or the gullible.
I have been in lockups. Prison is a terrible place, maybe too terrible. I am interested in hearing about cheaper and more humane alternatives.
To the people who favor less punishment and more rehabilitation:
How many felons have you known and would you hire them? Would you let them pay to room in your home?
Who should assume the risk of associating with them even if there was no legal liability to the employer?
I have known a few and some were not dangerous (to me), but they all had attitude, mental health, drug or alcohol problems. I would not want them around the weak, unaware or the gullible.
I have been in lockups. Prison is a terrible place, maybe too terrible. I am interested in hearing about cheaper and more humane alternatives.
Megan, maybe I'm way off base, but I'd say tax breaks should only be provided given that the felon will be in the minority of the workers at a company. Surrounding felons with ex-felons doesn't sound like the right cultural change.
Hey I thought you wanted the super-simple tax code with low corporate rates and few deductions? Isn't this an example of what you decry in other contexts? Sure, it's an apparently-worthy use of a special deduction, but everybody else thinks their deduction is worthy too. (Even the oil companies.)
Randomized drug tests and an immediate short stay in the poky for failure, f'rinstance.
Here's an idea: make it four days in solitary in a concrete 8x8 for the first offense, then add two more days each for the second and third offenses. No windows; day and night are controlled by the cycling of a single overhead light (full bright for day, very dim for night). Three small, bland meals, and the option to have one self-improvement book per day from a short, vetted list. Nothing else in the cell but a tamper-proof stainless steel latrine and sink, a bar of soap, a toothbrush, and a roll of TP. Completely disrupts the person's schedule, gives them no opportunity to build social networks to pass the time, but also gives them a very limited time to suffer, so they can look forward to getting out...and hopefully, not coming back.
Home detention, monitored with an ankle bracelet, is unpleasant enough (especially for a barely literate teenager) to be a real deterrent, and it doesn't have a lot of the drawbacks of prison. I'm surprised it isn't used a lot more.
Mouse, A toothbrush but no toothpaste? Classic. Not even Addington or Yoo had that idea.
Surrounding felons with ex-felons doesn't sound like the right cultural change.
I happen to know of a carpet cleaning company that is run by an ex-con which hires almost exclusively ex-cons, in the hope of getting them off on the right foot in society.
It's a noble idea. Would you like to invite them into your home to clean your carpets?
Anytime you talk about rehabing felons you immediately and always get people who will sit there and tell you the same line: they're bad!!!! bad!! bad!! Yeah I got that part when they went to Prison. However, we have 2 million and growing in our prison system. Made up predominantly of the poor and minorities. So to top it off it looks unfair. We as a people don't want anyone to commit crime correct (yes unrealistic)? If so we should be working to enhance enforcement, prevention, and rehabilitation. The enforcement part is pretty simple and quite frankly short of killing people or locking more away there isn't any new ground to cover. Rehab and prevention on the other hand still have a few directions to go. Any solution or possible solution that would keep a few people out is fine by me. Prison rehab programs are never that hard on a pocketbook just because it takes personal desire to change. Disturbingly, 8x10 doesn't seem to inspire much of that.
"I've made a fair number of spectacular moral and economic mistakes in my life."
I figured this line would fire up the trolls like giving liquor to fratboys but so far nothing!
Grandpa? I didn't know you read this blog!
I'll sign as "Other Bob" as there's already a Bob on this thread but oddly his comment is something I would say myself! It's like I found my online clone!
My brother-in-law is a convicted violent felon and small business owner. He was a bad kid and a bad young adult, but managed to turn his life around and become an upstanding responsible guy. And he makes a point to hire ex-cons or others who need second or third chances.
Of course, he's a really sharp guy who happened to learn a skilled trade from his dad, not a typical skilless, low-IQ felon.
I think there are distictions among felons and they should be considered when sentencing occurs. If the person is clearly a psychopath, then throw the book at 'em. But if you are dealing with a person who made an out-of-character mistake, then look for more rehabilitative measures. I think the mistake is to lump poor-impulse-control criminals with psychopaths.
I'm sure that everything has been tried, and there are no simple solutions, here, but I still have to think that there is something better than warehousing non-violent offenders.
At the margins, decriminalizing drugs would be a big help. Even given that it would create other costs, the evidence is strongly in favor of a huge, net benefit, largely in making the criminal and penal systems more manageable.
I think the mistake is to lump poor-impulse-control criminals with psychopaths.
Sure, it's a mistake. How do you propose to reliably tell them apart? Plenty of psychopaths are personally fairly charming and pretty convincing in their pleas of turning their lives around, etc.
Three-strikes laws are an attempt at this, but of course they're denounced as unfair.
This is a good post. I wish the presidential candidates would address issues of prison reform/crime and punishment a bit more.
