I don't understand.

When you vote, you are handed a piece of paper.  When you enlist, they give you a gun.  You can't kill someone with a ballot, although voting for Bush is close.

Now do you understand?

I'm a veteran myself.  Served in the '60s, medic, US Army, E-5.  Want to see my Honorable Discharge?

  Frankly, I have had very limited success with folks I have helped with employment. The inability to be a "good employee" is often perhaps a symptom of the same conditions which lead people to be in the criminal justice system.

They are much more likely to be employed in jobs where they have no contact with the customers. If they were convicted of crime against property they can't work in the financial industry, Drug crimes shut other doors (in fact some companies test all employees for drugs). Some states have license restrictions for barbers and plumbers etc. that can exclude felons. In Iowa they use loss of drivers license as an additional criminal sanction for drug crimes and other offenses. This can make it tough to get a job and find a place to live.

Some colleges and universities are starting to do criminal records checks on all undergraduate students instead of just professional schools that are closed to felons. So even more doors are being shut.

One thing about the military is if you screw up there are consequences. With a lot of these kids they get slapped on the wrist a bunch of times and then someone gets fed up and wham they are in prison. In the past the military did manage to give some of these folks a second chance.

  Employers have a duty to exercise reasonable care to provide  people it is  forseeable may be affected by their employees  with a safe environment.

   I'm not persuaded that providing employers with immunity from liability for wrongful acts perepetrated by their employees would be fair to those injured.

  Short of granting immunity, we are looking at standard concepts of reasonable forseeability and due care. Am I exercising due care if I hire a person I know to have a record? Well, first, that would depend on the basis of the record. Second, it would depend on the nature of the job and the degree of opportunity to hurt others and the degree of supervision. Relaxing these standards to provide incentive to hire ex-cons isn't a whole lot different than relaxing other health and safety requirements to reduce exposure to liability.

  If I'm relieved of liability for the acts of people I know have a violent history, why should I not also be relieved of liability for the effects of using equipment I know to have caused injuries in the past?

   If I know you have a drug conviction that might not make it any more forseeable to me that you would commit a crime harming another than if you had no record. If you had a conviction for battery or unlawful wounding, at the very least, i'd probably need to make an inquiry into all the circumstances.

  These are just a couple of examples of the issues. The bottom line is if as an employer I have qualified applicants who have no record what benefit is it to me to hire someone with a record? Even a slight risk of increased exposure is not worth it in the absence of some offsetting benefit to me.

  That's why, in  my experience anyway, it is easiest to place people in construction  and the restaurant/hospitality fields because these employers deal with high turnover and unreliable employees and often a perpetual shortage of "good emplyees."

  Fields where there is a surplus of of qualified and dependable employees are not likely to take many chances.

  Rather than lamenting the reality that a criminal record can be a serious handicap in many contesxts as being unfair, we need to do a better job of impressing that reality upon kids before they have one.

  We have to deal with the social reality that we have many people who have records and that they are more likely to do wrong again if they are not afforded some reasonable degree of opportunity, but I can't buy into the theory that it's unfair for them to face adverse consequences in society at large even after they have completed any criminal justice sanctions.

I suspect that many excons would make excellent soldiers if they survive the discipline of basic training without punching a superior officer.