In my column on Sunday concerning Obama’s push to rehabilitate ex-cons and reintegrate them into society, I wrote, “He’d better not be planning to give criminals the speed pass to the front of the line.”
On Monday afternoon, Obama spoke at Rutgers University and explained some of his initiatives to do just that. The White House released a “fact sheet” on its website that explains the measures he plans to take.
The Department of Education has selected 9 communities to receive up to $8 million for “supporting educational attainment and reentry success for individuals who have been incarcerated.” I’m not sure how those 9 communities were chosen, but the process was fair, no doubt.
Also, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is releasing new guidelines for housing authorities and HUD building owners on how to make it easier for those with arrest records to move into HUD-assisted properties. This good news for ex-convicts should bring some peace of mind to those law-abiding Americans who live on those properties now.
HUD will also be involved, along with the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, in an experimental program that will grant $8.7 million to community entities that can demonstrate they can successfully allow ex-cons to find permanent housing. This incentive places the responsibility of reintegration on public and private parties and not the ex-cons, and it rewards those parties who by chance might be able to comply, depending on the ex-cons, to meet the government’s criteria. No telling how well it will do after they get their money. I’m sure it’ll all work out.
In another DoJ/HUD initiative, they plan to provide $1.75 million “to aid eligible public housing residents who are under the age of 25 to expunge or seal their records in accordance with their applicable state laws.” Why, how nice of Obama to clean the slate especially for young offenders, while older people who have reformed but still have crimes from long ago on their records wonder why the hell their records aren’t wiped clean.
Perhaps this next initiative will do something for them. The DoJ and the Department of Labor are going to team up for a program that expands the federal government’s influence on local legal record maintenance. They’re calling it the National Clean Slate Clearinghouse, which will “provide technical assistance to local legal aid programs, public defender offices, and reentry service providers to build capacity for legal services needed to help with record-cleaning, expungement, and related civil legal services.” So they’re going to use more resources in order to create efficiency. The federal government just has to get its grubby, fat hands into everything. It never ends.
In addition, ex-cons will soon benefit from being added to Obama’s already-existing TechHire initiative, which the Administration launched back in March. In short, it’s a campaign to spend $100 million in grants from the Department of Labor that will “fast track” training and placement in high-tech jobs for low-skilled Americans in selected areas of the country.
There you have it–the speed pass I wondered about. Now the Administration expects these trainers to include more people with criminal records in their plans. But how many people who have obeyed the law will be pushed out of the way so this government program can meet its quota in rewarding criminals? Stand aside for this drug trafficker so he can take this computer coding class ahead of you.
Lastly, the part of the White House’s plans that’s raising a lot of eyebrows is the “Ban the Box” campaign. It’s an attempt to get rid of the question many employers have on applications where they ask if a potential employee has ever been convicted of a crime.
Liberals have been promoting “Ban the Box” for a while, and it seems to be pretty popular. New York City has taken this step with its public workers. It’s restricted City employers from doing credit checks on potential and existing hires, as well. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are on board with the idea. Obama is now on that bandwagon and intends to remove the question of one’s criminal record for all hiring by the federal government and federal contractors. While it’s a part of the bipartisan crime bill that’s working it’s way through Congress, Obama has already decided to take matters into his own hands by changing the rules for the Office of Personnel Management so that the federal government and federal contractors delay criminal background checks on potential employees until further on in the hiring process.
In other words, let’s waste time and taxpayer money in order to let more people through to becoming government workers only to find out that they shouldn’t be government workers, just to raise the hopes of former criminals.
The National Law Review had this to say about the “Ban the Box” movement:
The “ban the box” reform movement continues to attract the attention of legislators throughout the country. According to the National Employment Law Project, 19 states and more than 100 cities and counties have enacted similar legislation. In addition, over a dozen cities and 7 states have extended such legislation to private employers.
That last sentence should bother a few people. Even the Administration admits that the President’s “Ban the Box” reform is mostly symbolic since most federal agencies have already eliminated “the Box.” Obama’s doing this hoping to turn the screws on private businesses so they follow suit. Private employers shouldn’t give reformed criminals the chance to be open about their past? As this trend continues, pretty soon no employer, public or private, will even be allowed to do background checks on those they hire. That’s where I see this going. Actions will have fewer and fewer consequences because the state will forgive criminals and mandate that society forgets all their wrongs, making it impossible for employers to know what trouble their workers may or may not have gotten into in the past.
That census worker could have been a rapist. That park ranger could be a killer, for all you know. Do these morons ever think this stuff through? Doubtful. People like Obama know that recruiting the more “downtrodden” segments of the population grows the ranks of the Democratic Party, which gives them the power to win elections. Obama’s approach to criminal justice reform is to get us to look at criminals as victims and treat them special for the sake of fairness.
Now we’re about to find out how well Obama’s reforms will be for American society, seeing as he set 6,000 inmates free from federal prisons over the weekend.
But they’re only low-level drug offenders, we’re told.
Right. They went to federal prison because they were harmless non-violent offenders who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Gimme a break. Obama is so worried about urban violence or the next mass shooting, yet he pulls foolish stunts like this to win over the lower class. What a compassionate president. What a bunch of…
Yeah. I can tell this plan is going to work out great.
