The Movement for Fair Chance Hiring

A Fair Chance at Employment

People with records need reliable access to income through safe, good-paying, stable jobs. Unfortunately, many workers struggle to find employment because of the stigma of a record. This bias also perpetuates systemic racism, because Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people are disproportionately penalized by the criminal legal system.

Fair chance policies expand employment opportunities by:

• removing conviction history questions from job applications,
• delaying background checks until later in the hiring process, and
• requiring individualized consideration of an applicant’s record and the job sought.

Fair chance policies alone will not erase the employment struggles of people with records; no single policy change can accomplish that. But they represent a necessary step toward fairness for workers with records—something that is unobtainable as long as employers are allowed to reject job applicants with records at the outset of hiring.

Research Supports Fair Chance Policies

Employment background checks unfairly hold back millions of workers, disproportionately workers of color. Research demonstrates that removing unjust barriers to employment—including through fair chance hiring policies—benefits individuals with records, their families, communities of color, and society more broadly.

Fair Chance Research