Ex Felons For Hire

New Orleans officials are poised to give an update on implementation of a new “ban the box” measure approved last year that bars the city from running criminal background checks on jobseekers before conducting interviews. The measure, which took effect March 1, also bars city contractors from asking about criminal convictions in initial job applications.

Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montano’s office is expected to brief New Orleans City Council members on the city’s progress toward implementing the ban-the-box measure at a committee meeting Tuesday (March 26). Per the measure, Montano’s office is required to submit an annual audit of the city’s hiring practices each year to make sure the rules are being observed.

Passed last October by the City Council, the measure requires city employers to hold interviews first before checking a jobseeker’s criminal history. The measure codified an existing policy on background checks the chief administrative office has followed since 2014, according to Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who proposed the ordinance last year.

Under the bon-the-box rules, city job applications cannot ask whether a person has been convicted of a crime. Finalists for a job also have a chance to file evidence to dispute a hiring denial if the decision was made based on “information (that) is inaccurate or that mitigation or rehabilitation has occurred since the conviction.”

The City Council’s measure last year followed approval of ban-the-box legislation in 2016 that blocked state employers from asking about criminal histories before job interviews.

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New Orleans officials are poised to give an update on implementation of a new “ban the box” measure approved last year that bars the city from running criminal background checks on jobseekers before conducting interviews. The measure, which took effect March 1, also bars city contractors from asking about criminal convictions in initial job applications.

Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montano’s office is expected to brief New Orleans City Council members on the city’s progress toward implementing the ban-the-box measure at a committee meeting Tuesday (March 26). Per the measure, Montano’s office is required to submit an annual audit of the city’s hiring practices each year to make sure the rules are being observed.

Passed last October by the City Council, the measure requires city employers to hold interviews first before checking a jobseeker’s criminal history. The measure codified an existing policy on background checks the chief administrative office has followed since 2014, according to Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who proposed the ordinance last year.

Under the bon-the-box rules, city job applications cannot ask whether a person has been convicted of a crime. Finalists for a job also have a chance to file evidence to dispute a hiring denial if the decision was made based on “information (that) is inaccurate or that mitigation or rehabilitation has occurred since the conviction.”

The City Council’s measure last year followed approval of ban-the-box legislation in 2016 that blocked state employers from asking about criminal histories before job interviews.

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New Orleans officials are poised to give an update on implementation of a new “ban the box” measure approved last year that bars the city from running criminal background checks on jobseekers before conducting interviews. The measure, which took effect March 1, also bars city contractors from asking about criminal convictions in initial job applications.

Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montano’s office is expected to brief New Orleans City Council members on the city’s progress toward implementing the ban-the-box measure at a committee meeting Tuesday (March 26). Per the measure, Montano’s office is required to submit an annual audit of the city’s hiring practices each year to make sure the rules are being observed.

Passed last October by the City Council, the measure requires city employers to hold interviews first before checking a jobseeker’s criminal history. The measure codified an existing policy on background checks the chief administrative office has followed since 2014, according to Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who proposed the ordinance last year.

Under the bon-the-box rules, city job applications cannot ask whether a person has been convicted of a crime. Finalists for a job also have a chance to file evidence to dispute a hiring denial if the decision was made based on “information (that) is inaccurate or that mitigation or rehabilitation has occurred since the conviction.”

The City Council’s measure last year followed approval of ban-the-box legislation in 2016 that blocked state employers from asking about criminal histories before job interviews.

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New Orleans officials are poised to give an update on implementation of a new “ban the box” measure approved last year that bars the city from running criminal background checks on jobseekers before conducting interviews. The measure, which took effect March 1, also bars city contractors from asking about criminal convictions in initial job applications.

Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montano’s office is expected to brief New Orleans City Council members on the city’s progress toward implementing the ban-the-box measure at a committee meeting Tuesday (March 26). Per the measure, Montano’s office is required to submit an annual audit of the city’s hiring practices each year to make sure the rules are being observed.

Passed last October by the City Council, the measure requires city employers to hold interviews first before checking a jobseeker’s criminal history. The measure codified an existing policy on background checks the chief administrative office has followed since 2014, according to Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who proposed the ordinance last year.

