[Nearly 14,000 laws and regulations restrict people who have been
convicted or even just arrested from getting professional licenses ]
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‘A SECOND PRISON’: PEOPLE FACE HIDDEN DEAD ENDS WHEN THEY PURSUE
A RANGE OF CAREERS POST-INCARCERATION  
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Tara Garcia Mathewson
July 28, 2023
The Hechinger Report
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_ Nearly 14,000 laws and regulations restrict people who have been
convicted or even just arrested from getting professional licenses _

The Virginia Board of Bar Examiners denied Jesse Wiese a license to
practice law three times due to his criminal history. , Credit: Noah
Willman for the Hechinger Report

 

Jesse Wiese spent seven years in prison; when he left the Iowa
facility in 2006, he thought his debt to society had been paid. While
inside, Wiese had earned an undergraduate degree and puzzled over how
he might do right in the world. He started studying for the law school
admissions test, thinking he could become a lawyer and maybe, one day,
a judge.

In 2008, Wiese moved to Virginia to attend Regent University School of
Law. He loved it, and he did well. Three years and $150,000 in federal
and private student loans later, he graduated, and turned his
attention to passing the bar. Like the majority of his classmates, he
spent the summer foregoing gainful employment to study full-time for
the two-day exam. Except, unlike his peers, passing the bar would not
be Wiese’s biggest hurdle to becoming a lawyer. Indeed, he could
pass the difficult exam and still be denied a license to practice law
by the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners.  Before it considers
awarding a law license for any otherwise eligible candidate with a
felony conviction, the board holds a character and fitness screening.

For Wiese, it was all a big, expensive gamble — and, in one form or
another, is one millions of people with criminal records take every
year as they pursue education and workforce training on their way to
jobs that require a license. Yet that effort might be wasted thanks to
the nearly 14,000 laws and regulations that can restrict individuals
with arrest and conviction histories from getting licensed in a given
field.

 

Jesse Wiese served seven years in prison, but says that the barriers
he found to working after leaving amount to a “second
prison.” Credit: Noah Willman for the Hechinger Report

The rules that govern these barriers to entry are patchwork, scattered
across federal, state and regulatory codes, and they can vary from
field to field within a state. That means some people are
inadvertently steered toward training programs that, for them, are
dead ends. At other times, as in Wiese’s case, people have no choice
but go through time-consuming and often expensive courses before
discovering whether they can work in their chosen field. Advocates say
these barriers keep people from good jobs, not only reducing their
chances of staying out of prison but robbing the nation of their
productive labor.

“The focus should be on rehabilitation and putting people back out
in the community so they can participate and be productive and thrive
in their communities,” said Caitlin Dawkins, co-director for the
national re-entry resource center at the American Institutes for
Research.

Although licensing requirements vary from state to state, about one in
five people in this country need occupational licenses to do their
jobs — licenses they get only after completing a designated amount
of training and education in their fields. In addition to lawyers,
professional drivers must be licensed, along with health
professionals, public accountants, teachers, electricians,
firefighters, social workers, realtors and security guards.

According to a 2020 study by the Institute for Justice
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states allow licensing boards to deny applicants based on their
character alone for at least some occupations, leaving room for
denials based on any criminal behavior, no matter how minor or how far
in the past. Advocates say it’s not uncommon for people to pursue
training programs and submit their licensing applications without
recognizing the risk. Just 21 states
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criminal records to ask licensing boards whether their records will
disqualify them from getting a license before enrolling in any
required training.

Yet the case for education as a counter to recidivism is so convincing
the federal education department earlier this month announced a
massive expansion of Pell grants
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people pursuing higher education from behind bars. About 30,000 of
these individuals are expected to get $130 million worth of the
federal aid each year, a cost that researchers have found is far less
than detaining reoffenders.

Higher educational attainment is directly correlated with a lower
likelihood
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being reincarcerated, as is stable employment
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Both pieces of evidence have swayed policymakers nationwide. The
Institute for Justice found 40 states have eased or eliminated some of
their laws keeping people with criminal records from getting
employment licenses since 2015. Yet with every type of license bearing
its own local, state or federal limitations, many thousands of
collateral consequences remain.

It took Jesse Wiese a decade after graduating from law school to
become licensed as a lawyer in Virginia. Credit: Noah Willman for
the Hechinger Report

Wiese, now 45, went to prison for armed robbery of a bank. He passed
the bar on his first try and moved on to the character and fitness
screening required because of his prior conviction.

“It was like a mini trial,” Wiese said. He flew people in to serve
as character witnesses in front of an initial committee, which
ultimately recommended he be licensed. “I was like, ‘Awesome! This
is amazing.’ Then their decision was unanimously overturned.”

The Virginia Board of Bar Examiners wasn’t convinced Wiese should be
allowed to practice law, considering his criminal history. It told him
to reapply in two years. He did, but the same thing happened — there
was an initial committee recommendation for licensure followed by a
state board denial.

“They said it may be impossible to prove rehabilitation,” Wiese
remembered. He appealed to the state supreme court, but it ruled
against him, too.

The Virginia Board of Bar Examiners did not comment on Wiese’s case
or how the agency considers prior criminal history in its licensing
decisions.

Many of the county’s laws seem to dictate that the lives of people
with criminal records are governed by two competing beliefs — that
crimes are proof of character flaws that can never be outgrown and
that a criminal sentence should be the full extent of any punishment.

