Shackled by Freedom: How Workplace Licensing Holds Back Ex-Convicts
After years of drug abuse and crime, Rudolph H. Carey III began to get his life back on track in 2007 when he checked himself into rehab and eventually drew on his experience to become a substance abuse counselor in Virginia.
Then it was all taken away from him. After his company was taken over, his new employer fired him in 2018 due to his 2004 conviction for assaulting an officer while trying to run away from a traffic stop. State law prohibits former offenders like him from working as substance abuse counselors.
Joshua Crawford, Director of Criminal Justice Initiatives for the Georgia Center for Opportunity, acknowledged that the formerly incarcerated are often an unsympathetic group. But he said growing evidence shows that occupational licensing laws fail to improve public safety and sometimes even make communities less safe and less prosperous. “It’s not about benefiting that person as much as leveling the playing field and the benefits to public safety and more productive members of society,” he said.