Caught up in the System

by Tavares Forby

When a person serves time in jail for a crime that they have done, supposedly they have paid their debt to society for that crime. If a person does 5 years for Grand Theft Auto, dept paid. Or if a person does 10 years for having sex with a minor, dept paid. Actually no, the debt is not paid. Depending on the type of crime youhave done, for the most part, you will be paying your debt to society for a very long time. You will be paying this debt by being affected on obtaining jobs. Serving time in jail is supposedly rehabilitation (another story). Once out, supposedly you are let out into the world again with a fresh start.

Go out, get a job, and start over. But how do the government expect someone out of prison to get a job if every job is rejecting them because of a felony or registered sex offender tag found from a background check. The way the system is set up is that a person with a criminal history is more liable to go back to jail for doing a crime to survive because the disability of finding a job.

I have known a few people in this situation. They have paid the debt to society, get out of jail, and cannot find jobs. Every time they go out to find a job, every thing is great until the background check. Once an employer sees a felon from a background check, they will treat that person like they have a disease or something. This is really not fair, especially when a person did not do a crime that has anything to do with the position they are applying for.

For example, if a person has a felony for possession of drugs and that person is applying for a customer service position, it is not fair for that person to be rejected from his/her felony when drug possession has nothing to do with a customer server position. Now if the situation was such that a person that is applying for a position at a financial institute and that person have a felony from tax fraud, I can then understand why it would be fair for that financial institute to reject that applicant.

That applicant has done a crime that is related to the employer’s line of business. I believe the solution for this is to categorize crimes and each employer will only have access to the categories that is specific to their line of business. If the crime that was on a persons criminal record does not have any relevance to the line of business to which they are applying for, then that business should not have any access to that crime.

~Tavares Forby is a Republican who grew
up in Compton, CA he blogs over at

http://blackpundit.com/