Preventing ex-convicts from working is silly

Around 4,000 low-level felons made up 30% of the forest firefighters battling the raging flames, carrying chainsaws and other heavy equipment. Some risked their lives. Last year, Shawna Lynn Jones, a 22-year-old who had less than two months of her three-year sentence left, died while fighting a fire. By all accounts, Jones took great pride in her work, for which she was paid less than $2 an hour, and would have liked to continue firefighting once released.

Yet California, like many other states, makes it virtually impossible for former prisoners to get a firefighter’s license. The state requires nearly all firefighters to be certified as an emergency medical technician (EMT), an approval usually denied to convicted felons.

The state’s 200-odd licensing boards have lots of discretion over whether former prisoners can obtain occupational licences. Many licenses have a “good moral character provision” that immediately disqualifies anyone with a felony conviction.

Such requirements are correlated with a higher rate of reoffending, says Jarrett Skorup at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan. Around 4 million Michiganders have a criminal record, which makes it difficult or impossible for them to find work in the 150 professions that ban convicted felons. A recent study by Stephen Slivinski of Arizona State University found that between 1997 and 2007, states with the heaviest burdens of occupational licensing saw an average increase in reoffending within three years of release of over 9%. The states with the lightest burdens saw a decrease of 2.5% over the same period.