In Maine, prisoners are thriving in remote jobs

> Costa says he was also surprised to learn that Thorpe was eligible for remote work while he was in prison. He hired him in June. He figured Thorpe might have trouble clearing the company's background check and he says he prepared himself for that. But since it only searches back seven years and since Thorpe has been in prison for more than a decade, "He is actually our cleanest background check," Costa says.

This just makes me feel like the entire modern process of matching workers to employers is a kafkaesque hell that has negative value.

The boss doesn’t even care that the guy obviously violates the intention of his companies process. Stay in jail long enough and you’ll pass one of our arbitrary steps!

Maybe it's a statute of limitations thing. It sounds like his crimes were non-violent.

> boss doesn’t even care that the guy obviously violates the intention of his companies process

What's the intent of the process?

I remember hiring a few years ago, where a deep background check uncovered an assault charge on a candidate I liked. The charges had been dropped. But they were violent in nature, and this spooked my team.

Fortunately, our GC once did family law. Between me pointing out this was a remote position and our GC showing that the facts of the case looked incredibly like domestic dispute in the midst of divorce, we wound up hiring her. And she was great!

Heck, we might as well just limit jail sentences to 7 years! That will solve a fuck ton of problems, right guys?

The crazy part to me is that people are in prison at all for crimes don't even rise to the level that employers consider a disqualifier.

>the facts of the case looked incredibly like domestic dispute in the midst of divorce,

>we wound up hiring her. And she was great!

Did you try firing her just to be sure?

Within the default biases of the american law enforcement and court systems an assault charge on a woman in divorce dropped usually means almost the opposite of assault charges on a man in divorce being dropped.