Musings from Brian J. Noggle

No Sympathy for the Devil (II)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch likes to milk its previous stories for all they're worth, flogging horse skeletons to dust. For example, they recently discovered that elected fire protection boards tend to get paid lots of public money and that sometimes firefighters give the candidates whom they want to win money! Not satisfied with a multipart investigation, the Post-Dispatch carried on for weeks about the splash its story made with oversight groups and the state government; in each subsequent article, the Post-Dispatch mentioned, reluctantly and while kicking a toe shyly at the carpet that they originated the story.

But now, riffing off of the Bill McClellan column about how hard a time released felons have making it outside, the Post-Dispatch runs a story on the front page of its Sunday business page with the title Ex-convicts face a Catch-22 in job search.

Here's the "hook" anecdote that starts the article:

Dava Rogers says she applied at all kinds of jobs for a year, from fast-food restaurants to cleaners, with no success.

On every application, once she checked "yes" to having a criminal record, that was usually the end of it, said Rogers, 42. She served six months at the City Workhouse in St. Louis after being convicted of embezzlement from a former employer. She was released in 2002, but she found work only a year ago as a counselor in transitional housing for the YWCA.

"On the first few applications, I wouldn't check 'yes,' and then they would say if I explained it and didn't lie, they could've hired me," Rogers said. "When I was truthful, there was never a call back."

Personally, I have to wonder if it's not so much the checkbox in her case, but the If so, explain. portion of the question. I would have less trouble hiring a drug offender, a DUI person, a vandal, or any of the numerous other non-threatening felonies which continue to proliferate over someone who steals money from her employer.

I don't hear the St. Louis Post-Dispatch championing pedophiles who want to return to their birthday party clown jobs, but I didn't read the whole article. Undoubtedly, it's in there somewhere.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:21 PM