A FAIR CHANCE AFTER CONVICTION
The Obama administration has worked diligently over the last five years to ease the marginalization of more than 70 million Americans with criminal records that can shut them out of jobs, housing, higher education or the consumer credit system — sometimes for minor offenses in the distant past or arrests that never led to conviction. By addressing this problem, Mr. Obama is pushing the country to re-evaluate longstanding policies that trap people with criminal records at the very edges of society, driving many of them right back to prison.
Last week, for example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development warned private landlords that blanket bans on renting to people with criminal convictions — common throughout the country — violate the Fair Housing Act and can lead to lawsuits and charges of discrimination.
The council and its member agencies have been especially focused in
removing unfair barriers to employment that have become pervasive since employers turned to computer-based arrest and conviction records for job-screening purposes.
Another area of marginalization has been in higher education. There is no doubt that inmates who receive college degrees in prison — or who even attend classes without graduating — are far less likely to end up back behind bars once they leave.
Yet Congress disqualified inmates from getting federal Pell Grants during the “tough-on-crime” 1990s. Mr. Obama opened the door to prison education again last year with an executive order creating a pilot program that will permit a limited number of inmates to pay for college courses through federal Pell Grants. More than 200 colleges in 47 states have expressed interest in participating in the program.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/op...ol-left-region
