Ex-Felons Denied Employment 1

Ex-Felons Denied Employment Final Project Paper HRMG 3001-3/MGMT 3003-3 Instructor: Walden University By William Linville

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 2

Abstract

The topic this author has chosen to research is that of the Patriot Act and AntiTerrorist Acts which is being applied as a discrimination tactic by some employers against the hiring of ex-offenders who have ex-felony cases more than 10 years old and who were not convicted of drug crimes or terrorist acts within the United States or other countries. It has been brought to my attention over the past two years that many employers deny ex-felons employment opportunities due to their past involvement within the Department of Corrections. And supposedly these denials have been reported as part of the rights of the employer due to the Patriot Act and theAnti-Terrorist Act enacted in 2001.

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The purpose of the paper is to prevent further discrimination of these individuals by employers and to make awareness of this situation to those who are in power to change stated laws so as to not reflect on individuals who are American Citizens and do not deserve this type of stereotyping as terrorist. Within the confines of this paper the reality check of what the Anti-Terrorist Act and Patriot Act is actually about and its purposes as well as why it was enacted.

The Anti-Terrorism Act

The Antiterrorism Act of 1996 was a response to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. This Act was the loss of the American First Amendment Rights of freedom of speech, assembly, and petition and simply placed one in violation of the Act by guilt of association. (Cole, David and Dempsey, James, 2002) There were no longer any barriers to FBI or other federal investigations upon the American public including surveillance and methods that catch income and outgoing telephone calls. It also called for open door policies with Immigration and Naturalization services to deport Muslim citizens all based on secret evidence and nothing else was needed for deportation of the Muslim people. (Cole, David and Dempsey, James, 2002)

The Patriot Act Purpose of Enactment The Department of Justice's first priority is to prevent future terrorist attacks. Since its passage following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Patriot Act has played a key part - and often the leading role - in a number of successful operations to protect innocent Americans from the deadly plans of terrorists dedicated to destroying America and our way of life. While the results have been important, in passing the Patriot Act,

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 4 Congress provided for only modest, incremental changes in the law. Congress simply took existing legal principles and retrofitted them to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network. (Department of Justice, 2012) This statement is quite proficient in that most certainly it does help to quill the assault of terrorist such as those involved in the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah building and the attacks on the Trade Center in New York, however the question that remains here is how does it actually effect American populations and their civil liberty rights as well as the ability to gain employment to provide for themselves and their families? Perhaps sitting in your living room and watching television trials and juries handing down guilty votes with sentences to imprisonment for various crimes and numerous years of incarceration is just that a television show. However, reality is that this occurs in our communities each day in every state in America. The sentences are often excessive for non-violent offenders and more excessive for violent offenders as a rule dependent upon the crime and prior convictions. We rely heavily upon our state courts to give righteous retribution and give those people who commit crimes the proper punishments. Indeed within our American society prison inmates are one of the greatest costs we face. However, how long must the punishment for these offenses go on after their payment to society for their deeds? And must their families and children continue suffer poverty as well due to lack of employment? Are we Americans who have paid taxes to support these imprisoned inmates now to support them on welfare and

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 5 unemployment when they are now free citizens and able to support themselves and their families? I ask again how long must punishment continue? The National Security Letters (NSL) authorized in Title 5 of the Patriot Act is an administrative subpoena used by a number of government agencies, according to Philip Giraldi (2011) the NSL is used to obtain documents and information relating to any individual or to organizations, to include employment, health, financial, and credit records. There is no requirement for probable cause and there is no judicial oversight of the process. The recipient of the NSL cannot reveal that he has received the letter to anyone and can be prosecuted if he violates that restriction. At FBI, the letters can be issued by any Special Agent in Charge of any field office, which means that the authority to approve a NSL is essentially local, is not reviewed at a higher level, and does not have to be linked to any actual terrorism case. As of 2005, the NSLs had been used to obtain more than one million personal records, including medical histories and credit reports. A Justice Department investigation determined that most had nothing to do with terrorism. Anti-Terrorism Act The Act was requested for enactment by President George Bush and enacted by the many others in Congress who wanted to increase governmental powers over Americans thereby the 9/11 attacks were a most valid excuse to pass the Patriot Act which was already written and just needed an opportunity to be passed by the frightful American public. The Act gives the American government the right to spy on its citizens and retrieve any information on its citizens that it chooses to do so including the emails, wiretapping phone calls and medical records etc. anything the government desires to

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 6 know about a citizen. In essence American citizens or anyone else who lives in America has absolutely no privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union, say that the Act has undone previous checks on civil liberty abuses of the past and unnecessarily endangers privacy and discourages free speech. (Search Data Management 2012) How These Acts Effect Employment for Ex-Felons As previously stated it has been brought to this authors attention that due to the Patriot Act and Anti-Terrorism Act effects ex-felons within the state of Oklahoma are now being denied employment by a large number of businesses including the State Department of Substance abuse and Mental Health services, as well as many manufacturing companies and hiring in agencies. This authors involvement began when advised by a reliable resource Mr. L., that he had applied for several positions of employment throughout the state for over eight months and had been told that although he met the qualifications and exceeded qualifications in most respect the one thing that kept him from being hired was the fact that he had a 30 year old felony conviction. Of course, I did not just take Mr. Ls perspective on the situation and yet this seemingly discriminatory act greatly interested this author and through much in-depth research it was found that Mr. L was a most reliable source as many of these companies were personally contacted by me and interviewed as to their policies concerning hiring ex-felons in the State of Oklahoma. Although State of Oklahoma laws specifically forbid the discriminatory practice of not hiring ex-felons and many businesses specifically state within their policies a time frame of 5-10 years after incarceration including some truck

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 7 driving training schools before hiring ex-felons the source herein was not able to work anywhere in the state of Oklahoma at a job he was more than qualified for.

