Arizona Cities Weigh Criminal History Questions On Job Applications
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Nineteen states and more than 100 cities and counties have removed questions on job applications about a person’s criminal history, according to the National Employment Law Project.
While an Arizona lawmaker has tried unsuccessfully to pass similar legislation for three years, Avondale and Glendale recently joined Tucson as Arizona cities that have changed when they consider an applicant’s past.
Phoenix could implement a similar policy by the end of October. Discussions are also ongoing about whether to change policies in Buckeye, Peoria, Scottsdale, Tempe and Chandler.
“We really want to be screening all of our applicants based on their experience, their skills, abilities and their education prior to having this type of information,” said Cherlene Penilla, Avondale human resources director.
Removing criminal history questions doesn’t mean officials are looking the other way, Penilla said. Some city jobs will always require a clean record, and all other candidates’ pasts are still addressed. They’re just done with background checks later in the process.
Marcos "Gordo" Ramos is a supervisor for the Phoenix company, HBI International.
Gordo, 43, has a criminal past. During the 1990s, he served three years in prison for his role in a drive-by shooting. He’s watched family members go in and out of the criminal justice system. So after getting released, Gordo knew he had to find a way to stay out.
“There was a lot of times I could have easily slipped back in,” Gordo said. “Yeah, I had plenty of opportunities.”
Gordo is one of about 50 employees at HBI’s south Phoenix warehouse that ships tobacco products. HBI COO Matthew Colvard said the company years ago changed when it asks applicants if they have a criminal history until after deciding if they want to hire them.
“There is a lot of folks that struggle to find employment for no other reason than a bad decision early in life,” Colvard said. “We’ve found that given an opportunity, they become some of the best employees.”
HBI is not alone. Companies like Target, Walmart and Koch Industries have also removed application questions about criminal backgrounds.
The National Federation of Independent Business has opposed efforts in Michigan and Louisiana to remove questions about a job applicant’s criminal history. Arizona NFIB Director Farrell Quinlan said many small-business owners have checkered pasts and that’s why they may choose not to ask candidates about theirs.
“I think a small business is in a better position to offer that second chance to someone than some big corporate entity who's going to treat that person more like a number,” Quinlan said.
But a law saying all private companies can’t ask applicants about their past would be burdensome for small businesses, Quinlan said.
“Time is money and if it takes a week or two to hire somebody to go over this whole process and then at the end of that you have to start all over again, you may have lost good candidates that applied earlier,” Quinlan said.
Asking about an applicant’s criminal history isn’t illegal. But how a company uses candidates’ responses could violate civil rights.
The federal government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces discrimination law. An EEOC lawsuit against BMW Manufacturing Co. discriminating against mostly African-Americans in South Carolina recently resulted in a $1.6 million settlement.
Mary Jo O’Neill, regional attorney for the EEOC in Phoenix, said best practices suggest employers consider how long it has been since an applicant committed a crime and how it relates to the job they are seeking.
“If you completely don't consider somebody because of their criminal history, that can lead to a violation of civil rights laws because it has an adverse impact on people of color in our country, on African-Americans, on Latinos and Native Americans,” O’Neill said.
The EEOC does not take a position on whether questions about criminal history should be removed from applications, but O’Neill said choices by Avondale and Glendale to not ask likely make them compliant with the EEOC’s best practices.
According to O’Neill, one out of three African-American men, one out of seven Latino men and one out of 17 white men will be incarcerated at some time in their life.
“If we give up on those folks as a society, I think there is lots of prices we pay for that,” O’Neill said.
The Arizona Department of Corrections released about 5,000 prisoners from July to September and most of them likely sought to reenter the labor force.
Getting a job was the first thing on Aaron Ramirez’s mind when he got out of prison in 2004 after serving about a year on marijuana and weapons charges. Ramirez, a 29-year-old Glendale native, was nervous because he’d seen fellow inmates return to incarceration within a few months.
“I would have done anything at that point,” Ramirez said.
A friend helped him get hired washing cars in Scottsdale, but the pay was too low. Then another friend told him about an opening at HBI International, where he’s been for eight years and is now a sales representative. If he hadn’t started working for HBI, Ramirez said he probably would have gone back to his old lifestyle.
“If you can't find a job, you’re going to find other ways to make money and sometimes that means doing things outside of the law,” said Arizona Sen. Martin Quezada.
An Avondale Democrat and criminal defense attorney, Quezada has unsuccessfully tried to pass a state law banning questions about criminal history. He plans to introduce another bill next year in the Arizona Legislature.
“If it says felony record on the top of that application, those felony records get put at the bottom of the pile,” Quezada said.
Gordo thinks that’s where a lot of ex-offenders’ applications end up. As a father of five and a grandfather, he struggled for years to find regular work. There were times when job searching became a reminder of the person he’d worked to change.
“The bad part about that is soon as you mark ‘yes,’ they don’t even give you a chance,” Gordo said. "You don’t even get to the interview process.”
Gordo’s conviction also meant he was hit especially hard by the Great Recession. He survived off temporary jobs and remembers one that was supposed to last through the holidays. One day he confided in a co-worker about the drive-by shooting. The next day he was let go.
“They were told that I had a past and that they didn’t want anything to do with that,” Gordo said. “There was nothing I could do about it.”
Landing a temporary job at HBI was Gordo’s break. It was simple. He and four other people had to check tobacco wraps. Five years later, he’s a shipping supervisor and the only one of those temp employees still working for the company.
“I just had to do it for my family mainly,” Gordo said. “I guess that would be my inspiration, you know was my kids, my family.”
