Screening criminals - where do you stand?

[BravesBlock]

Thought provoking article. Where do you stand on this subject?
http://m.chronicle.augusta.com/news/...ning-criminals


When the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission started suing businesses for denying jobs to former convicts, the attorneys general of Georgia and South Carolina and seven other states began fighting back.

They sent a letter to the agency saying they were defending all U.S. businesses’ access to criminal screening as well as upholding some of their state laws that prohibit hiring former criminals in certain positions like daycare workers. But the EEOC argues refusal to hire people who have criminal records results in illegal -- if unintentional -- racial discrimination because more blacks than whites are behind bars.

The issue sets up a complex tug-of-war between competing policy interests.

[jpx7]

It's a tough issue that would be less of an issue if more relatively innocuous activities were decriminalized and, moreover, if our absurd carceral institutions were reformed.