California Should Use Green Infrastructure Funding to Employ Formerly-Incarcerated People
Written by Jon Judd
More than 27% of formerly-incarcerated people in the U.S. are currently unemployed. This number exceeds even the highest rate of U.S. unemployment (24.9% in 1933 during the Great Depression) and is far greater than the current 3.9% unemployment rate among the general public. Formerly-incarcerated people often struggle with employment due to policy barriers and social stigma. Challenges finding employment also contribute to poverty, the strongest predictor for recidivism, or formerly-incarcerated people reoffending.
The lack of adequate employment opportunities for formerly-incarcerated people severely restricts their ability to build stable lives and continues to punish them long after they have served their time. State and federal funding are necessary to develop job training and opportunities for incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated individuals, which in turn would decrease unemployment and recidivism among formerly-incarcerated people. Evidence of this already exists. California has allocated $37 million over 3 years to the training and employment of formerly-incarcerated people through the Workforce Partnership and Prison to Employment Initiative. This program and others providing job readiness skills, apprenticeships, and occupational training to incarcerated individuals close to release can be further expanded to fight unemployment and recidivism while also tackling the challenge of climate change.
The growing climate crisis will necessitate training tens of thousands of new workers in the sustainability sectors, i.e. green jobs. There is especially a need for blue-collar positions in fire management, public transportation, weatherization infrastructure, and more. These are all jobs where incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated individuals can receive training to reduce time unemployed. In addition to the previously mentioned funding for inmate job training, resources already exist in this sector that can be expanded to serve this new population. Examples include California’s investment of approximately $62 million to expand High Road Training Partnerships and High Road Construction Careers.
California presents a case study for how to include formerly-incarcerated people in our climate fight. The state, which is already contending with climate change-fueled wildfires, has established initiatives such as the Conservation Camp Program. Since 1946, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has partnered with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to supplement the regular firefighting forces with incarcerated people through the Conservation Camp Program. In 2015, incarcerated firefighters composed up to 30% of California’s wildland firefighting crews. However, before 2020, upon release these formerly-incarcerated people were unable to put their firefighting experience to use — formerly-incarcerated people can’t qualify for EMT or EMR licenses, which are required to be hired on a professional fire crew. The California legislature passed AB2147, signed into law in September 2020, providing the opportunity for formerly-incarcerated firefighters to petition for expungement of their record and thus allow them to apply for state jobs. However, AB2147 does not guarantee employment; formerly-incarcerated firefighters may still face barriers including denial of an expungement application or hiring prejudices based on their criminal record, which still appears on a background check even in the case of a successful expungement.
While AB2147 is a small step in the right direction, its scope is limited to firefighting. Firefighters must be able-bodied and the occupation is dangerous and highly taxing — both physically and mentally — so we must move beyond just firefighting. There are a variety of actions that state policymakers can and should pursue to confront the myriad of issues that have been laid out. First, California lawmakers should pass legislation that provides funding to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation; this could expand the Conservation Camp program to both train more firefighters as well as hire social workers to assist newly released firefighters with getting their record expunged and other employment obstacles. Second, state legislators should pass a policy similar to the Economic Equity First Act (AB915) that would require a percentage of the previously-mentioned funds to go directly to organizations focused on the training of formerly-incarcerated people in green jobs. Together, these policies would position California as a leader in prison reform, reduce recidivism, and move us closer to achieving our climate goals.
