Where are Real Jobs for Felons? I am 30 something year old black woman and had quite a run in illegal behavior in my early twenties. My years then were about undermining authority and surviving by any means. My luck ran out and I served time on a federal marriage fraud case, it could have been much worse. I have served my time, obtained gainful employment and also released from a four year sentence of supervision. Over the last Five years I have gotten away from the scrutiny that most state cases/crimes are subjected to during job seeking. State cases can be found easily by Motor Vehicle reports, but Federal cases by fingerprints ((Maybe useful for job seekers)). However my newest dilemma is not finding employment it is finding desirable employment. My life experience in and out of prison has given me a vision to prevent others from traveling down the same road, assist in decreasing recidivism, and ultimately give back in some capacity. However, in order to impact at-risk individuals they are usually tied to an Educational / Correction / and Governmental facility which Fingerprinting process is a minimum standard as well as some sort of Degree in the field.
I am over qualified for these service positions in life experience. In my opinion and experience most Case Managers/Probation Officers/Correctional Officers etc. are Under-qualified due to the lack of real life experience and cannot fully understand the lifestyle language. How can you help someone you don't understand? Who better to assist in these positions than a rehabilitated felon?? I'm out of ideas of how I can give back for a living... please help

First, email addresses are NOT allowed to be posted on AMHD. This is not a chat site.

This is more a discussion than anything else. Attorneys represent criminals without having a criminal record. My sister works for Child Protective Services, yet she has never abused a child.

Sometimes early mistakes follow "us" forever.

What is your education that would qualify you jto be a case manager/probation officer/correctional officer? If you have the credentials you can always apply.

The economy is rough. I lot of people can't find DESIRABLE employment. I know Attorneys who are working as Paralegals at a greatly reduced rate of pay.

Have you applied to have the charges removed from your record? It varies State to State.

Forget any case management or Probation officers, for many reasons, first these are prized positions and hard to get, they have 200 or more applications for any one position. Only those with top test scores get to even interview for them. Almost always they take experience in the system to get a job.

Correctional officer, forget it, the Federal case will stop you from carring a weapon all correctional officers have to be able to qualify and carry a weapon ( although they almost never do, they have to qualify to)

How about trying to establish a non profit working with them teaching them life skills or the such.

But I agree times are hard, and not sure what you see as desirable, but then a correctional officer is often the lowest paying job around ( good benefits) but low pay,
Around here often 10 dollars a hour to start.


Also while they normally do run a criminal record history when they do fingerprints, but they are two different things.

1. Fingerprints, check who you are, your ID. They run prints against other prints done in years past, to see if they were ever done using other names.

2. Background check, they are done using your name and other ID info, such as social security number, or fingerprint number, and they show all of your criminal history that is not motor vechile crimes.
There is no requirement to run finger prints to do this. Any job can do this just using the info on your job application.