Under the bon-the-box rules, city job applications cannot ask whether a person has been convicted of a crime. Finalists for a job also have a chance to file evidence to dispute a hiring denial if the decision was made based on “information (that) is inaccurate or that mitigation or rehabilitation has occurred since the conviction.”

The City Council’s measure last year followed approval of ban-the-box legislation in 2016 that blocked state employers from asking about criminal histories before job interviews.

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New Orleans officials are poised to give an update on implementation of a new “ban the box” measure approved last year that bars the city from running criminal background checks on jobseekers before conducting interviews. The measure, which took effect March 1, also bars city contractors from asking about criminal convictions in initial job applications.

Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montano’s office is expected to brief New Orleans City Council members on the city’s progress toward implementing the ban-the-box measure at a committee meeting Tuesday (March 26). Per the measure, Montano’s office is required to submit an annual audit of the city’s hiring practices each year to make sure the rules are being observed.

Passed last October by the City Council, the measure requires city employers to hold interviews first before checking a jobseeker’s criminal history. The measure codified an existing policy on background checks the chief administrative office has followed since 2014, according to Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who proposed the ordinance last year.

Under the bon-the-box rules, city job applications cannot ask whether a person has been convicted of a crime. Finalists for a job also have a chance to file evidence to dispute a hiring denial if the decision was made based on “information (that) is inaccurate or that mitigation or rehabilitation has occurred since the conviction.”

The City Council’s measure last year followed approval of ban-the-box legislation in 2016 that blocked state employers from asking about criminal histories before job interviews.

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New Orleans officials are poised to give an update on implementation of a new “ban the box” measure approved last year that bars the city from running criminal background checks on jobseekers before conducting interviews. The measure, which took effect March 1, also bars city contractors from asking about criminal convictions in initial job applications.

Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montano’s office is expected to brief New Orleans City Council members on the city’s progress toward implementing the ban-the-box measure at a committee meeting Tuesday (March 26). Per the measure, Montano’s office is required to submit an annual audit of the city’s hiring practices each year to make sure the rules are being observed.

Passed last October by the City Council, the measure requires city employers to hold interviews first before checking a jobseeker’s criminal history. The measure codified an existing policy on background checks the chief administrative office has followed since 2014, according to Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who proposed the ordinance last year.

Under the bon-the-box rules, city job applications cannot ask whether a person has been convicted of a crime. Finalists for a job also have a chance to file evidence to dispute a hiring denial if the decision was made based on “information (that) is inaccurate or that mitigation or rehabilitation has occurred since the conviction.”

The City Council’s measure last year followed approval of ban-the-box legislation in 2016 that blocked state employers from asking about criminal histories before job interviews.

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New Orleans officials are poised to give an update on implementation of a new “ban the box” measure approved last year that bars the city from running criminal background checks on jobseekers before conducting interviews. The measure, which took effect March 1, also bars city contractors from asking about criminal convictions in initial job applications.

Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montano’s office is expected to brief New Orleans City Council members on the city’s progress toward implementing the ban-the-box measure at a committee meeting Tuesday (March 26). Per the measure, Montano’s office is required to submit an annual audit of the city’s hiring practices each year to make sure the rules are being observed.

Passed last October by the City Council, the measure requires city employers to hold interviews first before checking a jobseeker’s criminal history. The measure codified an existing policy on background checks the chief administrative office has followed since 2014, according to Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who proposed the ordinance last year.

Under the bon-the-box rules, city job applications cannot ask whether a person has been convicted of a crime. Finalists for a job also have a chance to file evidence to dispute a hiring denial if the decision was made based on “information (that) is inaccurate or that mitigation or rehabilitation has occurred since the conviction.”

The City Council’s measure last year followed approval of ban-the-box legislation in 2016 that blocked state employers from asking about criminal histories before job interviews.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Source

New Orleans officials are poised to give an update on implementation of a new “ban the box” measure approved last year that bars the city from running criminal background checks on jobseekers before conducting interviews. The measure, which took effect March 1, also bars city contractors from asking about criminal convictions in initial job applications.

