The way state Sen. Martín Quezada sees it, people with criminal records have two options when they reach a job-application box asking if they've been convicted of a felony.

Neither is good.

"They can either lie on that application, which never turns out well, or they can be honest, and … those applications are often discarded," Quezada, D-Glendale, said.

The senator wants to make Arizona the latest of several states to pass "Ban the Box" or "fair-chance" laws, which eliminate criminal-record questions from job applications and postpone background checks until later in the hiring process.

Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order to that effect in 2017, giving applicants for state jobs a chance to make a first impression before revealing their records.

Arizona cities including Phoenix, Tempe and Tucson have similar policies for government jobs.

Quezada's Senate Bill 1437, which the Senate Commerce Committee voted Thursday to advance to the full Senate, would extend the mandate to private employers. It also would delay the review of an applicant's criminal background further, prohibiting public and private employers from asking about or considering an applicant's record until after making a conditional offer.

"Studies have shown that if applicants aren’t disqualified based on that initial check box of having a criminal conviction, the callbacks for jobs increase and the offers of employment increase," Quezada said at the Commerce Committee hearing.

"It gives applicants an opportunity to be judged on their merits."

'An opportunity to explain themselves'

Quezada's bill makes exceptions for jobs that require fingerprint-clearance cards, such as teaching and child-care positions, as well as for cases where an applicant's criminal conviction directly relates to the open position.

Landlords reviewing tenant applications would follow the same process.

"Here in Arizona, we’ve done a lot of good work to reform our criminal-justice system, but that reform goes beyond simply … dealing with our courts and our corrections system," Quezada told senators Thursday.

"The best way to ensure that an individual is successful after they leave the unfortunate situation of being incarcerated is to ensure that they find housing and to ensure that they find a job."

Brendan Mahoney, general counsel for Phoenix-based manufacturing business HBI International, provided a case study for senators, saying the company voluntarily removed the criminal-record question from its applications about 10 years ago.

"It took exactly 10 minutes of work," he said. "It was a word-processing function to delete the question from the application and move it to the interview questions. That was it. But the result has been phenomenal."

About 15 of HBI's 60 employees have past felony convictions, he said, primarily for crimes involving drugs when they were young adults.

The company has turned down applicants whose convictions were relevant to the jobs for which they were applying

"Nothing has changed about how we hire people," Mahoney said. "It’s just we now have a person sitting across the table who has an opportunity to explain themselves."

'Imprisonment crisis' a drain on state dollars

Dianne Post, an attorney with the Arizona Justice Alliance, also testified in favor of the bill, telling senators she'd worked with many former inmates who'd "made it very clear how difficult it is to rebuild a life when they’re coming out of prison."

"Getting a job and having a place to live are two very important parts of that," she said.

Post said that, when she was a parole officer decades ago, "the criminal-justice philosophy at that time was prevention and rehabilitation." But in the years since, "that philosophy has shifted to retribution and punishment."

"That has resulted in the destruction of millions of lives, expenditures of billions of dollars to achieve a negative result," she said. "We need to reverse this disastrous ship."

A 2018 report issued by bipartisan political group FWD.us backs up her statements.

The organization analyzed about 500,000 Arizona Department of Corrections records spanning 30 years, concluding that the state had an "imprisonment crisis."

It found that as of 2010, more than 350,000 Arizonans had a current or prior felony conviction.

"The imprisonment crisis removes thousands of people from the economy and costs taxpayers more than $1 billion each year — preventing the state from investing in other critical priorities like education, social services for families, and child safety," the report said.

A burden on business?

Nearly every lawmaker on the Commerce Committee applauded Quezada's goal of reintegrating former convicts into society. But they disagreed on whether his bill was the best way to achieve it.

Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, said she supported the bill because it "provides an opportunity for those who have a blemish … on their record" to have "some kind of interaction between them and an employer before the disclosure of the criminal record."

"That first impression that you make is so valuable," she said. "It really sets the tone."

Sen. J.D. Mesnard, R-Chandler, said he would personally "love to have employers set aside a person’s past for the sake of round one," but "when we start mandating it on businesses, especially without exception to the size or type of the business … I’m hesitant."

Mesnard said he worried the legislation would force a business owner who already knows he or she doesn't want to hire former inmates to waste time.

"I’m an incrementalist," he said. "I feel like we should do everything possible to … let folks get there on their own."

Sen. David Livingston, R-Peoria, opposed the legislation entirely, saying it would create "a very big burden on business owners" and landlords, particularly those who already don't consider criminal records a deal-breaker.

Changing employer perspectives

Quezada said he didn't "want to shy away from the fact that yeah, we are going to ask employers to change the way they do business in some respects to this."

But he disagreed about the size of the burden the legislation would create, saying the purpose of the legislation was to make those employers opposed to considering people with criminal records rethink their hiring practices.

Sen. Tony Navarrete, D-Phoenix, said he thought the legislation would "remove barriers for everyday Arizonans who are trying to catch up with our outdated and antiquated criminal-justice laws."

"That’s something I’ve heard a lot of support for from our small-business community, our construction community, various communities that have come to the Capitol advocating for some type of reform," he said.

Sen. Tyler Pace, R-Gilbert, was torn, saying Quezada had "started with a very large ask" but that he didn't believe the bill should die.

"Let’s remove the box off of all applications for businesses of a certain size, allow it to be asked at any point after that, and then fight the battle for rental properties later," he recommended.

After Quezada said he would be open to compromising on the scope of the bill in order to build bipartisan support, the committee voted 5-3 to advance the bill to the full Senate.

Reach the reporter at maria.polletta@arizonarepublic.com or 602-653-6807. Follow her on Twitter, @mpolletta.

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