I’m open to the idea of executing more felons. Three strikes and it’s the death penalty would probably clear up a lot of prison space.
"Randomized drug tests and an immediate short stay in the poky for failure, f'rinstance"
I'm almost positive probationers and parolees (a significant percentage of the population we're discussing) are generally subject to this right now. I know for certain they are in at least two jurisdictions I'm familiar with. Important safety tip: if you seriously want to use this "punishment", the stay in the poky after test failure needs to be automatic, mandatory, and not subject to judicial intervention.
I was thinking something more in the corporal punishment vein, or chain gangs.
"Home detention, monitored with an ankle bracelet, is unpleasant enough (especially for a barely literate teenager) to be a real deterrent"
Based on people I've known on home detention, I think you're optimistic. Especially with respect to barely literate teenagers.
On the "less prison" issue, has anyone done any research on whether shorter stays in extremely unpleasant prisons would be a better deterrent than what we do now? I'd be especially iterested in what convicts thought.
Public humiliation might be pretty effective as a short and immediate penalty.
Prison doesn't rehabilitate. Corporal punishments and threats only go so far to change a person. What we really need here is religion. We should threaten to sign these bastards up for Scientology.
It seems to me that a meaningful discussion is impossible because the term 'felony' has become so debased by the Justice [sic] system that it is virtually meaningless.
Any stupid little thing can be (and probably is) a felony -- just ask Martha Stewart.
I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but I think there are websites that list the incredibly stupid, trivial offenses that are, nevertheless, officially felonies. In Texas, for example, it is a felony to sell a can of spray paint to a teenager.
Prison doesn't rehabilitate. No matter how creative, corporal punishment and government sponsored harassment can only do so much to change a person. What we really need here is religion. We should threaten to sign these bastards up for Scientology.
I'm not saying we shouldn't punish kids who rob liquor stores, but we could try to think of ways that don't involve shoving them into a metal box with a lot of other criminals.
Flogging. Better for everyone, probably even for the floggers (I'm betting that occasionally beating the hell out of someone as part of your job is probably less morally corrupting than being a prison guard all the time).
Killing your way to crime free?.... There should only be one Ann Coulter, saying insane things to up book sales out there. Sarcasm and condescension are funny, but seing as how this line of thinking is actually repeated. Not just here, but in private. It speaks to an overall frustration with the current system. Improve the system, reduce the frustration, up time spent on things that are important.
How about eliminating the minimum wage for felons? That creates an incentive for a business to "take one for the team" without subsidizing the employment of bad guys, which would probably be politically unpopular.
In the same vein, the political resistance to eliminating minimum wage "protection" for bad guys will probably be low. It would probably come mostly from unions and other higher-wage competetors in the labor market, which just goes to show whom minimum wage "protection" actually protects.
As I previously suggested in these pages, we should consider excluding ex-cons/parolees from unemployment insurance coverage for a limited time after their release. This would both subsidize the employment of ex-cons/parolees (like Megan wants to do with tax breaks) and reduce the risks we ask prospective employers' to run. I think tinkering with UI could be more effective than a small tax subsidy. You see, right now if an employer hires an ex-con/parolee but the new worker "doesn't work out," UI will force that specific employer to support that ex-con for months after firing him. Employers really dread that prospect, yet we could alleviate it pretty easily. After an ex-con proves himself by holding a job for a while we could bring him back under UI.
If you eliminate all legal means of making a living, only illegal ones remain.
I agree with Megan on 3 of her 4 proposals:
First of all, reducing the number of things that are considered crimes would be great. Reduce over crowding and increase freedom at the same time.
Less prison and more monitoring is also a net gain.
Offering GEDs to criminals is good too. In fact, they should have free schooling (not limited to GED, skills training like how to balance a checkbook or cook or fill out a resume is useful too) while still in prison. This would be voluntary on the inmates' part and the teachers would receive bonus pay and have the authority to remove any inmate if they were causing a disruption or even not doing their homework or whatever.
The tax break thing is more controversial. I believe the money is better spent on training. If someone isn't going to hire a criminal because they think they'll be robbed, a 10% tax break isn't going to change their position. Besides, people are hired for what they can do and how much they'll help the company, not on how much of a tax break they'll be.
Singapore seems to have the right idea when it comes to its use of capital and corporal punishment for crimes. Where I think they’re wrong is that they criminalize some things (e.g. firearms possession) that shouldn’t be illegal and their criminal justice system does not have all of the protections of the American criminal justice system. I’d like to see us retain our protections (presumption of innocence, right to counsel, burden of proof, etc.) and not expand the number of things that are criminal offense (in fact, I’d support narrowing the range) but adopt much harsher penalties comparable to what Singapore has done.
Per James Heckman, lots of convicts get their GED's in prison now and it's not clear that does them much good. Certainly encouraging them to wait until they are released to seek a GED just so they can get a bonus would be counterproductive.