Chief Administrative Officer Gilbert Montano’s office is expected to brief New Orleans City Council members on the city’s progress toward implementing the ban-the-box measure at a committee meeting Tuesday (March 26). Per the measure, Montano’s office is required to submit an annual audit of the city’s hiring practices each year to make sure the rules are being observed.

Passed last October by the City Council, the measure requires city employers to hold interviews first before checking a jobseeker’s criminal history. The measure codified an existing policy on background checks the chief administrative office has followed since 2014, according to Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, who proposed the ordinance last year.

Under the bon-the-box rules, city job applications cannot ask whether a person has been convicted of a crime. Finalists for a job also have a chance to file evidence to dispute a hiring denial if the decision was made based on “information (that) is inaccurate or that mitigation or rehabilitation has occurred since the conviction.”

The City Council’s measure last year followed approval of ban-the-box legislation in 2016 that blocked state employers from asking about criminal histories before job interviews.

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Photo: NBC

1963. Lieutenant Mike Torello is the head of the Chicago Police Department’s Major Crimes Unit. The top file on his desk is that of Ray Luca, a well-coiffed upstart in the city’s formidable criminal underworld. Luca is a minor figure in Chicago organized crime, but Torello catches on to his plan to get made: Luca wants to monopolize the illegal sports-gambling industry, and he plans to locate the headquarters of this national betting network in Las Vegas. Torello and Luca are rivals, but each develops a kind of admiration for the other and his method. They’re both wounded men who put work above all else; they wander the same lonely streets at night. Torello’s pursuit of Luca turns from an assignment into an obsession.

1986. Producer Michael Mann rules the television airwaves with Miami Vice, a show that, as legend has it, was born from two words scrawled on a napkin: “MTV Cops.” Miami Vice has its share of critics: It’s too violent, too flashy, too pop, and officials in Miami are upset about how it depicts their city. Still, it’s a hit, and NBC has given Mann carte blanche to produce anything he wants. With Crime Story, his next project, he would cash that check to prove his detractors wrong. The story Mann chose to bring to the air was that of Torello and Luca, a classic cop-and-criminal dichotomy that would set the stage for decades of serious television to come, and establish the subject matter that would from thereon define Mann’s career.

Where Miami Vice brought the police procedural into the future — flashy clothes, big tunes, heaps of style — Crime Story went back in time, and even if it’s the lesser-known of the two series, it revolutionized the genre on a molecular level, whereas Miami Vice achieved the same only on the surface. Two decades before The Sopranos and The Wire, Crime Story was one of the very first serialized prime-time dramas to ditch the procedural format and tell a season-long story.

Directed by Abel Ferrara, who’d soon leave his own erratic mark on the crime genre with films like Bad Lieutenant and King of New York, the 90-minute pilot of Crime Story was seen by over 30 million viewers. Friday night on NBC became Mann’s night, with Crime Story following Miami Vice. The show was a stable for hot new talent, and featured early performances by future TV regulars like David Caruso, Dennis Haysbert, and David Hyde Pierce, as well as soon-to-be stars like Julia Roberts, Ving Rhames, and Christian Slater. A young Andrew Dice Clay — at that time all clay, no dice — appeared in a regular supporting role as Jewish gangster Max Goodman. Even Miles Davis turned in a cameo.

Later in its first season, Crime Story was moved to Tuesday night, where it played against ABC’s Moonlighting, then in its third season. Moonlighting had become a juggernaut, picking up 16 Emmy nominations for its second season, over the course of which it cracked the Nielsen Top 10 for the first and only time. The move was a death knell for Crime Story, which was cancelled after its second season; Mann’s plan to have the show jump in time from 1964 to 1980 was scrapped as well. Despite its innovative narrative, Crime Story has lain dormant in the graveyard of TV history ever since due to licensing issues, and has never really received the broader recognition it deserves. With the series now available on Amazon Prime — its very first time on a streaming platform — it’s time for that to change.

