The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is moving to make employment easier for ex-offenders who do not commit new crimes, by sealing criminal records.
When a person commits a crime in Massachusetts a record of all court appearances is kept. This record, called Criminal Offender Record Information, or CORI, is kept permanently, and any employer can access it for a criminal background check on a potential employee. The record is kept if a person is found guilty, or even if he or she was found not guilty, or had the case dismissed.
The Massachusetts legislature, deciding that CORI reform was needed, passed a bill in the House by a vote of 138-17 that that would seal the records of offenders who do not commit another crime within five years (for those who originally committed misdemeanors) or ten years ( for those who committed a felony). Murder or sex crimes are excluded from being sealed.
In a May 28, 2010 blog posting on Boston.com, James Alan Fox made the point that, while this reform is welcome, it is “too little, too late”.
Fox points out that, as written, the CORI Reform bill does nothing for the formerly incarcerated in the significant time frame of one to two years after release. When an ex offender applies for a job, the CORI Reform bill does not allow an employer to ask about the potential employee’s criminal history on the job application, but will allow the employer to ask that question in a follow-up interview.
Fox contends that the formerly incarcerated face three strikes, the first one being the stigmatization of ex offenders, followed by education and work/ skills limitations. Lack of education can be seen as the biggest obstacle in obtaining employment.
Prisoners used to be able to apply for Pell grants that allowed them to take college courses while in prison. Financial aid was discontinued in 1994 when the Federal Crime Bill disallowed prisoners from receiving financial aid for education. Prison-based college programs then dwindled from approximately 350 to about 12 today. Boston University’s prison program is one of the few remaining, having been able to obtain private funding.
The Massachusetts program “College Behind Bars” provides college correspondence courses to Massachusetts prisoners with a short time remaining on their sentences, or if they are enrolled in pre-release classes. Partnered with Boston University, College Behind Bars also provides mentoring for its students. The Executive Director of CBB, Lanny Kutakoff, is quoted as stating, “ College education is the single most significant factor for increasing an inmate’s chance of success upon release from prison.”
But is a college education the only factor for success? Fox allows that marketable job skills are also needed to succeed. When rehabilitation was a key factor in the correctional system, prison industries were de rigueur. Today, it is mostly the Federal Bureau of Prisons via its UNICOR program that teach inmates how to make furniture, clothing, military cable and other items, affording them training and skills. State prisons have few prison industries programs.
Unions generally decry prison industries, complaining that cheaply paid prison workers are taking jobs away from non-offenders. Prisoner rights advocates are also angry that prisoners are paid such dismal wages for their work. These views are opposed by prison industry advocates who believe the skills learned in prison can be applied on the outside.
Washington State University undertook a cost-benefit analysis recently and concluded that every dollar that is spent on vocational training for the incarcerated yields a savings of six dollars in future costs to the justice system, and every dollar allocated in prison education saves five dollars.
CORI reform, vocational and educational programs are seen by some in the prison reform movement as positive measures to lower the recidivism rate.
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