You see, right now if an employer hires an ex-con/parolee but the new worker "doesn't work out," UI will force that specific employer to support that ex-con for months after firing him.
That's not how UI works, in the US at least (I don't know about other countries, but I believe it's similar). UI is a tax on wages that all employers pay (or, alternatively, it is a mandatory insurance premium collected by the government) - one dab goes to the Feds (the maximum Federal UI tax is $56/employee/year, so I feel justified in calling it a "dab") and one to the state. People claiming UI get their checks from the government out of that pool of money, not from their old employers.
Some states do have a system set up whereby employers who have a pattern of laying a lot of people off have to pay higher UI premiums (which makes sense, as they're more of a risk), but that's not at all the same thing as making employers keep cutting payroll checks to ex-employees.
What Lisa says is true. Strangely enough, all my Upper West Side neighbors have maids, but they are puzzlingly unfamiliar with the UI system. O well, I guess they just pay their accountant to take care of the paperwork.
Clean a record after a certain amount of time of good behavior. Remove the yoke from the neck.
How about something of a success story regarding employing ex-cons?
The Delancey Street foundation out of San Francisco operates Delancey Street Movers, the Delancey Street restaurant, Crossroads Cafe & Bookstore, and several other initiatives. Every single DS employee is an ex-con and/or ex-addict. They all reside on-site, in a campus previous Delancey Street graduates built. Graduates of the program (which offers vocational training as well as a BA program through affiliation with local colleges) have gone on to work as bank tellers, bookkeepers, and CPAs; firemen and police officers; mechanics -- all kinds of things -- one even became a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
And Delancey Street Movers gets very high ratings on review site Yelp, so sometimes letting ex-cons into your home is not a bad thing.
On the bright side, quarantining huge numbers of aggressive males together for years at a time leads to remarkable creative innovations in tattoo art.
What Lisa says is not true. Just like actual insurance, UI charges higher rates to users who generate more losses. That's called "experience rating" and, just for example, in California UI rates range from $105 per worker yearly to $434/worker. More important is the "reserve account." The UI premiums (taxes, really) that the employer pays are credited to his "reserve account" and a balance is built up in it from which payments to his ex-employees are deducted. If the reserve account is fat, the employer pays a low UI tax rate. But if the reserve account is low or negative, the employer is charged a high rate until the account is built up again. Note that a single ex-employee who remains on UI for six months can suck as much as $11,700 out of his former employer's reserve account. Now, the $105-$434 per worker tax applies to every worker in the company-- so if you have ten workers at $105 year = $1050/year, then your rates go up because an ex-employee claims UI, you may end up paying $4340/year (about 4x more) for a number of years.
It is true that some employers (for example, timber harvesters who lay off their employees during the winter) never pay enough UI taxes to cover the UI benefits their employees collect. And other employers subsidize those employers by paying more in UI taxes than their own ex-workers collect in benefits. But many employers are more or less in the middle, and the UI system is specifically designed to force most employers to pay most of the benefits their own ex-employees collect, albeit over time.
As for domestic servants, if they are part time only their wages may not be subject to UI (that's the rule in California).
1. You want to help ex-convicts reduce anger impulses? Treat their illnesses whether it's psychological, emotional or drug related through rehabilitation. Getting to the root of why you're angry and how to handle conflict effectively is the key.
2. You want to help ex-convicts get off the street and have better jobs? See #1 and give them true resources to bettering themselves. Give them trades and education - not library time - but a real education. I know jail is supposed to be about punishment but it seems that not only are the prisoners punished, we are too when they are released. I can't understand why inmates can't have an education while in prison. It makes no sense.
Education and knowledge is power. Give them the resources and power to succeed. Maybe we should redefine our ideals about prison life.
1. You want to help ex-convicts reduce anger impulses? Treat their illnesses whether it's psychological, emotional or drug related through rehabilitation. Getting to the root of why you're angry and how to handle conflict effectively is the key.
2. You want to help ex-convicts get off the street and have better jobs? See #1 and give them true resources to bettering themselves. Give them trades and education - not library time - but a real education. I know jail is supposed to be about punishment but it seems that not only are the prisoners punished, we are too when they are released. I can't understand why inmates can't have an education while in prison. It makes no sense.
Education and knowledge is power. Give them the resources and power to succeed. Maybe we should redefine our ideals about prison life.
Megan of course misses the elephant in the room which is immigration. Why would anyone ever hire an ex convict when there are millions of hard working, salt of the earth, Mexican peasants ready and willing to do the job? Only those convicts with family connections or really in demand skills have any hope of getting a job as long as our borders are open. It is the lowest skilled least desirable employees like ex cons who are hurt the most by immigration. Not like any of that matters to a good cosmopolitan, transnational libertarian like Megan. I mean hey, it is not like they will ever live in her neighborhood.
