OKLAHOMA CITY – Joe Brantley had been incarcerated four times before finding his second chance at life with a dream job and a meaningful life of service to others.
The day he got the call from M-D Building Products, Brantley braced against the bitter cold on a busy Oklahoma City street to buy black pants at a thrift store for a low wage job.
“I was going to try to go do whatever I had to do, even if that meant being at Burger King working the register or flipping burgers,” Brantley said. “I just knew I needed something to keep me off the streets and continue to keep me in my children’s lives.”
M-D Building Products offered him a job and that day “changed my life,” he said.
With more than a dozen drug charges behind him, Brantley said he is living out his Christian faith and a life he couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago.
When Brantley isn’t working as a human resource professional and running a post incarceration program, he is busy serving on the Oklahoma Department of Corrections Board. Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed him to the position last year.
Employers are more willing to hire people with felony records as millions of jobs remain unfilled, but barriers to their employment persist, an NBC report found last fall. Oklahoma’s low labor participation rate, 52 workers for every 100 jobs, dovetails a nationwide trend.
As people with felony records look for jobs and employers seek to hire them, there are challenges for both the applicant and the company. State laws restrict many professions for people with a felony record.
In Oklahoma, applicants with certain felony records are prohibited from obtaining numerous professional licenses. A new law, House Bill 3002, eased restrictions to allow nonviolent offenders to obtain occupational licenses if the work is not related to a prior felony conviction.
According to an analysis of Oklahoma Department of Corrections data, Brantley is one of at least 240,000 state residents who have a felony record. The report by the FWD.us Education Fund, a bipartisan think tank focusing on incarceration trends, also indicated as many as 150,000 open jobs are posted every month.
“I know from my own pathway that those individuals are so much more hungry, so much more humble, so much more thankful for the opportunity,” Brantley said. “They’re just so much harder working than someone who’s never been in that situation.”
A 2021 survey from SHRM, the national largest human resources society, revealed 81% of business leaders and 85% of HR professionals believe employees with criminal records perform as well or better than those without them.
Luke Theimer specializes in getting job seekers with felony records a second chance at the Education and Employment Ministry. The nonprofit’s reentry program provides work readiness and social skills, job placement assistance and other services for people rebuilding their lives after incarceration.
Theimer said second chance employees are more grateful for a job because of the constant rejections they get and how much they have to lose without a job.
The consequences of incarceration linger in fines and other court costs with the threat of returning to prison if they do not keep up their payments.
“When someone gives them a second chance, they don’t want to squander it, which is why they make excellent employees and why I believe they are super motivated,” Theimer said.
Employers shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss an applicant without hearing their “story” of incarceration, he said. Even people with a violent crime on their record go through intervention and treatment programs that change their lives.
A criminal background can follow a person for life, he said, but employers should keep in mind “who they are now.”
Theimer also said employers can benefit from the federal work tax credit and a federal bonding program that protects against financial losses.
The Work Opportunity Tax Credit, designed to put hard-to-place people back to work, qualifies an employee hired within a year after a felony conviction or release from prison.
For the first six months of employment, the bond insures up to $5,000 in protection against fraudulent or dishonest acts from the employee. Issues to consider Hiring managers should consider company policies before hiring someone with a criminal background, said employment and labor attorney Frank Frasier, who serves the Lawton area.
No matter how well the interview goes and how hard the employee works, sometimes corporate policies unknown to the manager can mean devastating news for the worker.
Frasier told the story of half a dozen cases where someone “spilled their guts” in an interview about their criminal history and was hired, making more money than they had ever made in a job they considered a dream.
“Then someone comes in from corporate and says, ‘We can’t have them because they failed the background check.’” That’s wrongful termination, Frasier said. Hiring managers should know their company’s policy and complete the background check before making an offer for the job or make the job offer contingent on additional hiring processes being completed.
“That’s drug testing, background check, just whatever it is so, employers don’t get in a huge hurry to fill a space without doing due diligence first,” Frasier said. “That makes attorneys happy.”
According to an article featured on McAfee and Taft’s website by labor attorney Courtney Bru, there are best practices for employers to consider when hiring someone with a criminal record.
Employers can inquire about criminal history, but should stick to questions related to convictions and guilty pleas rather than arrest, which may not indicate a conviction. No contest is not an indication of guilt, she wrote.
Editor’s note: this article is the final installment of a series on the state’s workforce shortage and overlooked labor pools.