By Katie Mitchell / Wear Your Voice*,
Swap one of the current brands you buy from for one of the companies featured below.
Ironically nicknamed Land of the Free, the United States is the world’s #1 jailer. The U.S. represents only five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s inmates are here. By the close of 2010, America had 1,267,000 people behind bars in state prisons, 744,500 in local jails, and 216,900 in federal facilities—more than 2.2 million people in total. 1 in 5 inmates are low level drug offenders, and Black people are 10 times more likely to be incarcerated for drugs than whites despite using drugs at roughly the same rates.
Those who are released from prison are often still under state surveillance, and as a consequence, they are subject to discrimination that contributes to America’s 76 percent recidivism rate. Most people who were incarcerated are required
to have employment as a condition of their parole. Employers, however, are allowed to screen people with felonies during the application process, making it difficult for formerly incarcerated folks to get a job and feed themselves and their families.
Below is a list of companies that work to empower the formerly incarcerated with training, jobs, and skills that they can take into the job market. Supporting companies that are doing the work of getting people who have been incarcerated a chance to work is necessary for our communities. Swap one of the current brands you buy from for one of the companies featured below. You’ll get a great product that is securing the economic health of vulnerable members of our society.
READ MORE at https://afropunk.com/2017/10/companies-employ-formerly-incarcerated/
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