September 18, 2008 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Stanley Richards and his fellow workers at the Fortune Society, in New York, are painfully aware of the reasons so few black men can be found in nonprofit jobs as well as the rest of the work force. One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is currently in prison, according to a study by the Pew Center on the States, in Washington. According to the same study, only one in 106 white men older than 18 is incarcerated.
Mr. Richards, who wound up in jail when he was 18, and other experts say charities that refuse to consider applicants with a criminal history may be doing themselves a disservice.
“You could be screening out your next best employee,” says Mr. Richards, chief operating officer of the Fortune Society, a charity in Long Island City, N.Y., that helps as many as 4,000 former inmates a year re-enter society by providing them with job training, housing, and substance-abuse treatment. The group’s programs are widely praised by criminal-justice experts, who say the charity helps people leaving prison start over and avoid falling back into the same behaviors that landed them behind bars.
“It’s important to keep in mind that people aren’t the worst thing they’ve ever done. We call them diamonds in the rough,” says Mr. Richards, noting that the staff of his organization is composed entirely of men and women who have been incarcerated.
Lessons Behind Bars
Mr. Richards, who spent four and a half years in New York State prisons after multiple arrests on drug and robbery-related charges, says it was only behind bars that his life began to change. In prison, he completed an associate degree in social science and social work. But most important, he says, he began to learn about nonprofit organizations from the charities that were on-site to counsel prisoners.
Upon his release in 1991, Mr. Richards began applying for jobs at New York charities but quickly hit a wall. “It mattered that I’d done time,” he says. He finally found his way to the Fortune Society, one of the charities he had encountered while in prison, and started a job counseling inmates before they were released. He then worked his way up to a senior staff position.
“Growing up, I never thought of the nonprofit world as a place where I could build a career or provide for a family,” says Mr. Richards. “The careers that young people are exposed to are about making money, not building people.”
Getting Involved
Sean Pelzer says that he regularly encounters black men who are eager to work for good causes but are blocked by their criminal histories.
It is a frustration that he has long shared. With jail time in his past, Mr. Pelzer found it almost impossible to find legitimate employment and, he says, was even let go from his secretarial job at a Boston hospital when his employer learned of his criminal history. (He says he was convicted of violating a restraining order that was granted to his former wife during a bitter divorce.)
But two years ago, his life began to change. As he was walking down a Boston street, he saw a notice for a meeting the American Civil Liberties Union planned to hold on racial profiling. He attended and then began to meet representatives of nonprofit organizations. In 2006 he joined the staff of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods, a Boston charity that trains residents of the city’s poorest neighborhoods to be community advocates. Now he spends his days listening to people who have been sent to prison, counseling them about their rights, and helping to lead an effort to revise the criminal-records law in Massachusetts.
Mr. Pelzer urges the men he meets to get involved in local nonprofit organizations and even encourages them to consider starting their own charities.
“You have so many black men who could get engaged. Creating a nonprofit is a way to give back and become a voice,” says Mr. Pelzer. “I tell them that if you sold drugs or hurt your community in some way, this is a way for you to make it right. There is a lot of grant money out there that can help you make a difference.”
A criminal record should not be an automatic disqualification from holding a charity job, but prospective employers need to do plenty of research, advises John Patterson, senior program director at the Nonprofit Risk Management Center, in Leesburg, Va.
Rule number one, says Mr. Patterson: Pay attention to convictions, not arrests.
“Because you have some segments of the population that are more likely to come into contact with the criminal-justice system, it isn’t fair to disqualify someone because they’ve been arrested,” says Mr. Patterson.
Other issues to consider, he says: How long ago did the offense take place? How old was the individual when the incident happened? And perhaps most important, how does the individual feel about the incident now?
Deal Breakers
But some crimes are so serious that they should be automatic deal breakers for charities, says Mr. Patterson — for example, someone convicted of child sexual abuse should never be given a job that involves working with children. However, he says, hiring people who committed relatively minor offenses — especially if they occurred long ago — can send a powerful signal.
“These people demonstrate that circumstances can be overcome, that you can go on to live a productive life in the community,” he says. “It’s a way of providing role models to kids who are going through the same thing.”
