RIGHTS-US: Ex-Prisoners Face Bleak Job Market

By Haider Rizvi Reprint | | Print |

Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK, Jul 7 2009 (IPS) - “You write about human rights. Why don’t you write about this man?” asked Agha Saleh, an old acquaintance of this writer who runs an internet café in Jackson Heights, a Queens neighbourhood heavily populated by immigrants from South Asia and Latin America.

“You know today is 4th of July,” said Saleh. “Ask this man about independence. Ask him why he has no home, no job.”

The frail-looking man, who was mopping the café floor a few moments ago, joined us at one of the tables and commented, “The purpose of celebrating the Independence Day is to celebrate freedom. But where is the real freedom?”

Charles Menninger, 43, who casually works at Saleh’s Bombay Chat café, said he couldn’t find a job anywhere in the city for a long time, simply because he had served time in prison.

Menninger spent 23 years of his life in different jails for burglary and selling illegal drugs.

He says he resorted to petty criminal activities because he wanted to help his ailing mother, who died in miserable conditions after she lost her apartment and job. At that time, he was less than 20 years old.

She died in a hospital just six days after he was sentenced for selling drugs, he said, adding, “I wanted to die then. I didn’t want to live.”

His father, who had abandoned the family when Menninger was a child, died in 2001.

Menninger said that whenever he got out of prison, potential employers always asked him questions about his criminal record. They would either turn down his application or pay him far less than the minimum wage.

Once, when he came out of the prison in 1996, authorities gave him a bus ticket and 40 dollars – an amount they later deducted from his bank account. In jail, he said he worked for a landscaping company that would pay him 1.45 dollars an hour.

His experience appears to be common. One recent survey found that 80 percent of Los Angeles employers would not hire someone with a conviction record.

With overall unemployment in the United States now at 9.6 percent, competition for jobs – even low-paid, unskilled labour – is increasingly fierce.

Saleh describes Menninger as an “honest, hard-working and decent” man.

“He has never asked me for anything. That’s his beauty of his character,” Saleh said. “I first met him at a barber shop where he was cleaning the floor. That was five years ago. The shop owner described him as a thief. Then a few years ago, I saw him working at a pizza store. The owner would only pay him 15 dollars a day. He was then sleeping on the streets.”

Every year, about 650,000 people are released from state and federal prisons across the country. But according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than half of those released will be in some form of legal trouble within three years.

Some prisoner advocates see a correlation between discrimination in hiring practices and recidivism rates.

In California, more than 70 percent of parolees are returned to prison each year – the highest rate in the nation. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Little Hoover Commission, a California state oversight agency, estimates that 70 to 90 percent of formerly incarcerated people are unemployed.

Saleh, a chemical engineer by training who hails from Lahore, Pakistan and is now a U.S. citizen, thinks that authorities at the state and national level need to take serious action against employers who treat ex-prisoners like modern-day slaves.

“A few years ago, when I saw him sleeping outside a place where rich South Asians drink and gamble, he seemed hungry, sad and alone. That bled my heart,” said Saleh about Menninger. “This is his country first. His folks have been here for four generations.”

Menninger, who is of Irish and Italian descent, said whenever he was out of jail, he worked for many South Asian businessmen in the neighbourhood, but most of them paid him far less than the legal minimum wage because he chose not to lie about his prison time.

“They would pay me just 15 or 20 dollars a day,” he said.

Human rights groups say that millions of ex-convicts continue to face discrimination in the U.S. after they have served out their sentences, although many states, including New York, have laws banning it.

According to the Safer Foundation in Chicago, which helps individuals like Menninger, the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, at 669 inmates per 100,000 people. This surpasses Russia’s rate of 644 and South Africa’s of 400.

The total population of U.S. federal and state prisons and local jails exceeds two million. When the 4.5 million people on parole and probation are included, the total comes to 6.5 million – a 240-percent increase since 1980.

Studies by legal scholars show that 52 percent of U.S. inmates are housed for non-violent crimes related to drugs, property or public disorder.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a patchwork of state felony disenfranchisement laws also prevent a whopping 5.3 million citizens with a past felony conviction from voting in elections.

Menninger said he feels remorseful about the fact that he indulged in acts like selling drugs and committing burglary, but, at the same time, he justifies it. “I did such things not because I wanted to. I did all that because I had no other choice,” he said.

Last Saturday, Saleh, who actively supported the Democratic Party during the presidential polls last year, received a letter from President Barack Obama saying: “Today is a day to reflect on our independence… It is a day to celebrate all that America is.”

“Look at this letter,” said Saleh. “What does it mean? As long as hard-working and honest people like Charles continue to face abuse and injustice in this country, I don’t think there is real independence.”

Last year, while campaigning for his presidential bid, Obama vowed to address issues of racism and discrimination in the U.S. justice system.

Unlike other employers from South Asian and Latino communities in Jackson Heights, Saleh pays Menninger more than the minimum wage whenever he works, and lets him sleep in a basement at night.

“I don’t ask anybody for anything though. I think one should take full personal responsibility. Agha is good man. He is kind,” said Menninger, who has no close relatives left in his life.

Saleh said he was trying his best to get Menninger get out of this vicious cycle of going to jail again and again, but added: “He has lived most of his life in captivity because he is honest. That is unjust. There are hundreds of thousands of them like him out there, but I can’t help them alone.”