Justice
America's Most Promising Pro-Jobs Policy
More than 100 U.S. cities and counties have now adopted some type of “ban the box” law, which prohibits employers from asking job candidates about criminal convictions before the first interview.
Much of Donald Trump’s rambunctious announcement of his campaign for president last week was centered around jobs. Said Trump:
This “lack of incentive” explanation for unemployment, of which Trump is by no means the only conservative to subscribe, misses the fact that plenty of would-be-workers’ ambitions are dashed at the very beginning of the application process. That’s because most employers ask candidates to divulge whether they’ve been convicted of crimes on job applications, and many then deny interviews to them if they have. According to the National Employment Law Project, nine out of ten employers do criminal background checks and a third of all Americans have criminal records that would turn up on them.