This author further contacted a person who has a very high position within the State of Oklahoma Mental Health and Substance Abuse agency as well as had involvement with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and was specifically informed after in-depth questioning that the bottom line is that no one is really interested in hiring felons due to the Anti-Terrorist Act, so the best you can advise Mr. L is to find a job in another state.

I found this actually an intriguing statement especially from a State of Oklahoma Department head and thereby continued research into this matter further with examining the written Anti-Terrorism Act and its predecessor the Patriot Act. I also took my curiosity further wondering how other states viewed these two acts and how they affected employment by ex-felons within those states. I therefore had Mr. L., apply for several positions in manufacturing, warehouse work, management, and three truck driving schools in the States of Missouri, Texas, Kentucky and Arkansas. All positions were denied and all referenced the fact that Mr. L was an ex-felon was the cause of inaction on the parts of the parties.

Although it has not been mentioned at this point, I might add that each of the agencies contacted and applied positions for were those who claimed to be Equal Opportunity Employers which are governed by the Federal Equal Employment

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 8 Opportunity (EEO) Laws which prohibit job discrimination as stated in Section II under Discrimination Practices are as follows: hiring and firing; compensation, assignment, or classification of employees; transfer, promotion, layoff, or recall; job advertisements; recruitment; testing; use of company facilities; training and apprenticeship programs; fringe benefits; pay, retirement plans, and disability leave; or other terms and conditions of employment.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Discriminatory practices under these laws also include:

1.

harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, genetic information, or age;

2.

retaliation against an individual for filing a charge of discrimination, participating in an investigation, or opposing discriminatory practices;

3.

employment decisions based on stereotypes or assumptions about the abilities, traits, or performance of individuals of a certain sex, race, age,

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 9 religion, or ethnic group, or individuals with disabilities, or based on myths or assumptions about an individual's genetic information; and
4.

denying employment opportunities to a person because of marriage to, or association with, an individual of a particular race, religion, national origin, or an individual with a disability. Title VII also prohibits discrimination because of participation in schools or places of worship associated with a particular racial, ethnic, or religious group.

Employers are required to post notices to all employees advising them of their rights under the laws EEOC enforces and their right to be free from retaliation. Such notices must be accessible, as needed, to persons with visual or other disabilities that affect reading. (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2012)

The Laws also include age, sex, religion discrimination etc. however, in examination of the EEO laws no place does it designate specifically discrimination against ex-felons. Nor does it specifically state anything a person can do about these employers who refuse to hire ex-felons all of which this author believed was quite negligent due to the large prison populations in the United States and common sense that many of these populations have been released over the years which are employable. With these specific thoughts in mind I contacted several recently released inmates from both the women and men facilities in the State of Oklahoma and found that only about 10% of 50 persons had been actually hired in a position, even though the position were menial labor positions and paid minimum wage. None of the fifty were related to violent, drug,

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 10 assault, or terrorist crimes yet were found unworthy of jobs in their communities due to prior incarceration. Title 4 and Title 8 of the Patriot Act deal with defining terrorism. The definition was broadened to include many criminal acts hitherto regarded as non-terrorism, to include mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, intimidation, coercion, and racketeering. It also includes activities dangerous to human life. The definition of terrorist support activity was also made extremely broad and elastic, meaning that even a letter to the editor defending a terrorist group or the inadvertent contribution to a charity that was somehow linked to a group that the State Department had defined as terrorist could lead to criminal prosecution. Under the new law, any alien, including legal residents, who is arrested on terrorist related charges can be detained indefinitely under orders from the Attorney General. The evidence used to determine that the accused had possible links to terrorist organizations can be withheld at the discretion of the Justice Department and cannot be challenged, which means that it can be based on suspicion or uncorroborated information. There is no guarantee of any kind of due process for those who are arrested. (Giraldi, Philip, 2011) In conclusion during 2010 according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2010) the number of persons under supervision of adult correctional authorities reached 7.1 million at yearend. About 7 in 10 persons under the supervision of adult correctional systems were supervised in the community (4,887,900) on probation or parole at yearend 2010, while about 3 in 10 were incarcerated (2,266,800) in local jails or in the custody of state or federal prisons.

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 11 Employers continue to deny employment opportunities to those who are under Department of Corrections jurisdiction (i.e., probationers) as well as those who have been released as free American citizens again into society as the Equal Employment Opportunity laws are cast to the side under the veil of the Patriot Act and Anti-Terrorism Act. Our counties, states and the United States as a whole are going under due to financial difficulties and yet we continue to pay taxes and provide available welfare for recipients who are employable but cannot find an employer to hire them. What is wrong with this picture? WE cannot object due to being in duress from our own government who sees objection as a tool of terrorism to this country! This is the insanity we have come to because of our fears and our loss of power over our government and legislation. We have become lax and dependent upon the government for our welfare where and when does it stop. Who has given us the right to judge others. The foundation of this country was built by prisoners sent here from England and other countries. Seems to this author it America turned out fairly well, now if we can get our government back in check our America will be what is has always represented Freedom and new life for all.

Ex-Felons Denied Employment 12 References

Cole, David and Dempsey, James X. (2002) Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security. Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/10/19/anti-terrorism/

Department of Justice (2012) The USA Patriot Act: Preserving Life and Liberty http://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/highlights.htm HR Bill Anti-Terrorist Act (2001) What the Patriot Act Does for You http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/ata2001_text.pdf Giraldi, Philip (2001) What the Patriot Act Does For You http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2011/03/30/what-the-patriot-act-does-for-you/ Search Data Management (2012) Patriot Act http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/Patriot-Act U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEO) (2012) Federal Laws Prohibiting Job Discrimination Questions and Answers http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qanda.html