Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Annotation

Cassandra, Amanda. "Study finds NYC employers discriminate against Black ex-felons hardest." New York Amsterdam News [New York] 23 June 2005, Vol.96 ed., Issue 26 sec.: 2-4. EBSCOhost. Web. 26 Oct. 2009. vid=11&hid=8&sid=69372205-d6e7-4a0f-9df8- 5dbccc24c655%40sessionmgr10&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=aph&AN=17439753>.


Friday, October 23, 2009

Double standards with crime.

Along with looking at legal discrimination against felons I would like to do some research on double standards with people who commit crime. Celebrities and extremely wealthy people are the demographics I am particularly interested in. Face it, people with money can afford to hire better lawyers whom are more likely to defend the person successfully. Why should people, just because they can't afford to hire the greatest lawyer in town have to pay more in the long run with fines and punishments for their sentencing. A special circumstance also applies to celebrities; not only do they have money for the best lawyers, but they have a status that no one else has. People are actually, for some odd reason, interested in what is going on in their lives even though they may not know them personally.

Discrimination against felons.

I am interested in looking at whether there is a legal discrimination against felons who are trying to get a job. Everyone has heard about discrimination by gender, race, religious affiliation, and sexual orientation, but what about people who have a felony on their record? After very minor research of reading forums about this particular topic I found that felons are not a protected group, where as minorities and others are. In my perspective this creates a foggy line that somewhat allows discrimination against ex-felons. for example if you have two applicants for a job and one is a little more qualified than the other but has a felony on their record, who do you think the employer would hire? In my reading of several forums I found that countless citizens with felonies have an extremely hard time finding employment. Especially with the unemployment rate still increasing through these economic down times how are these people supposed to find employment so that thy possibly don't have to turn to crime for means to get money just to live a normal life. I understand certain situations where this is not acceptable. For example I would not expect a day care to hire a convicted child molester or sex offender, but for other cases I think that marking yes for a felony automatically labels the applicant as unfitted for the job, at least through the eyes of the employer. I would also like to do some research on whether the type of crime has a specific impact on how the employer looks at the person seeking employment. Obviously someone who commits murder is going to be looked down more upon then someone who was involved in insider trading. All of these factors influence how employers are legally allowed to discriminate against ex-felons. What do you think?