LR job fair for convicts offers them 2nd chance
Posted on Sunday, September 21, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/237928/
For the job-seekers who attend the inaugural Offender Job Fair on Monday, a felony conviction could open doors.
The event will offer convicts a chance to meet with representatives from at least seven employers, including the city of Little Rock, Schuek Steel Co., and companies in the construction, retail, hospitality and service industries. Information on dozens of other employers that hire felons will also will be available.
Anyone with a criminal record can attend.
The fair is sponsored by City of Faith, a Monroe, La.-based nonprofit that has operated a halfway house for federal prisoners near West 12 th Street and South University Avenue in Little Rock since 1996.
Residents at the house, which can hold up to 104 people, are required to hold jobs and contribute 25 percent of their earnings toward the operation of the facility.
Outside the halfway house, many people with felony convictions struggle to find jobs, said Katie Morrow, a City of Faith job-placement specialist. The halfway house came up with the fair as a way to help them.
Since the halfway house began advertising the fair about two months ago, it has received two or three calls a day from jobseekers wanting more information, Morrow said.
“Some of that is just they don’t know where to go,” Morrow said. “Many people have been turned down so many times, they’re just almost desperate to find a place that’s got the information they need.”
Heath Peters, a former City of Faith resident, said he already has a job selling cars at a southwest Little Rock dealership. But he’s hoping to find a job that pays more.
“The good jobs, you can’t even get in the door,” said Peters, 41, who has convictions for drug and firearm offenses. “They ask have you ever been convicted of a felony, and they say we don’t hire felons right off the bat.”
Service providers and corrections officials agree that finding jobs for more convicts would reduce crime and curb the state’s growing population of prison inmates.
Of the 6, 244 convicts released from Arkansas prisons in 2004, 2, 772 — or more than 44 percent — had returned by the end of 2007.
“The quickest way to return to crime is to not have a job or any way to support yourself and your family,” City Director Joan Adcock said.
Adcock works with Pulaski County Circuit Judge Willard Proctor’s Cycle Breakers program for probationers, and she helped City of Faith organize the job fair.
At a Cycle Breakers job fair in November, 15 employers showed up to meet with about 600 applicants, many of whom already had jobs but were searching for better ones. Twenty other employers provided applications to be distributed at the fair.
The probationers with whom she works often are intimidated, afraid their convictions will disqualify them, Adcock said. She encourages them to be honest and tell the employer about the conviction during the interview.
Convicts often make reliable employees, she added. Most are required to stay employed as a condition of their supervision, and many must submit to regular drug tests.
“They’re being checked all the time,” Adock said. “They have more to lose than a lot of people.”
Companies that hire them can get tax breaks. Through the U. S. Department of Labor’s Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which has been around in some form since 1978, a company can take up to $ 2, 400 off its federal income taxes for hiring an employee who was convicted of a felony or released from prison up to a year before being hired.
Nationally, companies claimed the credit for 45, 590 felons in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2007. In Arkansas, employers claimed the credit for 1, 158 felons in the past year, said Kimberly Friedman, a spokesman for the state Department of Workforce Services.
The city of Little Rock plans to be at the job fair as part of its policy of attending as many job fairs in the area as possible, said Curt Dawson, the city’s employment services manager.
While felons are barred from working as police officers, firefighters or 911 dispatchers, the city considers them for other jobs, depending on the type of crime and the job responsibilities.
For instance, “if there is a conviction for fraud, then we wouldn’t be able to consider that person for a job as an accountant or handling money,” Dawson said.
Allen Winkler, the program manager for City of Faith, said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will also send a representative to the fair. Daphne Moore, a spokesman for the company, was unable to confirm that last week. She did say the company performs background checks on its employees and hires felons on a case-by-case basis.
“Obviously, the safety and security of our customers is our top priority,” she said.
At Schueck Steel Co., which will be at the fair, a felony conviction is “not a deterrent,” said Danna Gauntt, the company’s director of human resources. Through the Arkansas Department of Correction’s work-release program, the company often hires prison inmates as welders. The inmates are bused to the plant in the morning and return to prison at night.
“They’re dependable,” Gauntt said. “The problem is keeping them after they’re paroled. They usually go back home” to other parts of the state.
The fair will be from 10 a. m. to 1 p. m. Monday at the Adult Leisure Center at 6401 W. 12 th St. in Little Rock. The halfway house declined to name the other employers who will be at the fair, saying they may not want the publicity.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette does not plan to send a representative, but it does hire felons under some circumstances, said Kay Brewer, the newspaper’s director of human resources. For instance, someone convicted of theft would generally not be eligible for a job that requires the person to work unsupervised.
The Arkansas Department of Community Correction, which supervises the state’s 51, 000 probationers and parolees, occasionally holds job fairs for people under its supervision, spokesman Rhonda Sharp said.
Employees at the department’s day-reporting centers also teach classes on writing resumes, interviewing for jobs and filling out applications, she said.
“We can’t obtain a job for somebody, but we do work with them to help them find work,” Sharp said.
When he started work as a temporary employee at a North Little Rock cookie factory four months ago, former City of Faith resident Greg Robinson, 45, said he was afraid his criminal record would keep the company from giving him a permanent job.
The only other legitimate job he had held was at a factory in the Forrest City Correctional Institution, where he served 15 years for a crack cocaine conviction.
But last month, the cookie company hired him. Now he makes $ 8. 75 an hour and lives with his mother in Little Rock while he saves money, hoping to someday start an upholstery business. Two weeks ago, he bought a car.
He hasn’t missed a day of work, he said.
“When you’re dealing with somebody who’s giving you a second chance, you don’t want to let them down,” Robinson said.