The myth of “paying your debt to society,” or the reality of piles of debt?

Thousands of people are leaving Oregon prisons each year. They and their loved ones are often frustrated that rather than being prepared to return to the community, former prisoners face many barriers to a successful transition home. Some of these barriers are financial and can include:

 

·        Ruined credit histories

·        Thousands of dollars of debts from the criminal legal system

·        Difficulty finding work due to a felony conviction and poor credit

 

Together, debt and employment problems send many people into a downward spiral that can lead them back to prison. These former prisoners have been set up to fail, and if they do return to prison, we all wind up paying the price. 

A new national report, “Repaying Debts,” outlines the range of debts that pile up for prisoners as they prepare to re-enter society. The study, commissioned by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, describes cases of newly released inmates who have been confronted with as much as $25,000 in debt the moment they step outside the prison gate. How does a person wind up tens of thousands of dollars in debt while in prison? 

A person’s legal financial obligations begin to pile up quickly. These expenses include:

 

·        Charges for their public defender (“indigent attorney fees”)

·        Court fines and court-ordered restitution

·        Child support and/or bills for foster care for their children

 

Some of these expenses --- restitution, for example --- need to be paid, since crime victims need restitution. But we have to take into account that most people in prison do not have a reasonable chance to pay them off. Many Oregon prisoners who are working full-time are making less than a $1 a day and one of the limited high-end jobs in an Oregon prison may pay 80 cents an hour.

 

These costs balloon into big bills quickly. Let’s look at child support costs. A person in jail awaiting trial but unable to work will still owe child support payments, which their children need, but instead all that will happen is a mounting debt. In addition to that, the state can charge prisoners if the prisoner’s children wind up in the foster care system (these charges are decided on a case-by-case basis). With a bill of hundreds of dollars per month per child, a five-year sentence can leave a prisoner thousands of dollars in debt.

 

Meanwhile, many of the debts that occur from a person’s financial legal obligations (for example, their legal fees for their public defender or their restitution charges) move through a complicated process that can end with a bad credit history. In Oregon, for example, these obligations move from the county of conviction to the state Department of Revenue, but without activity (payments) on the account in the first year of incarceration, the prisoner can be declared “in default” and the bills sent to a collection agency (Alliance One).

 

Why would someone not make any payments? A prisoner working at a typical full-time job in an Oregon prison might earn $350 in their first year, making a regular payment schedule difficult if not impossible. But the negative credit report simply records that they had thousands of dollars in debts that they did not pay.

 

On some level, the state recognizes the futility of attempting to collect some of these debts – child support, for instance – from people who are working full-time and earning $1 a day. Oregon allows prisoners to ask the state to modify or suspend their child support obligations while they are incarcerated, if they have been sentenced to over six months. However, many prisoners don’t realize that they are able to ask for the modification or suspension (see box on page x) and these changes cannot be applied retroactively.

 

In another improvement, earlier this year, Oregon lawmakers agreed to stop charging interest on legal financial obligations (such as legal fees for their public defender) until 60 days after a prisoner leaves prison. But, these changes do not stop the process of these bills going to collection, it only stops the interest charges until they after they are released from prison. This change is welcome, but not enough – people still leave prison mounded with debt, and with more debts on the way. 

When a person leaves prison, in addition to having to make payments on the debts already described, they now have a whole new set of expenses to deal with, including:

 

·        Post-prison supervision fees

·        Urine analysis and polygraph fees

·        Drug and alcohol treatment assessment fee

·        Parenting or anger management classes

 

There is no central agency tracking these debts, so each agency that is charging a prisoner might act as if the other agencies don’t exist. A formerly incarcerated person living far below the poverty level might still be hounded by four or five different agencies at once. That person wants to do the right thing, knows that all of those accrued debts are important, and wants to fulfill their responsibility.

 

Ultimately, these accumulated fees, current child support, debts from the legal system and the cost of living often mount up to an economic burden that sets people up to fail. This hurts both the parents reentering society and their children, along with crime victims who are awaiting restitution payments that the former prisoner can’t afford to make.

 

How is a person supposed to pay off these debts? Most people deal with debts by getting a job. But, there’s one problem --- few employers are eager to hire former prisoners.

It is a routine part of job applications to ask people about previous felony convictions, and in some cases, about previous arrests. Many employers don’t want to hire anyone who has a criminal record, much less someone who just got out of prison, even if they’re qualified for the job.

