Articles
"The Cost of Staying Out of Jail"
by Kirsten D. Levingston, New York Times, April 2, 2006
"When he released his budget in January, Gov. George Pataki boasted that New York was the safest large state in the nation. He also proposed programs to help people leaving prison "become productive, law-abiding citizens." Indeed, the governor rightly links a convict's reintegration into society with public safety."
"Cities That Lead the Way"
New York Times, March 31, 2006 "Crippled by soaring corrections costs, states and municipalities are re-examining policies that drive ex-offenders right back to prison by barring them from employment. Locked out of the mainstream, ex-felons become burdens to their families, their communities and the nation as a whole. Three cities — Boston, Chicago and San Francisco — have taken groundbreaking steps aimed at de-emphasizing criminal histories for qualified applicants for city jobs, except in law enforcement, education and other sensitive areas where people with convictions are specifically barred by statute."
"Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn",
by Erik Eckholm, New York Times, March 20, 2006 "Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other groups.
“Study Shows More Job Offers for Ex-Convicts Who Are White,”
by Paul von Zielbauer, New York Times, June 17, 2005
“According to a study by two Princeton professors, the first to assess the effect of race on job searches by ex-convicts, found that black men who had never been in trouble by the law were about half as likely as whites with similar backgrounds to get a job offer or a callback. Black men whose job applications stated that they had spent time in prison were only about one-third as likely as white men with similar applications to get a positive response.”
“He Did Time, So He’s Unfit To Do Hair,”
by Clyde Haberman, New York Times, March 4, 2005
“Mr. La Cloche served 11 years in New York prisons for first-degree robbery. While behind bars, he turned his life around. He learned a trade, barbering…[But] Mr. La Cloche’s ‘criminal history,’ an administrative law judge ruled, ‘indicates a lack of good moral character and trustworthiness required for licensure.’ In plain language, the fact that Mr. la Cloche had been in prison proved that he was unworthy for the trade that the state itself taught him in prison.”
“Redefining Restorative Justice,”
by Rima Vesely-Flad, The Witness, January 27, 2005
“Restoration of Rights recognizes that present-day slavery is, in fact, legal when a person is imprisoned -- corporations and states derive profit from the coerced labor of incarcerated people -- and that mass incarceration of African Americans is a direct result of racism rather than an inherent deficiency on the part of the incarcerated individual.” |
