President Obama announced Monday that his administration will refrain from asking about a job seeker’s criminal background at the application stage for most positions. Riding the wave of similar “ban the box” policies passed in numerous cities across the country, the president’s action* aims to help ease the process of securing jobs for those coming out of prison, in hopes that the gainfully employed will be less inclined to return.
The announcement coincides with the early release of some6,000 prisoners from federal custody, who have been either incarcerated or were under legal supervision. Their release began Friday, October 30, and will run through Tuesday, November 3. Another 8,500 federal prisoners are eligible for early release before next November, while some 46,000 drug offenders in total could be freed over the next few years, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. These emancipations come courtesy of a retroactive application of new U.S. Sentencing Commission guidelines, which shave two years, on average, off of certain prisoners’ sentences for nonviolent, federal drug convictions.
[For more of this story, written by Brentin Mock, go to http://www.citylab.com/crime/2...ates-hurdles/413470/]
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