Every episode of Crime Story begins the same way: a booming male voice thoroughly recaps the previous week’s episode before announcing, “Tonight, on Crime Story.” Every episode ends the same way, too: a freeze frame, branded by the words “To Be Continued … ” in red. Those three words are what made Crime Story different from any other show on television — every story was to be continued. Every episode required knowledge of previous episodes. Prime-time television had done the multi-episode arc, but no one had ever really attempted anything like this, which in its form was almost more akin to soap operas than to police procedurals. Supposedly inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 15-and-a-half-hour miniseries Berlin Alexanderplatz, Crime Story was sprawling and novelistic in a way no television show had ever been before. It required a certain loyalty and dedication from its audience that other cop shows did not — Crime Story demanded that you tune in, keep up, and pay attention. It made you take it seriously.

Mann executive-produced Crime Story, but the concept came from a spec script by Gustave Reininger, a former Wall Street investment banker, and Chuck Adamson, a Chicago police officer who’d worked as a technical consultant on Mann’s 1981 film Thief. (Adamson’s experiences pursuing a thief named “McCauley” would later inspire Heat.) Thief had introduced Mann not only to Adamson but also to Dennis Farina, another Chicago police officer and Adamson’s former partner. He was also a technical consultant on the film and had a small role in it, his first acting gig. Farina continued on the force after Thief, with night work as a bit player in TV movies and the Chuck Norris vehicle Code of Silence, but he hung up his real-life uniform for good when Mann came calling again, offering the leading role of Mike Torello.

Farina was a different kind of leading man, not quite as in-fashion as Crockett and Tubbs; his New York Times obituary credited his success as an actor to his “world-weary credibility and a convincing nexus of nose and mustache.” It’s exactly his real-life experience that made Farina a natural choice for Crime Story: His eyes communicated a certain kind of exhaustion and intensity that could only come from a real, seasoned detective. Farina had a quiet charisma, a dignity earned from the experience visible on his worn face, but mostly, onscreen, he just felt like a guy doing a job.

Crime Story also featured the breakout performance of John Santucci as Pauli Taglia, Ray Luca’s go-to guy. A former jewelry thief and career criminal, Santucci had actually been one of Farina and Adamson’s busts. The extended safe-cracking sequence in Thief, recreated in the pilot episode of Crime Story, is based on a real robbery in which Santucci cut through a vault door with a thermal lance. He would continue to pick up acting jobs throughout the 1980s, including parts in Miami Vice and Mann’s later TV movie L.A. Takedown, until he was arrested in 1996 for breaking into the vending machines at a Hyatt in Chicago. (Crime Story also featured a cameo from William Hanhardt, a high-ranking Chicago police officer who splits the difference between cop and criminal; in 2001, Hanhardt became the highest-ranking official to plead guilty to running a nationwide jewelry-theft ring.)

The presence of former cops and criminals in Crime Story lends the series a certain documentary tactility, one of Mann’s signatures. His characters speak the secret languages of their professions. Torello is rough and ruthless, uninhibited by any standard of decency or legality in his pursuit of Luca, which is a little troubling given Farina’s own past. Mann’s work is regularly about the thin line between cops and criminals, and the creative collaborations that made Crime Story possible illustrate how little difference often exists between breaking the law and enforcing it.

Crime Story unlocked the gates for shows like Wiseguy, Twin Peaks, and The X-Files, the wayward step-children of the police procedural. Its gritty realism would be carried on by the likes of Homicide: Life on the Street and NYPD Blue. But its most important contribution, the three words “to be continued … ” at the end of every single episode, influenced nearly every subsequent drama on prime time. Though Crime Story wasn’t the first series to flash those words across the screen — every show from Dallas to The Brady Bunch had done a multi-episode arc — the idea of a story that continued seemingly without end or resolution in sight, was new.

In fact, the show’s conflict is in part supplied by the issue of serialization: in the second episode, Torello wants to devote his efforts solely to Luca’s arrest, but he’s distracted by the emergence of a psychotic serial killer. Torello wants to commit himself to a single case just like the show wants to follow a single story, but the demands of the police procedural format force them both to take detours. Crime Story didn’t last long, but it proved that audiences had not only the patience but the appetite for a 22-hour narrative. It’s since become a cliche to refer to prestige dramas as novels, but when it comes to long-term television storytelling, Crime Story wrote the book.

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Last week, I got to participate in American Injustice: A BET Town Hall. It’s a series of live conversations with leaders from Cory Booker to Kamala Harris about how we got into this crisis of mass incarceration.

