4 Companies Solving the Top Cause of Recidivism

The What, the Why and the How of Employing Formerly Incarcerated People

Rubicon Bakers works with several nonprofit partners to find job candidates and uses an open-hiring policy for walk-in applicants. (Photo by Clara Rice)

We asked several B Corps that use their business to create employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated job seekers about the benefits of their policies, advice for businesses ready to do the same, and what their impacted employees have to say. Learn from their leadership and find resources to open your hiring to be inclusive of those who face barriers to employment.

As of 2017, 70 million Americans — one in three adults — have a criminal record, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). More than 640,000 people are released from prisons each week, but because of the stigma associated with a criminal record, nearly 75 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals are still unemployed a year after release.

The №1 cause of recidivism? Joblessness. This impact cannot be fully understood without understanding the inequality along racial lines. The limiting effect of a criminal record for African Americans to land a job interview is 40 percent greater than for whites with similar histories.

These statistics underline the reality that mass incarceration and the associated stigmas for formerly incarcerated people create a social and economic reality where we all lose. As a result of excluding formerly incarcerated people from the job market, the gross national product misses out on between $78 billion and $87 billion.

Businesses can play a huge role in changing this reality — and stand to gain from creating opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals. Businesses have a place and responsibility to use their economic engine to build a more inclusive economy, and fair chance hiring is one way to be a part of the positive change.

Here are four real-world stories of B Corps leading the way.

Homeboy Recycling | Los Angeles

Homeboy Recycling started in 2011 as Isidore Recycling, a standalone for-profit social enterprise. Founder Kabira Stokes had studied the California justice system while in grad school, and while working for the City of Los Angeles, realized she wanted to build a company that hires people with criminal records. “E-waste recycling is an underdeveloped market. Less than 30 percent of electronics are recycled. This industry seemed like a good fit for people who have maybe been in prison for 20 years, and clear career pathways could be built into work like that.” Employees are paid above minimum wage and have opportunities to learn new skills and increase their salaries, such as in logistics, e-commerce, and driving.

Homeboy Recycling offers permanent employment for people with criminal records.

In 2015, Stokes was looking to scale Isidore and chose to become a part of the Homeboy Industries network 18 months later. “Homeboy Industries is mostly a nonprofit transitional, 18-month job-training program. They have other standalone enterprises, but we are the first for-profit piece that provides permanent employment in the network. A lot of people go through the training program, but at the end of it — no matter how job-ready a person may be — only so many jobs are available to people with felonies on their record. That’s changing now, but more thoughtful hiring is still a huge issue,” Stokes says.

Homeboy Recycling has 24 employees and is working with a cohort of about seven Homeboy Industries training-program interns.

James Ford came to work at Homeboy through the re-entry program HealthRight 360. He started as a warehouse associate and was promoted to recycling lead in April. “Now I am able to provide for myself and, mostly, it’s increased my maturity level to be able to see that I can work and provide for myself. I don’t need the streets to provide for me,” Ford says.

Working with nonprofit partners, such as Homeboy Industries and HealthRight360, is the first step, Stokes says. “You can do it without them, but I wouldn’t suggest it. This way, you are hiring people who have built in support. People are people, and any employee with this built-in support is going to perform better,” Stokes says. “When something happens with an employee, such as housing becomes insecure, the services can support and get them back on track. And we are flexible as we can be to accommodate those life realities.”

The positive effect from fair-chance hiring, in Ford’s experience at Homeboy Recycling, has rippled to his loved ones. “After being [at Homeboy] a while, I had a heart-to-heart with my sister, and I told her all the things. We don’t need the streets, we can provide for ourselves. And she listened, and now she’s at Homeboy Industries in their trainee program.”

Rubicon Bakers | Richmond, California

Andrew Stoloff and Leslie Crary are the co-owners of Rubicon Bakers. “We purchased the business from a nonprofit, Rubicon Programs. They are a large nonprofit and an excellent organization in the East Bay in California. They work with a number of different populations on economic empowerment in general, including re-entry populations,” Crary says.

When Rubicon Programs wanted to sell the business, company officials asked Stoloff to help, and he and Crary decided to purchase the business themselves and run it as a for-profit social enterprise. “We made a commitment to the nonprofit to focus on re-entry, and others, including refugees, formerly or currently homeless, and recent graduates of drug rehabilitation programs. We hire people in need of an entry-level position to get on their feet,” Crary says.

