"I think there's a lot of that going on."Īhkir Hunter, who also goes by Antonio, saw the divide, though he believed it to be related to the type of felony on his record. They’ve found that especially, there’s one that found that whites – former convictions or prisoners – in the study got callback rates that were higher than blacks with those records. They’ll have people go out and do interviews. "They’ll put a white person with a felony conviction or a black person with a felony conviction. "There are academic studies where they go and put resumes out," Bucknor said.
According to Bucknor, black men suffered a 4.7 to 5.4 percentage point reduction in their employment rate compared to between 1.4 and 1.6 percentage points for Latino men and 1.1 to 1.3 percentage points for white men. Her study found that there's "disparate sentencing" between white and black people, as racial minorities are more likely than white people to be arrested and more likely to face stiffer sentences. Almost 32 percent of those people were reconvicted of a crime and about 25 percent returned to incarceration.īucknor said there are known barriers to return the workforce, some of which are related to race. Related data from the United States Sentencing Commission on recidivism - or the tendency for a past convict to reoffend - found that almost half of offenders released in 2005 were arrested for a new crime or for a violation of their parole within eight years of their release. Of the 1.43 million held in federal or state prisons in 2011 within the United States, about 57 percent of them lack a high school diploma or its equivalent, according to the most recent findings by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Bucknor and Barber's research found that there are up to 2.9 million former male prisoners with less than a high school degree. The employment rate is about 7 percent-8 percent lower for men without a high school diploma. "So, I’m like, ‘Ah, I’m not gonna get too far.’ At the same time, I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do to make it."įor most ex-felons, there are few clear paths to the workforce. In their study, researchers Cherrie Bucknor and Alan Barber wrote that overall employment rates in 2014 were about a percentage point lower than the general population compared to former prisoners. For men, the study found employment rates were about 1.7 percent lower than the general population. "I’m 36 and I’m a young, black man with a murder," he said. Still, upon release, there wasn't much for him. In his decade and a half in prison, he met Samuel, became disciplined under Islam and studied the teachings of a Detroit-based nonprofit organization, Chance for Life, as well as graduating from a culinary arts program. He recalls himself as "a young gangbanger" with little regard for himself and even less for others. He, like Samuel, landed in prison on a second-degree murder charge stemming from a killing when he was 20. It was pretty rough in the beginning for Portage resident Ahkir Hunter. Unfortunately, employers didn't always make the distinction.
But to know him now is to understand who he was then. Hunter was never interested in being a statistic. Be it the long gap in their job history, a lack of references or simply the box identifying them as a felon, numbers show all can be disqualifying. He and others who hold the title have struggled to find work, their mistakes raising red flags to potential employers.Ī June 2016 study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that prison time and felony convictions can have "a lasting and profound effect on future prospects for employment." Statistics show ex-felons often lack formal education and have numerous barriers to return to the workforce. Twenty-five years of that decision consumed his life. Before that, the 48-year-old spent 25 years of his life incarcerated for second-degree murder and arson. He told a room of about 40 people at Battle Creek's First Congregational Church last year that he'd set fire to a Wayne County home of a person selling drugs in his territory, unaware that two women were inside at the time.
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Hunter, who also goes by Muhammad Abu Bakr Abdullah, has been a free man for about two years now. For a long time, I felt like I let my mom down. I was in the penitentiary for taking two lives and that’s not what she wanted. "My mom died and I was in the penitentiary. "Man, that’s the hardest thing for me right now," he said, seated near the coffee table of his Kalamazoo apartment while his pregnant wife, Banah, milled around the kitchen. He removed his protective glasses, sunk his head and wiped both eyes with a hand before returning eye contact. Watch Video: 'Slow down': Samuel Hunter on incarceration and the road backĮven at about 6 feet tall with a sturdy build, it crumpled him.
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