The individually rational decision is not to hire a felon.
So ex-convicts are cheap, but harder to manage?
Could a labour-intensive business specialise in hiring ex-cons to cut its wage bill down?
Great ideas, eaglecapri. Charles Manson is in Corcoran State Prison in California. Once you get him sorted out with education, a trade, and anger management classes, come back and fill us in on your experience.
Great ideas, eaglecapri. Charles Manson is in Corcoran State Prison in California. Once you get him sorted out with education, a trade, and anger management classes, come back and fill us in on your experience.
Hey, why travel all the way to California? We've got Kaczynski, Moussaoui, Reid, and Yousef down south in the Florence SuperMax. Yousef is rumored to have converted to Christianity accompanied by a marked behavioral change, but AFAIK the others are still prime test cases for anger management classes.
Hell, Mouse, let's get 'em all together for a group hug, followed by a couple of rousing choruses of 'Kumbaya." I'm sure they'll see the error of their ways.
In fact, we could endow a chair (no, not that one, although that's probably a better idea) for this. Call it the "Ed Gein Memorial Chair of Liberal Do-Gooderism For Those Who Shouldn't Be Allowed to Cross the Street By Themselves."
Re #3, isn't that exactly the sort of thing Jane Galt argues against every April 15?
If you want to spend government money for incentives, fine. But do it as real spending; don't stink up the tax code in an effort to hide it from the budget.
If you start hiring ex cons, aren't you risking repeating this
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/memphis-crime
in your business?
My Dad got me a summer job in a manufacturing plant when I was in college. Many of the guys working there were, -er- a bad influence to put it mildly, on a naive suburban 18 yo. I'd have been a lot better off if I'd never been there, I did OK, eventually, in spite of the bad habits I picked up and but you can be sure I won't let my kids work in any place like that, let alone near ex cons. Why would I want to hire ex cons and screw over someone elses kids?
phil-Z,
One summer our #3 son worked for a temp agency. About the third day of a particular assignment (warehouse work) he came home and said, "I think I'm the only person on my work crew that's never been in jail."
Phil-Z: reading that article, something a little different struck me. Seven to two.
That's the number of times the word "mother" is mentioned vs. the number of times the word "father" is mentioned. But the disparity is bigger than that, because one mention of the word "father" is about the police officer's father, not the father of any of the poor people in the story. (The other mention of the word father does refer to the poor, but that person is currently in prison.)
After reading the various replies.. I believe we're going about this all wrong.
With the ignorance, judgement, persecution and cruelty that ex-cons or "the criminals are subjected to (by the good upstanding citizens). I don't think the prison system is necessary. We should fire all the guards, wardens etc. and save the county billions annually. Instead of sending an offender off to prison we could borrow from Hitler and brand the ex-cons with hand cuff appliques that they would have to display on the outside of all of their clothing. This way they could be served a helping of justice for the rest of their lives by our country's "good & decent folk". To go a step further, for crime prevention High School and College Graduates could wear the appliques for a eye opening experience of what their life would be like if they didn't walk the short and narrow.
I have not been to prison and I pray I'm never wrongfully accused- for if I am ever incarirated I know I will never leave. I would be too faint hearted to subject myself to the free world and it's society of self righteous ignorant bigots once I became "branded" for LIFE. I know this because I'm not branded now and can hardly stand to tolerate you all as it is!! Be careful out there, watch who you date, allow to stay in your home, make sure you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time... because you never know when the "money making machine of JUSTICE will scoop you up wrongfully accuse YOU. You're an idiot if you think every individual ever tried and convicted was guilty and that it can't happen to you.
Can we just please keep one thing in mind, here? A felony is any crime for which the sentence is a year or longer. If they make you go to prison for a year for sticking your tongue out at a cop, you've just been made into a felon and all you did was make a face.
My ex-husband is a convicted felon--by the Army, mind you, not by a state--who has served his time and moved on with his life. His crimes were breaking and entering and grand larceny. Before he got in trouble he had never had so much as an administrative UCMJ action against him, and had won several Good Conduct medals to boot. As far as impulse control issues, his were no worse than the average American's who sometimes racks up debt or is late on a bill or who gets a little drunker at a party than he intended; as far as drug problems, he had nothing that ever rendered him incapable of contributing to society. (I occasionally heard tales of his pot-smoking in high school. He never did this in front of me or our son, and as far as I could tell had completely kicked the habit. Given that he was in the Army during the most recent drawdown, this was wise.)
Nowadays he gets along fine, works for his parents in the family business, and has joined his local Masonic lodge. I wouldn't say he is exactly a pillar of the community but I wouldn't be surprised to see him become so one day.
I doubt he would be this far along had people given up on him. I also doubt he would be this far along had he been any color but white. Might want to think about that a little bit.