The D.C. Council wants to make it easier for the city government to hire ex-convicts.
A bill called the “Returning Citizen Employment Inclusion Act of 2010” would prohibit most District agencies from asking about the criminal records or histories of job applicants until after they’ve landed an interview. It’s sponsored by Ward 5 Councilman Harry Thomas Jr. With six other council members co-sponsoring the bill, including Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry, who has criminal convictions on his record, and Council Chairman-elect Kwame Brown, it already has enough support to pass.
The bill’s backers believe that not asking about criminal history on government job applications will make it easier for ex-convicts to get city jobs. They say hiring ex-offenders will keep them from returning to prison. Critics say the legislation will worsen problems
the city has with weeding out dangerous job applicants.
“The opportunity for released prisoners to obtain employment when they return to the District is critical to breaking the vicious cycle of re-offending and being returned to prison,” ACLU legislative counsel Stephen Block told the council during a hearing on the bill. He added, “Crime increases the cost of doing business in the District. It is in everyone’s self-interest to support a meaningful prohibition on discrimination against ex-offenders in employment.”
The District is home to about 60,000 ex-felons, nearly 10 percent of the population, the ACLU estimates.
The bill would not apply to city agencies that are legally required to run criminal background checks. The police and corrections departments and most agencies that deal with children, including the school system, could still inquire about criminal records on job applications.
Barry has introduced three bills since 2006 that have had the goal of making it illegal for any employer to discriminate against ex-convicts by including ex-offenders under the protections of the city’s human rights act. That would put ex-convicts under the same umbrella as race, religion, gender and sexual identity. None of Barry’s three bills has passed.
Although this latest bill is focused more narrowly, it would still put the public in danger, said D.C. police union chief Kristopher Baumann.
“There is already too little deterrence from committing crimes in the city’s justice system,” Baumann said. “This bill would take away a disincentive to commit crimes.”
The city’s background checks already fail to catch dangerous criminals, Baumann said.
Both the police department and the D.C. school system failed to detect a murder conviction in the background of a mentor hired to work at Spingarn High School. In June, 51-year-old Barry Harrison was sentenced to six years in prison for the 2009 sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl at the Northeast school. Harrison had spent 22 years in prison and was released in 2006. The criminal history check only went back 10 years, so it didn’t reveal his conviction in 1984.
