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Health & Fitness

Wisconsin Assembly, Senate Vs. Civil Liberties, Redemption

Examining Wisconsin's attack on ex-inmates rights to fair employment.

The prison system in America has for many years been filled with controversy.  From Nixon’s war on drugs to George W. Bush’s war on civil liberties via the Patriot Act, we have seen a great rise in the prison population in the United States that now rivals the Soviet Union at the height if the Gulag system prior to World War II. As of 2009, 2.2 million inmates were housed in federal and state facilities for an average of 743 per 100,0005 million were on probation or parole as of 2009. With a total of 5% of the world’s population, the United States is home to 23.4% of the world’s prison population.

Considering those numbers, what is equally shocking the racial break down of the inmate population in the US. 70% are non-white while 39.4% are African-American. The African-American population in America only adds up to 12.6% of the total. Those numbers seem to correspond with traditionally high unemployment numbers among that segment of the population (currently around 34% in Milwaukee). This directly speaks to the disadvantage such a population has in society. When gainful employment is unavailable crime rates and therefore imprisonment tends to rise. 

Recently, two bills have been presented in our State Assembly (AB286) and our State Senate (SB207). A survey from the Government Accountability Board states that, “These bills will permit an employer to refuse to employ or to bar or to terminate from employment an individual who has been convicted of a felony and who has not been pardoned for that felony.”

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It has long been the approach of our prison and judicial system to provide protection to society by providing fair trials and locking up those guilty of a crime. While in prison, inmates often are provided vocational and occupational training.  This helps prepare them for their return to society with skills that will help them become tax paying citizens and productive members of their community.  Employers play an important roll by providing job opportunities that keep ex-offenders from returning to jail or prison.

Providing employers a means to discriminate against those employed or seeking employment does a disservice to our society. It is our responsibility to provide an environment in which an ex-offender will not end up out in the cold on the fringes of our society. The point is to end the revolving door that has existed for too many years and legislation like this only makes it more difficult to achieve that goal. A civil society should believe in the ability of people who have made mistakes to be forgiven for those mistakes and to able to achieve their piece of the American Dream without the threat of discrimination.

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To find out more and to help fight back, visit Occupy the HoodMKE/ Kill AB286 & SB207 "Take Back the Hood."

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