Helping criminal record holders plug UK and US labour gaps can boost business and society
We have a problem: structural labour shortages across the world’s largest economies threaten our mutual prosperity. The UK and US, for different reasons, have a more acute problem than most of their industrialised peers. But we also share a common opportunity to address this challenge: improving the outcomes of citizens marginalised from the workforce due to a criminal record. Efforts to address this on both sides of the Atlantic are accelerating. Through mutual collaboration, we can hasten progress to benefit our economies and societies.
Both countries’ structural labour shortage is seemingly intractable — the result of falling fertility and ageing populations. Growing ranks of retirees are still consuming goods and services, but birth rates 20–30 years ago were not sufficient to supply the new workers now needed. Labour shortages cause considerable economic damage: an inability to fill open positions restricts growth and spurs inflation. In turn, poor growth undermines government funding and is linked with decaying social fabric and institutional trust.
With a few exceptions, this generational shift is a worldwide issue. However, the US and UK face particularly large challenges. The former is experiencing an unusually rapid wave of retirements following the post-second world war fecundity that created the ‘baby boom’ generation. The UK is challenged by post-Brexit immigration patterns, which by some estimates have already cost a full percentage point of its workforce.
Neither Just Nor Smart
While we share a common problem, we also share a common solution.
Since we cannot change past birth rates, we must ensure that all citizens are given economic opportunities — not only to gain a job, but also to contribute to the greatest degree of their capability. In short, we must look to those whom we have overlooked. In both countries, a largely untapped talent pool is those with a criminal record.
The US has the highest incarceration rate of the developed world, while the UK has the highest in western Europe. Those imprisoned represent only a portion of those with a criminal record; for example, among the circa 20 million Americans with a felony conviction (generally a serious crime), fewer than half were sentenced to a prison term. In both nations, the unemployment rate of those exiting prison is shockingly high. Studies show that in the US suggest an unemployment rate of more than 60% during the first year and a long-term unemployment rate of 27%. In the UK, government figures show that just 26.5% of those exiting prison gain immediate employment.
Policymakers have long realised that this is neither just nor smart. A criminal record as a barrier to employment represents an ongoing punishment, long after a sentence is served. It is also an impediment to true rehabilitation.
In part, a more effective path includes better systems within the correctional system. In Michigan, ‘vocational villages’ within several prisons provide extensive training in skilled trades. Jurisdictions such as California are working with employment-focused software companies such as Geographic Solutions to improve job search and recruitment in the reentry and second-chance employment space. But if employment is the key to a better system and economy, employers need to be more involved.
Talent Acquisition Opportunities
Fortunately, US and UK business communities are beginning to recognise this population of overlooked workers as a talent acquisition opportunity. In the US, 50 large companies comprise the Second Chance Business Coalition, which implements and studies such hiring. It is vocally championed by the likes of Jamie Dimon and Rodney McMullen, CEOs of JPMorgan Chase and one of the country’s biggest retailers, Kroger, respectively.
In the UK, Iceland Foods has appointed a director of rehabilitation who actively recruits in prisons and Virgin’s Richard Branson has publicly hired hundreds with criminal records. The country’s newly appointed Prisons, Probation and Parole Minister, James Timpson, brings to his role years of experience as an employer of people with criminal records. Some 10% of the Timpson workforce — Mr Timpson’s family company and one of the UK’s biggest service retailers — has a criminal record.
Business leaders who take on this opportunity quickly learn that hiring such marginalised people requires support, involving de facto partnerships with governments and charitable entities. Education and policy groups like the Society for Human Resource Management and the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice are already supporting these efforts in both the US and UK. But we must increase transatlantic collaboration, sharing the efforts of groups like the US’s National Reentry Workforce Collaborative and UK’s Fair Chance Business Alliance.
Between the two countries, tens of millions of our citizens need businesses to provide the employment that creates the foundation for rehabilitation. More to the point, in today’s structural labor shortage, we in the business community need them, too.
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