WHY DO WE NEED IT AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

Each year hundreds of thousands of people are released from incarceration and return to neighborhoods suffering from underemployment and lack of opportunity. In order to put our communities back to work, we need policies that prioritize lifting local residents out of poverty by giving them access to good jobs.

• Community hiring requirements create incentives for employers to hire from the community, and good first source referral systems create the pipeline of qualified workers from low-income areas prepared to meet that demand.
• Ban the box policies remove questions of criminal history from the initial job application, ensuring applicants are considered on their qualifications first
• Job quality standards such as living wage, paid sick days and other measures help make sure that the jobs made available are good jobs.

These policies work together to enhance the application pool available to employers, assist employers and policymakers in complying with federal antidiscrimination laws and in redressing economic inequality, and strength our communities. This resource will provide information on integrating the policies.

Key Components of Combined Community Hiring And Ban The Box Approach

Reducing stigma

Some of the ways that people with arrest and conviction records are described reinforces stereotypes. There has been growing consensus that leading with the term “people” is humanizing, such as “people with arrests or convictions” or “people with criminal histories”

What do these measures do?

At a minimum, the ban the box component includes removing questions about criminal records from the job application. More effective ban the box policies include the components detailed below. Targeted hiring measures create obligations on employers to include particular categories of workers such as local and disadvantaged workers as part of their workforce.

Who is covered?

The combined measures can be written into law, policy or contracts to cover local government hiring, include contractors with the local government, or even expand to all public and private employers within the area.

Click here to view more information about the “Ban the Box” Fair Chance Policy
Source: http://www.nelp.org/page/content/banthebox/