By Jamie Dimon,The New York Times, August 4, 2021
One in three American adults — more than 70 million people — have some type of criminal record. To put this in perspective, about the same number of Americans have college degrees right now.
Unfortunately, these Americans, who were incarcerated or have a conviction on their record, are essentially unable to secure good jobs in this country. Nearly half of formerly incarcerated people are unemployed one year after leaving prison. That is a moral outrage.
This group is ready to work and deserves a second chance — an opportunity to fill the millions of job openings across the country. Yet our criminal justice system continues to block them from doing so.
Currently, financial, legal and logistical roadblocks prevent those who have paid their debt to society from re-entering the work force. Barriers like occupational licensing rules that keep people with records from getting jobs and a history of systemic racism in our criminal justice system disproportionately impact communities of color, especially Black people, who represent 35 percent of formerly incarcerated people but only 12 percent of the U.S. population,according to a 2020 Brennan Center report.
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