 

The Legal Action Center has published a re-entry report card that counts unfair and counterproductive barriers to employment for each of the fifty states. The lower the score, the fewer barriers people face and the more fair the state’s approach. Out of a possible score of ten barriers, Oregon scored a nine. The report explains our poor score:

 

“Employers can ask about arrests that never led to conviction and refuse to hire anyone with a criminal record no matter their qualifications. Occupational licensing authorities, on the other hand, must determine the fitness of each applicant by considering the facts surrounding the conviction and intervening circumstances. No opportunity for people with criminal records to obtain certificates of rehabilitation.” 

 

When employment applications ask, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” it doesn’t seem to matter if there is any relevance to the job description, how much time has passed since the conviction, or what the person has done to turn their life around since their conviction. These are all legitimate factors to consider, yet many employers don’t bother to ask, choosing instead to just discard the applications of people with felony convictions.

 

And now employers are increasingly turning to credit histories and criminal background checks instead of checking personal references and work histories. A Society for Human Resource Management survey in 2003 showed that four out of companies they surveyed ran criminal background checks before hiring, and one-third checked credit histories before hiring. These blanket reviews can eliminate qualified people from jobs they may be very qualified for; jobs they need to support their families as well as pay off these debts from the legal system. 

Over the last year, Partnership for Safety and Justice has worked to build support for our “Think Outside the Box” campaign. We asked Multnomah County, the largest county employer in Oregon, to remove “the question” about felony convictions from their initial job application. We gathered letters from elected officials and other organizations around the county who endorsed the campaign because they recognize that it’s not helpful to ask about conviction history early in the employment process, and in some cases doing so leads to the elimination of qualified applicants.

 

This October, the Multnomah County Director of Human Services, Travis Graves, announced that Multnomah County has decided to remove the question “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” from the county’s initial job application and to ask questions about felony convictions later in the process. They’re joining a growing number of local governments who are realizing that locking former felons out of job opportunities is short-sighted and may contribute to recidivism --- new crimes being committed by former prisoners.

 

In another move in the right direction, more cities and states are creating workforce development projects to get former prisoners into jobs and address the questions and concerns that employers have about employing people newly-released from prison. These programs are prompted by the growing awareness that prisoners cannot be reasonably expected to stay out of prison, care for their children, and pay their restitution unless they can find work. And given their extraordinarily high debts, it’s even more important that they find “living wage” jobs that will not leave them deeper in debt. 

Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) statistics show that 30% of people will re-offend and be sent back to prison within three years. Are we doing everything as a community to set people up to succeed? No, we are not if one out of three people are returning to prison so soon after release.

 

There are many changes that need to happen so that former prisoners can meet their financial obligations and re-enter the community successfully after prison. Here’s a sampling of potential solutions to address the barriers discussed in this article:

 

1.      Oregon law requires prisoners to work full-time. Why can’t they work and earn an amount that could enable them to pay their restitution, fees and child support debts while they are incarcerated[DW3] ?

2.      Improve management of court-ordered financial obligations, including court fees, fines, and restitution, so that people can deal with a single agency that balances paying their debts off while still meeting basic living expenses.

3.      End the practice of slamming the door on job applicants with conviction histories. A more thoughtful approach needs to be used in deciding when to ask someone about conviction histories and determining whether that history is relevant to the position being filled. We believe that the question about conviction history should be asked later in the process and people should be given an opportunity to talk directly about whether their history should be a concern. Additionally, we believe that employers should only consider conviction histories that are substantially related to the actual job.

(Up until this point the article is in 13 font; the following bullets are in 12 point)

For example:

·         The nature of the crime for which the applicant was convicted

·         What positive changes the applicant has achieved since conviction

·         The time elapsed since the applicant was arrested

·         The applicant’s age when he or she was arrested

 

4.      Support employers who are willing to hire former felons for living wage jobs, and address questions and concerns of those businesses with resources like workforce development programs.

 

Oregon must end the harsh poverty-stricken living conditions imposed on people trying to re-enter society and stop ignoring reality. If Oregon is really looking for ways to keep people from returning to prison once they get out of prison and have “paid their debt to society,” we have to get serious about acknowledging and eliminating the massive debts that threaten to drown them after prison.

 

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Justice Matters.