Eugene evaluating job form

by Karen McCown, Register-Guard
November 29, 2009

A tiny box on the first page of a city of Eugene job application can have an enormous impact on some particularly motivated job seekers.

It’s the one beside this question: Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

Eugene officials say they don’t weed out applicants based on checking the “yes” box. But the prominence of the question — and the mere perception that it’s a deal-breaker — can have that effect, Eugene resident Paul Solomon said.

“It’s a barrier for people with criminal histories,” said Solomon, board chairman of Partnership for Safety and Justice, an Oregon advocacy group that has persuaded Eugene to try removing the question from its initial application form.

“When they go to the city and apply for a job and that’s the first thing they see, they think, ‘I’m not going to get a job here,’ and they don’t even apply.”

That barrier is problem for a couple of reasons, said Solomon, also assistant executive director of Sponsors, a local agency that helps former prison inmates with employment, housing and other issues.

Most obviously, he said, it hampers individuals who have paid their debt to society when they are competing for living-wage jobs. Landing such jobs, Solomon said, helps felons “overcome some of the other barriers with re-entry after incarceration.”

Research shows that people released from prison are far more likely to commit new crimes if they cannot obtain stable housing and a living-wage job, he said.

But the “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” barrier also hurts employers, Solomon said.

“It can deny the city a chance to get the most talented pool of prospective employees,” he said. “Eleven percent of adult males in the United States has a felony conviction. Yet one of them may well be a very qualified candidate for a particular job.”

In many states, he said, the majority of felons were drug offenders. After becoming clean and sober — and perhaps completing prison programs to help them remain so — “many are functional people who will jump at the chance to turn their lives around.”

For both reasons, the Partnership for Safety and Justice — composed of people convicted of crimes, survivors of crime, and the families of both — launched a “Think Outside the Box” campaign. Since 2007, such campaigns have persuaded jurisdictions such as Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, St. Paul, Minn. and Oregon’s Multnomah County to change their hiring policies. Removing the felony box from initial, generic applications helps ensure that all job applicants are considered first and foremost on the basis of their experience and qualifications.

Under the new approach, cities can still discuss a candidate’s criminal history and its relevance, if any, Solomon stressed. They just do so later in the hiring process.

“Also, we’re not asking local governments to change their policies with regard to positions that require a criminal background check,” he said.

Among those urging Eugene to join jurisdictions that have removed the “felony box” from its initial, generic application form was Ted Wheeler, chairman of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.

“Supporting the success of formerly incarcerated people reduces recidivism, increases public safety and helps lower the cost of incarceration,” he said. Wheeler added that he hoped the county’s action would spur private employers to take a similar approach.

After making presentations to Eugene officials this fall, the Partnership for Safety and Justice received a letter last month from Eugene City Manager Jon Ruiz, notifying the group that Eugene would begin a pilot project July 1, 2010, that removes the felony conviction question from its initial application form.

Instead, he said, the city will ask about criminal history on a “supplemental questionnaire and/or at the appropriate time during each individual hiring process.”

After a year, Eugene will evaluate the pilot program to see if it should continue, he said.

He called the trial part of the city’s “commitment to continue being as inclusive as possible with its employment opportunities.”

Eugene will also “provide more detail on our on-line application regarding how the City processes felony conviction responses, and will clearly demonstrate that we do not use this information to screen out candidates at the initial application review phase,” Ruiz wrote.

The city’s recruitment and selection manager, Becky DeWitt, said Eugene officials are still working out exactly how they’ll do that.

“We will basically be balancing being responsive to applicants with (felony) convictions campaign with asking at some point the questions we need to ask for public safety positions and any other positions that have access to vulnerable populations,” she said.

View the Register-Guard article on PSJ's Think Outside the Box victory