Roughly 30 organizations gathered in the gym of Albertus Magnus College in New Haven Friday morning; all seeking to help formerly incarcerated people beat the former convict stigma and secure full-time jobs.
Organizers who attended the expo said the hardest part for many formerly incarcerated people is convincing landlords and potential employers to take a chance on them.
“Deposits for houses now are double, people want two kinds of security deposits plus first month’s rent, which makes it so hard for somebody just coming home to come up with the money to move into a place and sustain that,” said Sandy Morelli, an organizer with the Hartford Pantry Center.
Morelli said the stringent regulations on types of identification required to sign a lease, as well as mandatory criminal background checks from landlords mean that many former convicts end up homeless or resign to living with family.
Most hirers will also require a criminal background check as part of the employment process, which Jehroam Ormsby, from EmergeCT’s Bridgeport chapter said often discourages people from applying, because they assume a prior conviction will invalidate their application.
“You’ll probably get 99 no’s before you get one yes, and we try to embed that in people, you know, don’t give up,” Ormsby said.
Erica Reshard, a counselor with Sankofa Counseling, an organization that focuses on the effects of PTSD in former convicts. Reshard said struggling to secure housing and a full-time job often compounds the trauma that serving time causes and makes it more difficult for formerly incarcerated individuals to adjust to life after being discharged.
“It’s really frustrating, and it’s often why people recidivate,” Reshard said. “They go back to what they know because they know they’re going to make money.”
Reshard said the best way to minimize the likelihood of re-offending and create firm pathways after incarceration is to revise the way employers do criminal background checks.
“We’re the only country in the world that continues to punish people after they’ve served their time. It’s not fair,” Reshard said.
Barriers to securing housing and work can sometimes be mitigated if a former inmate’s record is expunged, but Reshard said sometimes, convictions still show up on employers’ background checks, even after expungement.
Michael Nicholson and Emmanuel Ressler, two men who attended the expo, with the hopes of getting full-time jobs in construction or landscaping, said that they had been looking for work for four to six months.
Nicholson said he has faced more discrimination during his job search than from landlords. He said that if the process for becoming work-eligible after prison was clearer and criminal background checks were not so ubiquitous, it might be easier for former convicts to find full-time work.
“If somebody has been out of jail for a minute, and there’s nothing behind them for years, they’ve been trying to make a change, just give them a shot,” Nicholson contended.
Nicholson says he will keep applying for jobs and trying to push through rejections that he believes are connected to his criminal background.
“Once I get a chance and a foot in the door, that’s all I need.”
