Homeless Persons Representation Project, Inc. (HPRP)

Of the 9,000 Baltimore residents released each year from the corrections system, only ten percent are employed upon release.  Their status as ex-offenders serves as a significant barrier to employment because employers often ask whether a job candidate has ever been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor offense.  Employers who employ broad hiring prohibitions based on criminal histories reject many prior offenders who have successfully completed their sentences or engaged in successful rehabilitation efforts.

With a grant of $5,000 from The Abell Foundation, the HPRP examined the role of Maryland public policy in the employment of ex-offenders and examined laws enacted in six other states that have extended some form of legal protection to those with criminal convictions seeking employment.  HPRP’s findings are documented in a November, 2001 report entitled Ex-Offenders and Employment:  A Review of Maryland’s Public Policy a Look at Other States.   The report found that Maryland has 26 laws that either bar the employment of ex-offenders or require or encourage background checks that operate as bars to employment.

The report also found that, although none of the six other states studied has successfully balanced the policy concerns of recidivism and rehabilitation in relation to ex-offenders and employment, Maryland law could be revised to allow the expungement of all records not involving convictions, regardless of the subsequent behavior of the defendant, and to prohibit the reporting and consideration of any records that do not relate to convictions.

Since 2002, The Abell Foundation has supported HPRP in providing direct legal representation to nearly 400 Baltimore City ex-offenders annually, helping them to expunge eligible convictions from their records.  Although expungement is a limited option for most ex-offenders, individual representation provided a wealth of information about the barriers ex-offenders face in seeking employment and led to the introduction of legislation seeking to allow the expungement of nuisance crimes.