REALITY CHECK: US CORRECTIONS OFFLS: EX-CON JOB HUNT EASES
09:10 EST 11/15
By Gary Rosenberger
NEW YORK (MktNews) - The job hunt for prisoners and former inmates is easing as tight labor markets force private industry to use workers once considered unhirable, say U.S. corrections officials.
Private companies are attending prison job fairs, setting up factories inside penitentiaries, or looking to work-release programs they ignored for decades to fill staffing needs.
Pennsylvania's jobless rate for ex-offenders, while high, has nose-dived by a third in the last five years, says a parole official.
A Wisconsin corrections official says tight labor markets are behind a gamut of joint ventures between private industry and prisons.
An Ohio corrections official boasts that more than a fourth of inmates who attend prison job fairs land jobs.
A Fortune Society official notes an unprecedented willingness by private companies to hire former inmates.
"We have a tight labor market, and there's been a thorough tapping of all the traditional ways of filling jobs," said JoAnne Page, executive director of the Fortune Society, a service and advocacy group for former inmates. "Employers who before might never have considered an employee with a felony conviction, are now willing to look at them."
Page noted that the Fortune Society's career workshop in downtown Manhattan now places more than 200 former inmates a year, versus three years ago when the number was between 50 and 60. "There's been a tremendous breakthrough in the number of people we place in jobs -- 1998 is when we really started to see the difference," she said.
She noted that one former inmate with computer skills landed a job for $47,000 a year but most jobs are in the "over $8.00 an hour" range.
"Companies are surprised by the range of skills that this pool of workers offer," Page said. "They are motivated to do well and bring an extra measure of gratitude to an employer who gives them a chance."
Tight labor markets have smoothed the way for an increasing partnership between private enterprise and the prison system, said Chris Faulhaber, president-elect of the Correctional Industries Association, which represents prison employment programs.
"The stigma isn't as great as it was a few years ago," said Faulhhaber, who is also prison industries director for Badger State Industries overseen by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.
"There is more tolerance because employers are saying 'I'll take the chance or I can't make the product," he said.
"There is a labor shortage of both trained and untrained workers," he said, adding that "fast food industries throughout the country" are among those snapping up newly released minimum security prisoners to fill the employment gap.
Others "are putting factories behind fences" -- paying inmates the prevailing local wage for the jobs they perform, while consulting with local industry and organized labor to insure the programs won't displace civilian jobs, he said.
One such program, called the Private Industries Enhancement Program under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, employs more than 2,600 inmates around the nation.
"In this economy anyone that wants to work can work," Faulhaber said. "Employers are looking for people with soft skills, who know to show up 5 days a week at 8 in the morning and take instruction." He said companies find an additional benefit in that inmates released from Wisconsin prisons leave the system alcohol- and drug-free.
Faulhaber's biggest indicator of the demand for prison labor is that he himself is in short supply when he needs inmate-workers.
"We're finding it harder to get prison employees into our own operations," he said.
"I used to be able to get 20 inmates at short-notice, but now they're all spoken for by private employers -- I have to beg, borrow and steal to get them," he added. "These programs have been around since the 1970s, but there's never been the demand that we have right now."
Ohio's Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC) boasts a web site devoted to hiring ex-offenders.
Darrel Wilt, assistant offender job linkage coordinator for the DRC, notes that over the past two years, Ohio has sponsored 133 job fairs devoted to hiring offenders that attracted some 175 employees and 2,098 inmates.
"Of those, 552 inmates (about 26%) were offered employment on the spot," Wilt said.
"There is a stereotype that inmates only watch TV, lay around all day and play cards -- it's anything but the truth," Wilts said.
He said most companies that hire ex-inmates prefer to stay anonymous, but jobs include a gamut of industrial and service skills from construction, welding and computer programming to fast food and dishwashing. But there are fields closed to inmates, including financial and direct-patient care, he said.
"We get calls on a regular basis for employers looking for workers," Wilt said. "There is a lot of building going on in Ohio. Contractors approached us for skilled labor for an arena project going up in Columbus."
Those who hire ex-inmates also are eligible for federal tax credits of 35% of the first $6,000 paid per employee, he said.
"Obviously low unemployment and tax credits may motivate some employers initially -- but those who had the experience of hiring an ex-offender often become repeat customers," Wilt said. "If you have skills you can market yourself to almost any employer in Ohio."
He said that most of the companies that hire ex-inmates have fewer than 15 employees, but added that those are the companies he sees as driving the nation's job growth.
Jennifer Hitz, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole observed a significant decline in jobless rates among released prisoners, which nevertheless remain very elevated.
Hitz noted a strong correlation between a tighter job market and the decline in the unemployment rate for ex-offenders -- which was down to around 30% in 1998 versus 46% in 1994 (1999 data were not available.)
Laura Noonan, president of the Corrections Connection Network, an on-line news and information resource for the industry, said the nation is becoming more tolerant of ex-inmates in the workforce. "So many upstanding people -- including politicians in Washington -- have crossed the line into questionable behavior, that the line between former inmates and everyone else has blurred," Noonan said.
Carl Wicklund, executive director of the American Probation and Parole Association, said he is increasingly hearing of inmate populations being used in functions once closed to them. He noted one women's prison in Minnesota famous for being a telemarketing and reservations center.
But he also worries that parolees are often stymied by a lack of job and life skills.
"They don't generally have many more skills when they leave prison than they had when they went in," he said.
Another obstacle is that ex-inmates are facing increased competition from welfare-to-work programs.
"Companies are more likely to hire those who were on welfare than offenders," he said. "Parolees have never seen that kind of competition before."
A Missouri official who runs inmate work programs said prison enterprises are often subject to the same pitfalls suffered by any company in a global economy.
Wilbur Gooch, administrator for Missouri Vocational Enterprises of the Missouri Department of Corrections, related how a cottage industry he ran for three years was lost two years ago to NAFTA. "We made 75,000 fishing lures a day for a Montrose, Missouri company -- Montrose is a small town and the company couldn't find help, so they turned to us," Gooch said.
"For three years it was very successful, then NAFTA came in and the company started to lose contracts to manufacturers in Mexico," he said.
The company's owner had to shut down the prison operations because under the rules, "you can't displace civilian workers," Gooch said.
Editor's Note: Reality Check stories survey sentiment among business people and their trade associations. They are intended to complement and anticipate economic data and to provide a sounding into specific sectors of the U.S. economy. |
