Is it discrimination when felons have obtained a college degree & changed their life are overlooked for jobs?

Question

Do you believe that ex felons can be just as productive as employees without criminal backgrounds but do not get the chance because of the simple question on the application for the job. If given a chance reformed felons can be valuable assets to any company. There are programs to help ease companies fears for giving a felon a chance at employment, but there are not many companies that will even consider people like us. If anyone knows of assistance that will help us here in Southwest GA please do tell. Why is this not a form of discrimination? I have paid my debt to society but yet and still have not been given a chance to prove that I can be an asset to society and not just an ex convicted felon. Is this ethical for the government to convict us, we pay our debt, but still treated as if we were still not worthy. If God gives 2nd chances why can not the people who convicted us and say we serve our time give us a 2nd chance?

Answer 1

Its not discriminations its called the law!

Answer 2

It is discrimination if that's the reason. It's just not illegal discrimination.

There is nothing to say that private individuals and companies cannot discrimination, except based on certain specific categories (race, ancestry, gender, usually marital status, sometimes age, sometimes sexual orientation). Aside from these statutorily protected categories, there is nothing that prohibits private discrimination.

So, if a company doesn't want to hire you because your hair is too long or too short, or because you hair is blue, or because you are a vegetarian, or because you are an ex-felon, there is nothing stopping them.

The government is slightly more limited in its ability to discriminate, but even then felons or ex-felons are not a protected class, and thus are generally not subject to heightened scrutiny on the laws.

Without getting into any of the arguments around whether being a felon is a choice or not, or anything about God versus humans granting a second chance, the legal answer is that private discrimination is generally not illegal, and many types of government discrimination are also not illegal.

Is that fair? Probably not. But this world hasn't been fair since the concepts of prejudice and fear got invented. It's just the way it is.

Answer 3

~You are not an "ex-convicted felon". You are a convicted felon. You may have served your time but the record is permanent. By law, you are forbidden for holding certain licenses and types of employment.
Were I an employer screening applicants, would I be more inclined to hire someone with a record or someone without a record. Well, everything else being equal, that's a real poser.
You don't mention your crime (or number of convictions) or your age. I would give more consideration to someone with a minor felony conviction at a young age, but then I'd have to wonder if the person had a youthful offender adjudication before the felony and failed to learn anything from the experience. Anyone with multiple convictions would have proven himself to be a bad employment risk.
That being said, yes, I agree people can reform. Would I put such a person in a responsible position or give him or her access to company funds, secrets or properties. Duh. Maybe if he or she started at the bottom and proved himself/herself over a period of years.
Don't you wish you had had the sense to think about all this before you decided that you were above societies rules? Too late we get smart.

Answer 4

Your asking a tickler here. Just because an individual has a college degree doesn't mean they still aren't a felon. What if the reason that individual obtained that college degree was to further his ideas of committing another felon that he dreamt up while incarcerated? I have a little back ground in this as I was chewed out for not hiring a felon back in the 1970's because he was a felon who had forged checks. Where I was working we had incoming checks for amounts of up to and some times over one million dollars. Based on his previous convictions I did not hire him. Would you? I faced reprocussions because of my reasons until one of our attorneys backed my decission. There are so many downs compared to ups that it makes it obvious that common sense in the only thing that works. We have no idea as to whether an individual will or will not commit another crime, but from statistics I've read, over 80% do and this makes the other 20% suffer. Discrimination has nothing to do with it.

Answer 5

if you were to steal a pack of gum when you were 17 and got caught you should pay the price for the rest of your life? of course not and you should also get another chance if you have not committed any crimes for some time. i am a convicted felon and i have not been been to jail since i committed that crime in 1996. i now am a recovering drug addict and a cancer survivor, and am a recovering felon. i have changed my whole life and retrained myself to live life accordingly. now i can not get the job i want. i want to be a cop! so i am going to still go to school for criminal justice and just hope i get a job in that kind of field, except a cop.i can be a private detective or even a drug and alcohol counselor. the only set back is the freedom we all get to hire who we want and that is were i will run into problems. because unless i find an employer that will take my word that i am recovered, i will get discriminated against with out even knowing it. i suggest that if you can do something to work for yourself to do so , so we don't have to go threw life being rejected and reminded of what idiots we were when we committed our crimes. good luck to you and all those recovering, honest, felons that are just people who made the same mistake as that person who stole that gum

