Thought-Provoker: ex-offender reintegration

A stigmatized individual is perceived to be imbrued with unfavorable attributes and behavioral expectations. Criminal ex-offenders (i.e., those who've committed a crime in the past but have since completed any court ordered punishment) are still unfortunately stigmatized for life, and looked upon as belonging to possibly the lowest rung of society. We see this with ex-offenders being denied the right to return to full citizenship and societal engagement. To state this another way, ex-offenders are denied full participation in society even after they've completed their punishment.

It’s not just the citizenry that stigmatizes and discriminates against those with criminal convictions, the broader State apparatus and commercial entities do as well. Indeed, when it comes to criminal offenders, the State has created a punitive and retributive legal and social model, instead of a rehabilitative model. This also authorizes the non-offender citizenry to similarly discriminate. Contrast this with laws that, instead, criminalize prejudice and discrimination directed toward members of other minority and disadvantaged groups in society.

For example, there are pre-employment criminal records checks of various types that substantially impact the employment opportunities of former offenders, many educational opportunities are similarly impacted by a criminal history, there may be issues securing professional licenses and memberships, sometimes there are barriers to acquiring financial loans from lending institutions, professional indemnity, property and vehicle insurance may be denied by insurance companies, and one’s capacity to travel internationally is also compromised.

Opportunities to adopt children are also likely to be restricted. Educational scholarships, student loans, sport team selection, and citizen and bravery awards may all be denied. Apparently an ex-offender performing a heroic function isn't worthy of the same recognition as a citizen with no convictions! This demonstrates the bizarre, political and identity motivations at work here.......

Many people believe that any person who has committed a criminal offence is highly likely to commit others. It's this flawed thinking that leads to the prejudice and discrimination of former offenders by both regulators and the general public. The reality is that, as time goes by, a previous offense is no more predictive of a future offense than is never having offended predictive of a future offense. That is to say, the vast majority of former offenders will never again re-offend once 5-7 years has elapsed since they last committed an offence. Moreover, engagement in stable fulfilling employment and improved education, allows movement away from disadvantageous social and economic circumstances. These are all predictive of future non-offending---the very things often denied by the State and citizenry to those who've committed criminal offenses!

Ex-offenders are also acutely aware that what they do even now, is possibly being observed by others who expect the ex-offender to re-offend. For example, an ex-offender who dares to express some degree of consternation about some aspect of his or her life circumstances, might be perceived by observers as displaying behavior that is reflective of someone with criminal proclivities. This then serves to validate the views of the observer. Whereas another observer of the very same discussion who has no knowledge about this persons criminal history, is likely to see things very differently--perhaps merely putting it down to the individual having a bad day.

The knowledge that one is possibly being monitored by others with certain attitudinal and behavioral expectations creates an enormous burden on the ex-offender---negatively impacting their task performance and decreasing life satisfaction, as well as increasing anxiety and depression etc.

At the extreme end there may actually be some form of unfavorable or illegal acting out committed by the ex-offender, not because of any desire to behave in such a way, but merely as a result of the pressure or expectation to do so! This resulting self-fulling prophecy is the result of a phenomenon known as stereotype-threat. Of course, those believing the unsupported assertion of ‘once a crim, always a crim’ now rest easy in the knowledge their viewpoint has been validated---even though their perceived nexus of cause and effect was wrong.

We also see State sanctioned discrimination toward ex-offenders causing them to resent society, yet, desistance from crime is clearly a function of a sense of belonging and positivity about one's community coming about through the effective restoration of citizenship and associated rights and privileges.

Hopefully it can be seen that discriminating against ex-offenders can actually lead to the undesirable consequence of re-offending. Therefore, it’s in everyone’s best interests to allow full reintegration of ex-offenders. That is, in the majority of cases (excluding obviously dangerous and habitual recidivists), once court appointed punishment has been served, we should all consider providing ex-offenders with the same opportunities available to all other citizens.

Everything else being equal, the earlier and more fully we allow ex-offenders to reintegrate, the less likely it is they will re-offend.