The company has flourished, as it goes through a rapid expansion — hiring 90 people to reach nearly 180 employees in the first half of 2018 — to meet growing demand for its tarts, cakes and cookies. While Rubicon Bakers also works with several nonprofit partners, including Rubicon Programs, to find job candidates and provide social services support for employees, the company also takes in candidates who walk in with an open-hiring policy.

“We’re definitely taking into account the challenges before us, such as having a diverse population from a variety of backgrounds and life experiences, and trying to be as inclusive as we can and make everyone feel welcome,” Crary says. To that end, Rubicon recently hired an experienced human resources director and a new operations manager with the goal of solidifying its onboarding processes.

“Once we hire someone, we do expect them to live up to the standards we have for everyone. Showing up, showing up on time, being productive, being a part of the team and working with other people,” Crary says. “We try to support our employees in meeting our high expectations; we recognize our hires may have more challenging life circumstances.”

CORE Foods | Oakland, California

CORE Kitchen is an extension of founder Corey Rennell’s CORE Foods brand, which has sold CORE Meal bars — made of organic oats, nuts, and fruit — at health-food stores nationwide since 2010. CORE Kitchen opened after a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise $90,000 for kitchen equipment and serves an entirely plant-based menu.

All of CORE Kitchen’s food is prepped and prepared on-site. Everything from chopping zucchini for the popular Thai zucchini noodles dish to cracking coconuts for curry collard wraps has to happen day-of and in-house. The number of free, healthy meals served to homeless families climbed to more than 40,000 in 2015. Team members qualifying for some sort of economic or workforce development program has climbed from around 25 percent in 2011 to almost 75 percent in 2016.

CORE Kitchen

“We hire formerly incarcerated individuals, with a preferential policy for people with life sentences on parole. We take people who have committed the worst of crimes, forgive them completely, and give them a chance to be defined by their dreams, not by their mistakes,” Rennell says.

Rennell and his team are working on a guide to share with other businesses to help them build in hiring people with barriers to employment. He says there are five main steps to take:

Locate your hire. Find a local workforce development training partner (state governments maintain lists of these agencies), send them your job description, and ask whether they provide any training or hiring incentives to you. Meet your hire. Be patient with the difficult life challenges that your potential hire is likely facing and be sensitive that the background may be different than your previous hires. Meet them where they are. Give a job opportunity. CORE Foods establishes a trial period before doing the full-time hire. Be sure to set clear expectations, provide feedback with high emotional intelligence, and strive to set someone up to succeed. Not everyone will be right for a hire — just like anyone who doesn’t face barriers to employment. Hire full-time. Continue to be cognizant of the life challenges and necessary flexibility. Do it again!

“Question your own stigmas,” Rennell says, when asked what advice he has for other business owners. “Are random people from Craigslist always reliable, trustworthy, and excellent performers? No way! Re-entry staff are often better trained, have gone through extensive emotional-intelligence training. It’s not just a kind choice, it’s a better business choice.”

Greyston Bakery | New York City

Greyston Bakery CEO Mike Brady wants to persuade more companies to embrace Open Hiring. His team members were once labeled “unemployable,” but now they are the backbone of a profitable company. “Change and social justice need to be on a faster pace than is currently happening,” Brady says, arguing that adoption of Open Hiring could raise hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty. In a 2015 TED talk with team member Dion Drew, Brady issued a challenge to Fortune 500 companies: If each chooses one vendor that develops the Open Hiring model, in 10 years 100,000 jobs will be created for the seemingly unemployable, returning $750 million to local economies.

Greyston is advancing its Open Hiring model through its Center for Open Hiring, formally opened in 2018. The center is a collaborative learning space that evaluates, improves, and defines best practices; facilitates the widespread adoption of Open Hiring, and supports innovation in the delivery of community programs for employees and neighbors.

“Open Hiring is not a handout or giveaway. It is built on mutual respect, opportunity, a fair chance. It is about communities, jobs, families. It is about responsibility, hard work, commitment, achievement, and the intrinsic worth of every human being,” Brady says. “And we’ve been doing it for more than 34 years. What began as a modest bakery on the edge of New York City with the moniker that ‘We don’t hire people to bake brownies, we bake brownies to hire people,’ has emerged today as a globally recognized brand with an innovative business model and value proposition.”