***** New York Times 15 March 2001
Flood of Ex-Convicts Finds Job Market Tight
By PETER T. KILBORN
NEW ORLEANS - After a decade-long surge of people into the nation's prisons, sociologists and economists are warning of a new challenge for the labor force: the steady stream of people coming out.
The prison population soared in the 1990's, to 2 million from 1.2 million, and now tens of thousands of inmates are leaving prison each year, having completed their sentences or been granted parole. Though these ex-convicts are under pressure to find jobs and rejoin society, labor experts say that many have become the untouchables of the work force.
"This is a major upcoming issue," said Harry J. Holzer, a labor economist and professor of public policy at Georgetown University. "Half a million people are being released from prison over the next several years. Many of these guys come out with almost every characteristic that makes employers reluctant to hire. They're not just ex-offenders. They're high school dropouts. They have poor skills and substance-abuse problems."
The hurdles faced by ex-convicts seeking work can be staggering. Many employers flatly rule out hiring people with criminal records, regardless of the offense or when it occurred. Anti-discrimination laws rarely protect them.
And yet most of these ex-convicts, who are typically men, have a compelling need for a paycheck. Beyond court orders to work, they may also owe court costs -- an average of $600 here in New Orleans. Many are also required to pay restitution to victims and to start child-support payments.
In today's tight labor market, some employers make exceptions for ex-convicts. But often they offer only the most menial jobs -- washing dishes and lugging cinderblocks, worse jobs than many ex-convicts held before their arrests.
For Bobby Eubanks, 25, the temporary jobs he could sometimes get were dead ends that could not begin to support him, his three children by two women and the unborn child of his fiancée, a home health aide.
As a senior in high school, Mr. Eubanks was caught selling cocaine and was sent to a juvenile jail. He was released to his mother in Yazoo City, Miss., and later returned to New Orleans, where he was caught selling cocaine again and imprisoned for 34 months. Paroled last May, he found jobs as a common laborer, but the pay was less than $6 an hour and work stopped when it rained.
"I need a steady job," Mr. Eubanks said, sitting at a table in the parole office here. He was a muscular picture of dejection, now and then folding his face into the crook of an arm.
"I've been all over New Orleans filling out applications," he said. "But they don't call. All the applications ask if you have ever been convicted of a crime, and that kills the whole thing right there."
On St. Charles Avenue, ex-convicts sign in daily at a spartan, beige and linoleum office of the Louisiana Division of Probation and Parole. It is a busy place. Violent crime fell sharply here in the 1990's, in part because of tough enforcement of drug-dealing laws, leading to today's tide of newly released offenders.
About 8,200 are on the city's rolls, said Susan B. Lindsey, the division's New Orleans regional director. Except for a few hundred aged and disabled clients, she said, "all have an obligation to secure and maintain employment." But only half are working. While the others search, the office assigns them community service work -- stuffing envelopes and washing state cars.
To help clients find work, the office enrolls them in free literacy classes and helps to prepare résumés and job applications. It offers twice-weekly classes with recruiters from Manpower, a temporary-work agency, and a few other employers openly willing to hire ex-convicts.
The clients checking in cover the spectrum from cocky to hopeless. One was Stennis May, a 30-year-old on parole after seven years in prison for armed robbery. Turned down for a food-plant job, he said: "I held strong. I just kept trying."
Finally a Shoney's restaurant took him on in the kitchen at $7 an hour, hardly enough to lift himself, much less his family of five, above the poverty line. But in late February Shoney's raised him to $9.
"I've been moved up to assistant manager," he said proudly. "I train cooks."
But for every beaming Stennis May, there is a Bobby Eubanks. Mr. Eubanks's girlfriend, Kimberly Derischebourg, said that as Mardi Gras approached last month, he heard of a bellhop job. He applied and was told to come back in an hour. He returned three times, and was told each time to wait -- all for naught.
Mr. Eubanks said: "I'm trying to do the right thing. I'd like to get married. I just want a chance. That's all I want."
But on Sunday night, March 4, two days after he was interviewed for this article, Mr. Eubanks was shot and killed in a nightclub in Yazoo City, his home town. Detective Michael Wallace of the Yazoo City Police said: "From information gathered at the scene and from witnesses, he and another individual were attempting to rob the owner of the nightclub after closing. Gunfire was exchanged, and he died."
For the least educated young American black men like Mr. Eubanks, jail is more the norm than a job. Bruce Western, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who examined the effects of prison on jobs in a study in January, said that on a typical day two years ago, 29 percent of the nation's black male high school dropouts ages 22 to 30 were employed. Far more -- 41 percent, up from 26 percent in 1990 -- were in prison.
Once released, Professor Western said, bleak prospects for good jobs tempt the men back into crime. He said they start work making 10 percent to 30 percent less than other young black dropouts without criminal records, and remain stuck there.
"We know that employment discourages crime," Professor Western said. "And because their employment opportunities are poor, they're more likely to commit crime again."
With New Orleans's rising population of probationers and parolees, programs have begun to tackle the barriers to ex-convicts' employment.
But there is only so much the programs can do.
Joseph Thomas, 27, is nearing the end of probation for selling drugs. He recently completed a commercial truck driving course at Transport Safe Training Center, through a federally financed project of Tulane and Xavier Universities' National Center for the Urban Community.
Short, wiry and affable, Mr. Thomas says he has been drug-free since his conviction and is all charged up to hit the Interstates making $40,000 a year in the cab of an 18-wheeler.
"I jump in the truck," Mr. Thomas said excitedly. "Adjust the mirror. Put on my seat belt. Release the brake. Whooooosh! It's fun. I'm driving something bigger than me."
Jerry L. Jones, the school's director, is proud of Mr. Thomas, who left school in the ninth grade. "He's an excellent student," Mr. Jones said. "He's made excellent progress."
But at best, Mr. Jones said, Mr. Thomas will have to spend some years driving a delivery van around New Orleans for wages closer to $14,000 a year. Until he finds a trucking company that disregards his conviction, Mr. Jones said, "he's going to get stuck on a certain level." *****