Editorial: Honest work beats ex-cons on the dole

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

The fastest way to make sure an ex-con turns to crime again is to deny him any chance at a job.

If he can’t get honest work, nobody should be surprised when he returns to dishonest work.

With that in mind, we interpreted a headline in Monday’s Sun-Times — “City Hall hired 139 ex-cons in 2 years” — as oddly good news, though we know many readers would say otherwise. Our only disappointment might be that the number of ex-offenders hired by the city wasn’t higher.

Some 20,000 ex-offenders return to Chicago each year, most having served relatively short terms for nonviolent offenses, though some having served much longer sentences for the really scary stuff, like murder. One ex-offender featured in Monday’s “Watchdog” report by police reporter Frank Main had shot and wounded two police officers.

For decades, City Hall had an unwritten policy of disqualifying ex-offenders for employment. When a rare ex-offender did land a city job, you could be sure he had some serious clout. An ex-con without connections need not apply.

But in 2006, Mayor Daley, having had one of those progressive epiphanies that always confounded his critics, called for a “radical change” in the city’s policy with respect to hiring ex-offenders. From now on, the mayor said, City Hall would “weigh the relationship” between the crime committed and the job being sought.

“We’ll look closely at the criminal backgrounds,” Daley said. “But they won’t be automatically disqualified because they’ve done time in prison. Implementing this new policy won’t be easy. But it’s the right thing to do.”

It is indeed the right thing to do if you believe in redemption and second chances. A city that permanently turns its back on ex-offenders is giving only lip service to the notion that they have “paid their debt to society.”

It is also the right thing to do if we’re truly tired of unsafe streets and high taxes. Those 20,000 ex-offenders are returning to Chicago each year whether we like it or not — we can’t lock up every thief and corner dealer forever — and so it is in our self-interest to help them stay on the straight and narrow.

An ex-offender with a job, according to Loyola University studies conducted for the Safer Foundation, is two times less likely to commit another crime and be returned to prison. The State of Illinois is broke, in part, because it spends more than $1 billion a year on a prison population of about 45,000.

Hiring ex-offenders can be a dicey proposition, obviously, which is why it might be easier for City Hall than for, say, a little neighborhood store. It has to be done with caution. Before hiring an ex-offender, the city considers the nature of the crime, the number of offenses, the length of time since the last conviction and any evidence of rehabiliation. The final decision is made by the head of the department where the employee would work.

And for all of that, not surprisingly, it still may not work out. Ald. Carrie Austin (34th) hired a woman who had a federal drug conviction, only to learn later that the woman was facing additional criminal charges.

But Austin says that has not discouraged her from hiring other ex-offenders.

“Everyone should have a second chance,” she told Frank Main. “Some of them, I am quite proud of. I have had thugs who have become pillars of society.”

Hiring ex-offenders — carefully and cautiously — is smart public policy.