The Moral Quandary Behind Excluding People With Violent and Sexual Convictions

“No felonies and absolutely no violent or sexual offenses” is a hard stance I often hear in discussions of criminal justice reform. These blanket exclusions in employment and housing policies arise from a legitimate fear around the harm caused by violent and sexual crime. However, they fail to acknowledge the vast complexity and variability within these broad categories and needlessly outcast people that don’t pose a relevant risk. Nearly half (47%) of individuals in jail or prison are serving time for a violent offense and the majority (95%) are expected to be released back into their communities. Exclusive policies that preclude this massive group of individuals from securing the basic necessities of life have detrimental costs to society as they magnify the conditions that lead people to crime, including homelessness and poverty. This challenge highlights the moral quandary that lies at the heart of community safety – excluding people with serious offenses feels like the right thing to do in order to protect one’s inner circle but inadvertently poses disastrous consequences for our broader communities.

Navigating the balance between safety and fairness has been a central focus of my career endeavors but has recently taken on new weight as I’ve begun to grapple with it in my personal life. My partner and I are developing a passion project to build a reentry home and farm that we hope to someday live in with our future children. Today, when individuals release from prison, they are often directed to halfway houses that reflect the harsh environments they've left behind and offer minimal support during this critical transition period. We are developing the project to demonstrate a new model for reentry housing that provides individuals with a safe place to call home and to find healing through nature, community and meaningful integration. Recognizing the weight of responsibility we will carry in ensuring the safety of our family and reentry community, we are challenged by what criteria to uphold to determine who will live there. At the heart of this decision is the question of how to create a safe environment while also living out our values and commitment to fairness and inclusion. Pondering over the same questions that I often pose to employers and housing providers, I have found increased compassion for the difficulties they face when making risk decisions. But this deliberation has also led me to strengthen my belief that balancing safety with fairness and inclusion is not only achievable but essential, as they have an interdependent relationship with one another. 

If you have ever volunteered in prison with an organization like Defy Ventures or Breakthrough , you have probably met beautiful human beings who have suffered unimaginable trauma and discovered that most people in prison were victims far before they were labeled as offenders. Their stories expose us to the reality that “hurt people hurt people” and that the conditions of the communities we live in have a direct connection to where we end up, be it prison or a boardroom. More importantly, their stories are testaments to our incredible capacity as human beings to transcend the dark experiences of our past and construct positive new trajectories for our future. This doesn’t mean that causing harm is ever justifiable or that we shouldn’t hold people accountable for the harmful decisions they make. However, if someone has taken personal accountability and made significant strides to repair the harm they have committed, the rest is up to us to decide how we will respond as a community. If we choose to mass-reject and ostracize people before getting to know who they are, we are perpetuating the harm that leads to instability in our neighborhoods, including crime, homelessness, mental health epidemics and substance addiction to name a few. On the other hand, if we choose to recognize the power of human transformation and create avenues for healing and reintegration, we will begin to uproot the causes of crime and sustainably secure safety and well-being for ourselves, our families and our communities. 

When it comes to making difficult risk decisions, the ultimate goal is to determine whether or not someone poses a relevant risk today. This requires us to see beyond the mistakes of their past and instead see who they have become as a result of that past. Criminal records may serve as an indicator of potential risk, but should only be used as a starting point for deeper inquiry as they lead to more questions than answers. Working at a background check company for 5 years exposed me to the immense variability behind each person’s record and the important context that gets masked by vague and scary words, such as ‘Felony’ and ‘Convicted’. In certain jurisdictions, you could be put on the sex offender registry for urinating in public. If you got into a bar fight when you were an angsty 19 year old, you can have an ‘assault in the third degree’ criminal conviction. If you had some connection to someone who committed a murder, you could be charged with the same conviction and sentence as the person who pulled the trigger. To complicate things further, nearly 98% of criminal cases in America end in a plea deal (the defendant was encouraged to plead guilty in exchange for a significantly reduced sentence), instead of a jury trial. Broken legal practices like this prevail throughout our justice system, making the lines between ‘guilty’ and ‘innocent’ or ‘dangerous’ and ‘safe’ incredibly opaque. Thus, putting too much dependency on criminal records and their broad-sweeping categories will only lead us to making poor decisions that have costly ramifications for society. 

This doesn’t mean that we should trust everybody and turn a blind eye to past decisions. By no means am I advocating for endangering our loved ones, our workforces or our tenants by giving handouts to anyone in need. Rather, I am calling for us to be more effective and sophisticated in our decision-making. Instead of relying on a broken justice system to make unintelligible judgments for us, let us implement employment and housing strategies that consider all of the factors that matter to make the most informed and data-driven decisions. In the case of our reentry home, this will mean setting up a thorough application and interview process that assesses each applicant for factors such as, alignment with our community’s values, the steps they have taken to rebuild their lives, evidence of their involvement in programs to expand their opportunities and references from those programs that can attest to their drive and accountability. While the factors that matter will be different for each decision-maker, the key lies in replacing unnecessary barriers and exclusions with inclusive practices that effectively determine who is best-suited for the opportunity at hand. 

I have been able to drastically shift my perspective around this topic because I have been privileged enough to meet incredible individuals who happen to have violent and sexual convictions. Some of the best colleagues and role models I have ever had have served time for charges of murder, aggravated robbery, and sexual assault. But what their records fail to tell you is about the decades of decisions they have made to make amends for their past, invest in their character development and contribute meaningfully to their communities. What you can’t know from their background check is that they are now brilliant software engineers, successful business-owners, loving fathers, poets, spiritual healers, and just normal people with hobbies, personalities and dreams. We can only find out all that good stuff by taking the time to listen with open-minds and open-hearts. As my hero Bryan Stevenson would say, proximity allows us to recognize the humanity and brokenness within each of us and begin to heal the wounds caused by our perceived separation. I invite you to get proximate to the human beings who you presume to be dangerous. You might be surprised to find some new friends instead.