It’ll air this Sunday. If there’s one thing I want people to take away from it, it’s that locking up Black people is big business.

Since the 1980s our prison population has more than quadrupled. Crime, of course, has not quadrupled. It’s been at historic lows.

We now lock up 2.2 million people, more than any other country in the world. A disproportionate number are people of color with Black people incarcerated at 5 times the rate of white people. Women—mostly mothers who are the primary breadwinners in their families—are the fastest growing population behinds bars.

We are tearing apart families, destroying futures, and wasting human potential on a mind-blowing scale. This does not happen accidentally. The truth is there’s a whole system of businesses and people that profit from taking away people’s freedom.

Building and staffing prisons is big business, especially in towns full of closed factories reeling from a loss of manufacturing jobs that’ve gone overseas or been made obsolete by technology. It’s an easy answer for politicians under pressure to create jobs.

The bail industry is made of modern-day loan sharks preying off poor people and people of color. DA’s set bail far out of step with the charges or people’s ability to pay—so they either go into debt or pay the highest price—their freedom.

We know all too well the story of Sandra Bland, who was hauled in under the pretext of a traffic stop, couldn’t pay her way out, and hung herself in a jail in Waller County, Texas. Or Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old falsely accused of stealing a backpack, who spent 3 years in jail, most of it in solitary confinement, before taking his life.

Money bail is a trap. It leads to pre-trial detention, which ruins lives. In our research we found if you borrow $1,000 for bail, you’re likely to pay a private bondsman $6,000—even if you show up to court or your charges are dismissed. Black people get higher bail for identical crimes. And the average felony carries $10,0000 bail, so do the math and you’ll see what working class people are up against before they can even hire a lawyer or have their day in court.

All of this creates huge incentives for people to take plea bargains, whether or not they’re guilty, no matter how flimsy the evidence against them.

Meanwhile, prosecutors build lucrative careers acting “tough on crime.” They lock up people who’ve been pressured to take deals, pulling them out of their jobs and families, which has a ripple effect in their communities, undermining public safety.

These are the issues Color Of Change works on every day through campaigns to end money bail, demand accountability for police violence and flip the script on prosecutors, where we’ve helped reform-minded candidates rise in a dozen cities from Ferguson to Philadelphia, Orlando, and Chicago.

It’s daunting work, but not all the stories are tragic. Ebony Thomas spent three days in an Atlanta jail after she was arrested for an unpaid ticket, missing sticker, and light out on her car. Her family thought she’d been hurt, or worse. But a year later, she stood with us as part of Mama’s Day Bailout and helped raise the money to send 147 women home on Mother’s Day.

We’ve led campaigns to shame prisons for forcing incarcerated people to do dangerous, backbreaking work, like fighting forest fires in California for as little as $1/hour. Our work led to the first law in the country to make phone calls from jail free. We’ve gone after the worst offenders, like California’s largest bail agency Aladdin, now under fire for corruption and keeping bail premiums high.

Profiteering in the prison industry should come as no surprise. But it does surprise people.

Our criminal justice system is a labyrinth of unfair, racist, counterproductive laws that’ve been built up over four decades. And the only way we’ll undo them is by coming together to have brutally honest conversations about what’s going on behind closed doors.

With 1.4 million members behind us, we are building power to transform the system. That means building political power, showing up en masse at town halls and in voting booths to set new standards for prosecutors and hold those in office accountable from Dallas to Detroit.

It means changing the narratives we see everyday on TV, on the news where data shows Black people are portrayed as criminals in far greater percentages than they actually commit crimes—and on popular crime shows. It means teaming up with influential artists like John Legend and Common to show how money bail, probation and parole, and pre-trial detention have become another form of incarceration for millions.

It’s time to break down where injustice hides and show people what we can do about it. Because there is so much we can do, together.

Mass incarceration is big business. If we want justice, we just have to follow the money.

Rashad Robinson is President of Color Of Change, a leading online racial justice organization. Driven by more than 1.4 million members working to build political and cultural power for Black communities, Color Of Change is creating a more human and less hostile world for all people in America.

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