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Voters leave the Bricolage Academy gym after casting their ballots in New Orleans, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Photo by Matthew Perschall/Louisiana Illuminator)
NEW ORLEANS –Nziki Wiltz, buzzed around a crowded job fair Sept. 4 at the headquarters for the criminal justice reform nonprofit Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), helping people apply for jobs.
“We’re making copies for those that need copies … whatever you need,” Wiltz said, “we’re going to make sure that if we don’t have it, we help you get it.”
Wiltz, a regional policy coordinator for VOTE, said that having a racketeering charge brought against her by the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office over six years ago taught her how vulnerable people are to the criminal justice system. The charge was later dropped.
“I lost everything, and then I started learning, studying the law and getting [involved with] more organizations that do work like VOTE,” Wiltz said.
Now, after setting up VOTE’s job fair designed to connect people with criminal convictions with employers willing to hire people with that history, Wiltz and her colleagues have their eyes set on the city’s upcoming election.
Wiltz and her colleagues are advocating for voters to vote to approve an amendment to the city charter to protect people with a conviction history from laws that “arbitrarily and unreasonably” discriminate against them. They hope that the Fair Chance Amendment, as proponents of the measure call it, will serve as a declaration of the city’s residents in support of giving people with past convictions a second chance.
The amendment, if passed, will amend the municipal Bill of Rights, a largely aspirational section of the charter, that “reflects the beliefs, convictions and goals of the citizens of New Orleans,” according to the document.
Although it’s not clear that the amendment will result in any immediate, concrete change for formerly incarcerated people, supporters say it will serve as a foundation to combat discrimination against people with convictions on their record.
“If we vote yes on that, it enshrines a protected class of people with conviction history,” said Ronald Marshall, chief policy analyst at VOTE.
Marshall, who found work with VOTE after getting out of prison, said that he constantly meets people who are getting turned down for jobs and can’t find housing because they were discriminated against due to their status as a formerly incarcerated person.
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Nearly 1 in 3 Americans has some sort of criminal record, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Roughly 45 million have had misdemeanor convictions and an estimated 19 million have had a felony conviction. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the statistical arm of the Department of Justice, Louisiana was ranked 2nd in the nation for imprisonment rates in 2022, behind Mississippi.
Research done by the Historic New Orleans Collection has shown how Louisiana has long been a leader in incarceration in the United States. And a study released by the BJS in 2021, revealed that no more than 40% of formerly incarcerated people they tracked were employed at any given time over a four year period between 2010-2014.
“When people are leaving incarceration and coming back to their communities, a job and housing are the two major things that they’ve got to get sorted out in order to restabilize, and oftentimes, you can’t get a job without a house and you can’t get a house without a job,” Monique Blossom, director of policy and communications at the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center told Verite News in an interview before the job fair.
A streetcar rolls past a voting precinct in New Orleans. (Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
During a public hearing at City Hall in April for the ballot measure, several supporters of the issue shared how a criminal conviction can stay with a person, making finding a job and housing difficult.
“This amendment is just not about a fairness, it’s about giving our people, our neighbors, a real second chance,” said Ciara Green, a business owner and volunteer with VOTE who spoke at the hearing. “It’s about ending the sentence at the prison gate, not extending it to every job interview, every housing application and every ‘no’ that gets thrown at someone who’s already paid the price.”
Marshall helped advocate in City Hall for the ballot measure. He said that the progress the city made this year, sharpening the city’s existing “Ban the Box” ordinance, has already laid the foundation to support people with a history of conviction when they’re applying for jobs with the city and city contractors. The “Ban the Box” ordinance was originally passed in 2018, and it required the city and its contractors to interview candidates before checking for a criminal record.
This summer, the City Council passed an ordinance that amended the city’s Ban the Box ordinance, adding five criteria that the city’s hiring managers would have to consider before denying a formerly incarcerated person a position. The ordinance also created a means for job applicants to sue in District Court if they feel they were denied a position in violation of the code.
Marshall said that voting to enshrine formerly incarcerated people as a protected class in city law — which the amendment would do, supporters say — ups the ante by creating further legal foundations to protect people with histories of conviction, especially where it does not clash with state law.
“We are preempted from creating local laws on housing. We are preempted from creating local laws on licensures. … We are preempted in a lot of areas by state law,” Marshall said, arguing that in areas where state or federal law does not prevent it, the measure’s passage could create space for formerly incarcerated people to challenge potentially discriminatory practices.
“We’ve got to end the permanent punishment,” Marshall said.
Councilmember Oliver Thomas introduced the changes to the Ban the Box law and the ordinance to amend the Bill of Rights. Dominique Lang Jackson, his legislative director, said the two pieces of legislation work together to protect formerly incarcerated people from discrimination. The latter, if passed by the voters, “will reflect the beliefs of our citizens,” Lang Jackson wrote, and the former “protect(s) formerly incarcerated individuals from discrimination based on conviction history in employment/contracting with the City of New Orleans.”
City Council President JP Morrell, who told Verite News that he “fully supports the amendment on the ballot,” also clarified the limitations of the amendment, in a previous hearing.
“When we amend the charter, that affects the city, not private industries,” he said during a City Council Criminal Justice Meeting in April.
At the Sept. 4 job fair, which offered a wide range of assistance from resume writing to offering free business clothes, others lauded the amendment and what it might be able to achieve for formerly incarcerated individuals.
Local entrepreneur, Sess 4-5, was at the event to promote it on social media and encourage some of his followers to come out and look for a job. When asked about the ballot initiative he said that he was in favor of it.
“It’ll help take the barriers off of folks who were incarcerated, who changed their lives and [are] in the process of becoming productive citizens, so that you won’t have those obstacles or barriers placed on you,” he said. “If you qualify for the job, you should be able to get the job.”
Jordan Bridges, organizing director at the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, was there to tell attendees what services his organization offers.
“As a workers’ center focused on economic justice and labor justice we wanted to make sure that those workers specifically have access to resources in case things go wrong at work,” Bridges said.
The NOWCRJ is preparing for their own event to help people impacted by the justice system — a warrant clinic scheduled for Sept. 20. At the clinic, attendees will be able to address outstanding misdemeanor warrants and associated fines and fees and reinstate their Louisiana drivers licenses with the Office of Motor Vehicles.
With respect to the ballot question, Bridges said they are urging everyone to vote yes.
“Our goal, for even our own warrant clinic, is to make sure that we address systemic issues, we dissolve barriers to employment, and this Fair Chance Amendment gives formerly incarcerated people a chance to participate more fully in society,” Bridges said.
Let us know what you think…
This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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