I worked for 20 years in a state employment office. We offered job search assistance, training, veterans' services and unemployment insurance. We never could shake the label "Unemployment Office. In a day, I may see those with six figure incomes (with or without advanced degrees) to others scraping by on part time minimum wage work. In my experience, no group had a tougher time than those saddled with criminal records. It was even worse for females with criminal records. The guys could still find construction laborer and other forms of low skill back breaking work. Women less so, at least in my experience.
I was pretty good at getting people to open up, sometimes too good. A young African American lady, Tonya, (not her actual name) sat down and let me know right off the bat she had a felony. I forgot what it was for or even if she told me. She knew she was in for a rough time and taught me much about life as a poor dark skinned person weighted down by a permanent criminal record. She was not at all nasty or angry, just detached. From her, I learned about police occupation; warrantless home entries, constant observation and random stops leaving people afraid and powerless. Tonya also told be about Guilty County. According to her this was the hardest county for a former offender to find work in the whole state. I saw nothing in my twenty years that would make me disbelieve her. She was far from the only person who taught me about the criminal record label.
I had one Hispanic lady (We'll call her Ella-not her real name) who had a drug possession charge because her ex-husband left a small amount of cocaine in her car. Ella was a permanent resident (non citizen but here legally). Her English was so so, with no high school diploma and she was over fifty years old. She also had three high school aged children she was raising on her own. No one would hire Ella. Eventually, she got some part time work cleaning buildings for minimum wage. She had a good work ethic, was always positive, funny and trying to do the right thing. I never saw her feeling sorry for herself or blaming anyone for her situation. Ella just wanted to work and get by. Her brown skin and felon label made her untouchable here in Guilty County. Unable to support herself and children here, she moved out of state and I lost touch with her. She's resilient and will always get by but society has sentenced her to an old age filled with poverty and struggle. The punishment far out weighed the "crime."
I could write for years about the people I've met and what I learned from them. But let's not get off topic, former offenders. My cube became a confessional of sorts. I needed to know what the barriers were to help them. I talked to murders, drug dealers (unlicensed pharmaceutical reps), child molesters and God only know what else. I rarely asked what they did if they told me they had a criminal record. I would rather not know but most told me anyway. My role was to help any and all without judgement. I found the problems faced by this underclass so acute, I created another blog dedicated to former offenders- Get a Job with a Criminal Record. It is not much but something. The situation is not completely hopeless but we can do better.
