TEDx: Kevin Hyde: Ban the Box

[Metro Jacksonville]

TEDx: Kevin Hyde: Ban the Box



Ex-offenders cannot get jobs. Yet employment is one of the most powerful tools against recidivism. How can a community–even a conservative city like Jacksonville–come to grips with helping ex-offenders obtain employment? Kevin will discuss the practical community benefits of providing job opportunities for ex-offenders, dispel some of the myths of why and how ex-offenders should not be hired, and demonstrate why job training is more “cost-effective” societally and financially than incarceration.
MetroJacksonville is very proud to be a media sponsor of TEDxJacksonville. This great video of Kevin Hyde is from TEDxJacksonville 2015!


Read More: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2016-sep-tedx-kevin-hyde-ban-the-box

[rls929]

We treat people who have made mistakes as modern day lepers.  Rather than rehabilitate them, we tend to seek punishment as retribution, not restorative justice.  Rather than find sensible solutions to the problems of fatherless children and drug addicted parents, society has abandoned any pretense of fixing the problem, and has decided that incarceration is the answer.

When people have no job prospects, come from dysfunctional families, and have major drug habits, that is a recipe for crime.  In addition, with the rise of automation, jobs are disappearing, and companies can cherry-pick among qualified applicants.  Without a moral imperative of reforming ex-cons for the eventual good of society, corporations satisfy their immediate needs by choosing only from the cream-of-the-crop of job applicants.  I fear the situation will only get worse, before it gets better (if it ever does?).

It is simple economics.  Society has assigned a scarlet letter to ex-cons, and therefore, they are last to be hired, and first to be fired.