“Ban the Box” Efforts Gather Steam
Sometime next year Washington State may join the growing list of states and municipalities which have “banned the box,” prohibiting most employers from requiring job applicants to check off the box “have you ever been convicted of a crime” in their initial screening of job applicants.
In total, 13 states and 70 cities have adopted “ban the box” legislation over the past four years. Over the past several months Illinois, Nebraska, New Jersey, Indianapolis, Louisville, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C. have passed such legislation, with Georgia, Michigan, and New York currently considering it.
Ban the Box legislation has enjoyed growing support from an unlikely coalition of liberals and conservatives thanks to the hangover from “tough on crime” legislation passed in the 1990s that has resulted in overcrowded prisons and a growing underclass of unemployable ex-convicts. The budget problems that have resulted from these policies have helped to spur bipartisan support for remedies that reduce prison budgets and prevent future recidivism.
The idea behind the legislation is that qualified ex-offenders are often unfairly dismissed from consideration for a variety of jobs despite a lack of research to support a correlation between criminal history and workplace crime. Ban the Box legislation still allows employers to run background checks after initial interviews, and exempts certain jobs, such as law enforcement and jobs that require the applicant to work with children or vulnerable adults. Many private employers are finding that “ban the box” is good business, with Home Depot, WalMart, and Target adopting the policy voluntarily in order to expand the pool of talent available to them.
Washington State’s effort, titled the “Washington Fair Chance Act,” is spearheaded by the AgForestry Council, the Washington Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (WACDL), and the ACLU, and is supported by a diverse coalition of private organizations. For more information, go to www.wafairchancecoalition.org and read the New York Times article.