Answer 6

We draw the line at fraud and forgery and theft. Very few employers would allow a credential-forger to keep his job. Most employers that I know and counsel would report the violation to the district attorney's office. We had a "lawyer" in the office who was caught flat-footed when we instituted a due diligence program. It turned out that not only was he not sworn in as an attorney but he never attended law school. A paralegal makes not more than $60,000 per year. A lawyer makes a sliding scale starting at $135,000 and going up to $160,000 in his third year (he was busted in his third year after he claimed to be a lawyer). He has been indicted for grand larceny in the amount of $440,000 (he got bonuses, too). If he had produced a forged degree, he would also have been charged with Second Degree Forgery and Criminal Possession of a forged instrument. Since the transactions were separate, the sentences would be served consecutively. That would come out to 7 to 21 years. Plus we had to refund all the fees we collected due to his activity, so the civil lawsuit against him comes out at $2,060,000, and the judge on the criminal case has said he will not accept a plea bargain for anything less than 5 to 15 until and unless a plan is developed to repay at least the guy's ill-gotten gains. He's going to go upstate for a very long time. He was just doing it in th search for a better life. But he was stealing his life. He has caused an incredible amount of anguish and pain, and his convict lifestyle is his just desserts. So don't do it unless you feel like losing everything. Credential falsification is a crime, and the crackdown is here. In the post-PATRIOT Act world, secrets are becoming totally passe.

Answer 7

You have to look at it from the employers standpoint. Is it ethical for an employer to endanger their employees by hiring a known violent person. Is it ethical for a school to expose their kids to a convicted drug user. How about hiring an alcoholic to drive trucks. Recidivism for felons is high, and while you may never repeat your mistakes, as a population, most felons do.

Yes, God gives second chances. But you can't hurt God.

But you seem very insightful of your circumstances. Perhaps employment teaching others to avoid your circumstances (social work, religious services)

Answer 8

Felons are never ex-felons. Once a felon, always a felon. The government doesn't stop you from getting a job. Your fellow Georgians have cause to question your honesty and reliability. It also would depend on for what you are convicted. A college degree means nothing. Depending on the major, less than nothing. Paying your debt to society doesn't mean you're trustworthy. Most of the good paying jobs require a degree of trust.

Answer 9

First of all, get over it. You've been turned down for employment. Happens to everyone. Take your college degree, and your skills to a lesser job for a while so you can live, then begin to figure out what you can create in the way of a business. Get motivated and start your own. Maybe someplace that hires people who have served their time and are having trouble finding work. I know prison doesn't seem like the ideal networking source, but all of us have families of some type or another. Contact people who have friends/relatives/spouses etc. who are inside. Tell them you don't want anyone else to feel the way you did when they told you they didn't need you and you want to help. I know, it's not fair...I know, they shouldn't be able to do it...I know, nobody will listen....I also know that it happens all the time....to a lot of people...people of color.....people who have different abilities....people of lesser stature......people of female gender.....you're in good company, some of the best of the best get discriminated against. Get it together, then hire their best away from them...it's the best way to show them you can do it. One more thing. Do you really want to work for a company that thinks that way? I know I wouldn't.
Good Luck

Answer 10

It is a form of discrimination, it however is NOT illegal discrimination. You may have indeed paid your debt, BUT there's no way to know if you can be trusted again. Trust is earned and comitting a crime basiclly means you say "I can not be trusted".

What type of jobs should a felon get? Cashier? No, no way of knowing if the money will stay in the drawer. Stocker? No, no way of knowing if the items will end up on the shelf or in a back pocket.

Get the point? It's not that you will do that, but that there's is NO way of trusting that you won't.

Answer 11

it is a catch 22 but most have proven that they can not reform and will go back to there same ways maby not right away and sometimes it takes a few years or but most have proven it will happen. I do believe that they need to be given a second chance and i commend places that do give them a change. i think the government should give business a break if the higher multiple felons, but they should also be allowed to drug test them frequently at the states cost. but the do need a second chance because if they are not given one what is there only option, to commit more crimes