Gregory Payne, 52, worked for a company that made insurance manuals in Santa Monica, Calif., after graduating from high school. He said he lost the job when he needed to care for a daughter who was ill. “I had two kids and an apartment, and the only fast money I could see was” dealing drugs, he said. He was caught, went to prison, got out, said he couldn’t find work and returned to dealing. He served 16 months, then three years, then another three years and a final four years on top of that. “You keep doing the things that get you the money because you can’t get other jobs,” he said.

About seven years ago, he left his life in Venice, on the Pacific Coast, and moved with a newborn son to California City, about 100 miles inland. He said he hadn’t used or sold drugs since moving, but employers don’t seem any more interested. “Your record hurts you, man,” he said. “In certain cases, I understand. They got a right to say no if you’re stealing and robbing people. I wouldn’t hire you myself. But people who went up for drugs?”

Last year, California passed a “ban the box” law but, at least for Mr. Payne, it came too late. He qualified for federal disability benefits two years ago and said he had no immediate plans to seek work.

Mr. Mirsky is more hopeful that New Jersey’s new law will help him find work.

He says he hopes that he has hit bottom. In November a friend put him in touch with an agency that places workers in short-term jobs. He said that most of the other men also have criminal records. He worked five days at a brewery, a half-day at a coffee plant and a few weeks at the dairy. When that job ended, the company liked him enough to offer him a second temporary job. But on the January morning he was scheduled to start, just minutes before he planned to leave the house, the police arrested him again on a new charge of not paying child support.

This time he went quietly, and the judge let him go. And the dairy, after a few phone calls, said he could start the next day.

It felt, Mr. Mirsky said, like the first lucky break he’d had in more than four years.