The past decade has manifested incredible progress in the criminal justice and fair chance space — far beyond what I imagined possible when first getting involved. I have witnessed this progress in both raw numbers of reduced barriers for people with criminal records, as well as more personal anecdotes from working alongside many of these inspiring individuals. Highlighting these positive stories has been the focus and joy of my career, including bringing them to the TEDx stage. However, progress also requires giving attention to what still needs improvement and what is simply not working. And that’s my hope for this post — to zoom in on a few gaps in the fair chance movement that are hindering our potential for enacting lasting change.
The allure of fast solutions
A pervading challenge is the balancing act between scaling quickly, to repair the immense harm being caused by our justice system, and deepening impact, to ensure high quality and sustainable solutions. Five years ago, I found myself allured by the former end of this spectrum and chose to leave the nonprofit sector for tech. This career shift proved to be immensely fruitful, as I found myself in a community of passionate, brilliant and rebellious dreamers who were maximizing the financial and social capital of tech to actualize their dreams. For the first time, I was able to witness initiatives produce impact numbers in the thousands, which previously seemed inconceivable to my nonprofit perspective.
On the flip side, being tethered to a for-profit corporation (albeit with a beautiful mission), I often felt pressure to sacrifice quality solutions for ones that produce impressive numbers quickly. An example of how this scale-fast approach hurt us is the lack of companies we were able to convert into true “fair chance employers”, i.e. companies hiring talent with records. An embarrassingly abundant number of initiatives, including conferences, hiring fairs, marketing campaigns and coalitions, were organized with this intention in mind. Although these advocacy events were majorly successful at generating interest, they were equally unsuccessful at converting that interest into action. The main reason for this churn is that we were neglecting the employers’ needs for guidance on how to implement the fair chance practices we were promoting. Without this follow-through, the majority of companies gave up when they realized the nuanced complexities involved in fairly recruiting, assessing, hiring, training and retaining talent with records. Rather than changing our efforts to address this major gap, we continued to focus on initiatives that generated immediate rewards, only to produce the same long-term results.
I don’t know if there’s a perfect place to be on this pendulum swing between scale and depth of impact — I’m currently taking an extended break from work to reflect on this. As with most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle. As designers of the future and possessors of most of society’s wealth, the tech and for-profit industries are an essential player in the fair chance movement. However, the hasty approach and competitive attitude they bring to the table must be balanced out with high-quality solutioning and collaboration with the long-term experts of the space, including nonprofits and directly-impacted populations. Building a fairer future depends on our ability to collectively commit to the long haul and invest in the necessary steps to get there.
Where’s the evidence?
Being a data enthusiast, the gap area I’m most passionate about is the lack of sound research studies evaluating and influencing existing solutions. There has been significant focus on garnering data around the need for criminal justice reform, but woefully little research dedicated to examining solutions. When legislators, donors, employers and other stakeholders in the movement rightfully ask for proof that the proposed solutions will work, they are often met with studies that are too far-removed, biased or inconclusive due to low participation rates. For instance, case studies from Starbucks, John Hopkins and JP Morgan are often shared with employers in completely different industries. But the seeming majority of questions are not even being explored at all.
When encouraging employers to hire talent with records, a common objection we get is fear of negligent hiring litigation. But does fair chance hiring truly increase occurrences of these lawsuits? Does the increased risk outbalance the risk of discrimination claims from rejecting candidates because of their records? And looking beyond negative drivers, what are all the proven benefits of fair chance hiring? Does hiring talent with records have a significant effect on talent acquisition, retention and productivity rates? What factors influence these results (type of record, length of prison time, involvement in reentry programs, etc.)? These are prime research questions and experiments that could improve our solutioning and the effectiveness of our advocacy efforts.
A great example of the power of unbiased research is the study conducted by academics to evaluate the effects of ban-the-box laws, which require employers to consider a candidate’s qualifications before their criminal record. These well-intentioned policies were discovered to have the unintended effect of increasing racial discrimination in some circumstances. This finding does not necessitate the repeal of ban-the-box policies but rather the improvement of those policies to maximize impact for everyone involved. A few organizations such as Arnold Ventures and Recidiviz are championing this data-informed approach and centering their efforts around the biggest blockers to fair chances, even when those blockers are “un-sexy” like probation restrictions and fines and fees. To foster wide-scale systemic change, we should all be following their example by basing our solutions on evidence, rather than assumption, thereby magnifying their credibility, effectiveness and long-term sustainability.
But what about prison?
In rooms where fair chance solutions are being discussed, there is always a giant elephant in the corner asking, “But what about prison?”. Throughout my involvement in the space, I’ve continuously heard and believed that prison reform should be tackled separately from reentry initiatives. The rationality for this is that each space is far too large, with too many unique problems, for any one organization to specialize in both simultaneously. While there is truth here, I now believe that we cannot be successful in either space until we recognize that we are serving the same population and that our efforts have a causal effect on one another.
Nearly two million people are behind bars on any given day in America and over 600,000 are released from prison back into the community each year. With an annual budget of over $80 billion (far more if considering social costs), the carceral system should be flaunting major success at alleviating criminal involvement. Instead, we continue to see alarming rates of recidivism, as more than two-thirds are rearrested within 3 years of their release and half are re-incarcerated. The reasons for the revolving door phenomenon are many-fold but the indisputable takeaway is that whatever we’re currently doing is not working. By joining forces, prison reformers and reentry advocates can demonstrate more effective uses of funding to accomplish everyone’s shared goal of reducing crime and improving safety and fairness for all.
A perfect opportunity for tighter collaboration is in creating more prison-to-employment pipelines for livable wage careers. Current fair chance efforts tend to focus on creating jobs for people post-incarceration but many are released from prison ill-prepared for these positions or get rearrested before the opportunities reach them. As one group makes headway with employers in implementing fair chance hiring, another should be simultaneously expanding on training programs in prison to teach the specific skills needed for the positions being opened. Creating these pathways will pour qualified talent into employer hiring funnels and allow incarcerated individuals to seamlessly transition into the workplace upon release. A few states have made imperfect but impressive strides in this arena but most are severely neglecting the power of career training programs and spending the majority of their budgets (68% on average) on correctional officer salaries, overtime, and benefits instead. As prison education programs and employment have both demonstrated effectiveness at reducing recidivism, creating increased opportunities for both can inspire governments to rethink their spending and align budget distributions with what works.
When we find ourselves in the trenches of the fair chance fight, challenges like prison reform seem insurmountable at times. But I hope we can always remind each other that the biggest blockers are also the biggest opportunities for change and a fairer future depends on our ability to seize them.
*This article was originally posted on my LinkedIn in March, 2023
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