CLEAN SLATE: JOBS FOR EX-CONS IS THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM
Prisoner art painted on a wall inside the notorious and now-closed Spofford juvenile jail in the Bronx, 2015. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
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Not long ago, New York was a leading contributor to mass incarceration in America. Now it's a leader in criminal justice reform, but its work is not finished.
2.3 million New Yorkers completed their criminal sentences but remain shackled to their pasts by criminal records, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul. They belong to a burgeoning underclass because their permanent, digitized criminal records follow them everywhere and condemn them to a life of sporadic or marginal employment and poverty. They lose almost $2 billion in collective wages every year.
This underclass is growing because criminal record databases and background check requirements are spreading throughout society.
Nationally, 77 million Americans-that's one out of three-have criminal records, according to the US Chamber of Commerce. It causes "extreme rates of unemployment" and loss of $78 to $87 billion in national revenue each year, it found.
"That is a moral outrage," Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive of JP Morgan & Chase said in a New York Times Op-Ed in 2021.
"This group is ready to work and deserves a second chance-an opportunity to fill the millions of job openings across the country," Dimon wrote. "Yet our criminal justice system continues to block them from doing so."
The Empire State has dismantled many parts of its criminal justice system that fed mass incarceration in the eight years since the NYPD killed Eric Garner in 2014. But it has failed to lock those reforms in place by reducing the one factor that could wipe out all the gains: keeping ex-convicts employed.
Reform, it seems, is only one horrific crime away from being eliminated because of the horrific news headlines one horrific crime can produce. One horrific crime could turn the tide of public opinion and bring mass incarceration roaring back.
Former felons who are employed are much less likely to commit new crimes, every scientific study ever done on the subject reports. Yet, overall, no more than 40% of all former felons are employed at any time. That means 60% are jobless. With joblessness that high among the formerly incarcerated, it's a wonder they don't commit more crime than they do.
Even those “who did find jobs struggled, too: Formerly incarcerated people in the sample had an average of 3.4 jobs throughout the four-year study period, suggesting that they were landing jobs that didn’t offer security or upward mobility," according to the Prison Initiative.
A criminal record reduces one’s annual earnings by around 50 percent, adding up to an average lifetime loss of around $500,000. One conviction alone reduces lifetime earnings by about $100,000. Even a misdemeanor slashes annual earnings by more than 15 percent.
Akeem Browder, brother of Kalief Browder, in 2015: Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
The staggering statistics are confirmed by my own personal experience as a former felon.
I served almost 13 years in prison for manslaughter from 1990 until 2003. I earned a bachelor's degree from New York University and went to work as a journalist in 2006. One of the reasons I became a journalist was it didn't require a background check. I had a successful but semi-impoverished career, first as news photographer then as an investigative reporter. I broke news and helped spur some of New York's criminal justice reforms. I even defended freedom of the press in court and ended NYPD censorship of journalists. Mainstream media outlets had no problem exploiting my labor as a freelancer, but not one was willing to actually hire me.
I was finally gentrified out of New York City for good in 2022. Today I live in upstate New York along the Canadian border-in a prison town. I planned to work as an outdoor guide in my new home, but New York requires a state-issued license. It's been holding up my application for 19 weeks and counting.
Meanwhile, my partner and I can't afford to pay our home heating oil bill and are reduced to buying even-more expensive kerosene by-the-gallon from the gas station and dumping it into our fuel tank. That's what poor people in the North Country do in winter. And my 14-year-old step-daughter needs dental work that goes undone because no dentist in the area takes my partner's insurance.
The Clean Slate Act would change that-in one fell swoop.
It "would create opportunities for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers overnight," according to the Brennan Center.
The proposed law would automatically seal criminal records after a certain, specified period of time: three years for misdemeanors, seven years for felonies except sex crimes. Crucially, it would apply retroactively to convictions predating its enactment. That means it helps the 2.3 million New Yorkers burdened with criminal records now by erasing them-including mine.
“This makes total sense from an economic development standpoint,” Paul Zuber, Executive Director of the Business Council of New York State, said at a rally supporting the Clean Slate Act in Jan.
Business leaders like Zuber, JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon, Verizon, unions and others support Clean Slate legislation because it will ease New York's labor shortage. There are about 10 million jobs open across America. 458,000 of them were in New York in Dec. 2022, according to the latest figures available from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Enacting Clean Slate would generate about $7 billion in wages annually for the formerly incarcerated.
"Why are we keeping people out of the economy?" Zuber said in Jan. "It doesn't make sense."
Clean Slate passed the State Senate in 2022 but died in the Assembly when lawmakers got reform shy because of a post-pandemic crime spike.
Nationally, clean slate laws were enacted in California, Colorado, Connecticut and Oklahoma. Besides New York, Oregon and Illinois are seriously considering enacting a clean slate law and California is considering strengthening the one it enacted last year, Forbes reports. Even prosecutors support Oregon’s proposed clean slate law.
In New York, Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz (D-Queens) introduced a modified Clean Slate Act bill in Jan. 2023. To allay critics, it allows police, judges, education officials and some sensitive licensing agencies to see the records off-limits to all others.
"If you're concerned with public safety, the way to keep the community safe is to get people back to work," Crus told Spectrum News 1. "Statistics show recidivism is completely tied to someone's ability to sustain their family to actually earn a living."
The revised Clean Slate Act cleared a senate committee hearing on Tuesday and is headed to floor vote by the full Senate. From there, it would still have to pass the Assembly. It died there last year, but this year Assembly Democrats say they support Clean Slate.
If it does, Gov. Hochul committed to supporting Clean Slate reform in her 2022 State of the State Address. Time will tell whether she still feels the same way after fellow Democrats torpedoed her nominee for New York's next top judge, Hector LaSalle. Another complication is the emerging deadlock between Hochul and the Democrat-controlled legislature over the state’s bail law.
The Free Lance asked Gov. Hochul's press office whether she was still committed to Clean Slate but it did not respond.
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