Second Chances Cannot Be Reserved for the Privileged Few | Opinion

Americans like to see themselves as believers in second chances. Our culture celebrates reinvention, redemption and comeback stories—especially when they belong to people with status, talent or influence. Consider figures like Tim Allen, Martha Stewart, Michael Vick and Mark Wahlberg—all of whom have enjoyed America’s redemptive grace.

In sports, entertainment and business, we’re willing to look beyond a person’s worst moment if they have already shown us something exceptional. But for millions of ordinary people with arrest or conviction records, there is no comparable second chance. Every April, Second Chance Month asks Americans to consider a simple question: What should happen after justice has been served?

In theory, the answer is straightforward: a person is held accountable, pays their debt to society and then has the opportunity to move forward with their life.

In practice, that’s rarely how it works. When a person leaves prison, completes probation or simply has an arrest record, the punishment continues: with background checks that summarily reject job applications, career pathways closed off by licensing exclusions and the persistent stigma attached to having a record. All told, there are more than 40,000 federal and state legal and regulatory restrictions that limit civil rights and block access to education, employment, public assistance and occupational licenses.

We tell people to pay their debt to society. Then, long after that debt is paid, we keep sending the bill. And all Americans pay the price.

In fact, excluding people with records from full participation in the workforce costs the U.S. economy upward of $87 billion annually. The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. Nearly 2 million people are behind bars each year, and millions more remain under probation or parole supervision.

Beyond that, one in every three adults, or almost 80 million Americans, carry an arrest record. We can’t afford—economically, socially or morally—to leave so many Americans on the sidelines. The unemployment rate for people with records typically hovers around 30 percent.

That’s more than six times the national average. And it’s not for lack of trying: people who have experienced prior justice involvement are more likely to be active in the labor market than the general public. Why, then, is work still so hard to find?

It reflects a deeper narrative about who we believe deserves redemption and who does not. The problem, at its core, is stigma. When a person is reduced to their record, it sets an unforgiving cycle into motion.

Even amid labor shortages and workforce gaps, employers worry about liability, uncertainty or reputational harm. Too often, they treat people with records as high risk rather than high potential. Across the country, outdated occupational licensing rules and legal restrictions reinforce that stigma.

Policies created in another era now function as blanket exclusions, shutting people out of entire categories of work long after their formal sentence has ended. The result is a cycle of economic exclusion that hurts everyone. Employers struggle to fill roles.

Families lose income and stability. Communities are less safe and are denied the contributions of people ready to move forward. And the broader economic cost measured in lost productivity, reduced economic mobility, persistent crime and the heavy price of recidivism runs into the billions.

The solution can be found on both the supply and demand sides of the labor market. Employers across the country say they need dependable talent ready to work, and millions of Americans with records are willing to step into the nearly 7 million unfilled jobs in the country. Some may need additional training, but apprenticeships and earn-to-learn models can help close that gap.

The other critical piece is demand: more employers willing to open their doors and offer a fair shot. Research and employer experience increasingly show that fair chance and second chance hiring is a smart workforce strategy. More than 80 percent of business leaders report that individuals with records perform the same or better than employees without records.

And companies that hire people with records often report higher employee loyalty and stronger workforce retention. That matters in an economy where turnover is expensive and dependable talent is hard to find. There are real consequences when we continue to marginalize millions with records.

We shrink the workforce, weaken families’ economic stability and make it harder for entire communities to thrive. When people are shut out of legitimate ways to contribute and move forward, we should not be surprised when cycles of recidivism and harm continue and underground economies grow. Exclusion does not produce accountability or safety.

It undermines both. If we truly believe in reinvention, redemption and accountability, then second chances cannot be reserved for the famous, the powerful or the privileged few. As a society we should not accept, nor can we afford, defining people by their worst moment and never giving them a chance to prove what they are capable of.

People with arrest records do not need lowered standards or empty sympathy. They need an opportunity: the chance to build a career, support their families, contribute to safer and stronger communities. It’s time for employers, policymakers and the public to extend America’s grace to all, not just the celebrated few.

Ken Oliver is president and CEO of JUMP (Justice and Upward Mobility Project). He spent 24 years in prison, including a decade in solitary confinement, before successfully challenging those conditions and winning an unprecedented settlement and his freedom through a landmark civil rights lawsuit in partnership with Stanford University and Mayer Brown. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.