The view that crime is proof of character, which can never be
reformed, has received legal support for at least 125 years. The U.S.
Supreme Court first affirmed the right to discriminate against people
with criminal records in an 1898 decision in Hawker v New York, which
held that “character is as important a qualification as
knowledge.”

Ronald Day came across this court decision while writing his
dissertation as a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the City
University of New York. Day has been involved in prisoner re-entry
work for about 15 years, since he finished his own sentence and found
himself navigating life on the outside. He received his doctorate in
2019 and now serves as vice president of programs for The Fortune
Society, an education, service and advocacy organization focused on
criminal justice and re-entry.Day’s time in the archives introduced
him to the ongoing legal dispute over the rights of those who are
incarcerated, or who used to be incarcerated, taking him on a journey
from the Supreme Court’s views in 1898 to the fallout from a 2015
decision by New York District Court Judge John Gleeson. Gleeson ruled
in favor of expunging the conviction of a woman who had committed
healthcare fraud and, after serving her sentence, found her record a
constant barrier to getting and keeping jobs as a home health aide. In
approving the expungement, Gleeson wrote, “I sentenced her to five
years of probation supervision, not to a lifetime of unemployment.”
But even support from the district court judge who sentenced her
wasn’t enough. A Federal Court of Appeals overruled Gleeson
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According to the Institute for Justice study, in five states,
including Arizona, Tennessee and Virginia, any licensing board can
deny an applicant based on a felony, even if it’s completely
unrelated to the license. In 30 states, an arrest alone can disqualify
applicants. In seven states, there’s no right to appeal after a
license is denied.

When the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners denied Wiese’s license a
second time, he was told he could try again in two years, but that he
would have to re-take the bar because so much time had passed. With
the support of his wife, Wiese took time off to study, and passed the
test a second time. Once more, he applied for a license, jumped
through the hoops at his hearing and was recommended for a license.

But for the third time, the state board denied his application.

Wiese appealed the decision of the state licensing board, again taking
his case to the Virginia State Supreme Court. This time, it ruled in
his favor. Ten years after graduating from law school, Wiese got his
license to practice.

Looking back, it didn’t seem like a triumph.

“In my younger days, I would say you can overcome anything. You can
outwork it,” Wiese said. He doesn’t believe that anymore. “This
is called the second prison. Literally, you walk out of one and you
walk into another one.”

Sometimes people with criminal records reach out to him and say they
heard about his case and they want to go to law school too, but Wiese
doesn’t think he opened any doors. “I feel bad for the next person
that’s coming in line behind me,” he said.

Because the laws and regulations are so scattered, they can be
difficult for anyone, not just those exiting prison, to navigate.
Every field has its own state-level licensing board and related
policies. “Just because of the lack of coordination, they’re often
unknown for even the people who are responsible for administering and
enforcing them,” said Dawkins, of the American Institutes for
Research. 

In some states, people serving time can fight fires as part of a
prison work crew but can’t get licenses to work as firefighters in
local fire departments after they get out. They can cut hair in prison
but can’t get cosmetology licenses on the outside. They can do
landscaping on city property through a prison work crew, but — with
a criminal record — can’t get a government job.

Cosmetology, in many states, is considered “second-chance
friendly” and a good path for people coming out of prison. In
Virginia, by contrast, applicants can be denied cosmetology licenses
for having specific misdemeanor convictions or any felony.

A number of organizations across the country have stepped up to
advocate for policy change and to support those with criminal records
as they seek to rebuild their lives outside of prison. Jobs for the
Future this year put out a framework called “Normalizing Opportunity
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calling on policymakers to remove barriers to employment for formerly
incarcerated individuals.

“There’s a multiplying effect there,” said Brandi Mandato, a
senior director at Jobs for the Future who helped write the framework.
“If we don’t have access to good jobs, we don’t have access to
health care, housing, all of these things that are important to
launching a life and building community and keeping people safe.”

Such advocacy has bipartisan support. John Koufos, who has led
criminal justice advocacy work at organizations across the political
spectrum and himself navigated re-entry, said the effort to eliminate
employment barriers has galvanized one of the most diverse coalitions
in criminal justice.

“[Occupational licensing] serves as an exclusionary barrier to
people and to prosperity,” Koufos said.

At a time with very low unemployment and major demand for skilled
employees, advocates say the business case for eliminating these
barriers is as strong as the humanitarian one.

Wiese is now the vice president for research and innovation at Prison
Fellowship, an organization that helps individuals and families
affected by incarceration and which gave him his own sense of purpose
and possibility while he was in prison. Early in his career with the
organization, Wiese managed a caseload of about 70 men who were
navigating re-entry. Over and over again, he saw them stop chasing
their dreams, confounded by barriers to stable employment. The message
they got, he said, was “don’t take the initiative.”

“It really limits people’s ability to make a difference and to
contribute,” Wiese said, “and we miss out.”

_Tara García Mathewson is a reporter covering inequality and
innovation in K-12 education, nationally, and she oversees coverage
for Hechinger en Español as the languages editor. She has been
writing about education since 2012, first for the Daily Herald in
Chicago’s northwest suburbs and then as a freelancer until she
joined The Hechinger Report in 2017, where she has focused on the
“Future of Learning” and educational inequalities._

_This story about career licenses
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produced by _The Hechinger Report
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nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and
innovation in education. Sign up for our __higher education
newsletter_ [[link removed]]_._

* incarceration
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* Joblessness
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* Job Discrimination
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* punishment
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