After spending 10 years in prison, Simpson struggled to find housing where she was welcome and could afford it. For four months after her release she lived under a highway overpass while she saved wages from her work at a chicken plant — about $5,000 — to buy a road-worn Lexus with over 200,000 miles on it.

Simpson is one of an estimated 70 million to 100 million people in this country with a criminal record. The number is hard to pin down because of differences in how states keep records. Simpson’s record has placed a laundry list of barriers in her path to fully rejoining society.

But this past fall Simpson and other organizers convinced the Atlanta city council to pass an ordinance banning discrimination based on a person’s criminal history. By making formerly incarcerated people a legally “protected class,” it’s their hope that they can pull down some of the collateral consequences that hamper life for those who completed their sentences, but who remain second-class citizens in myriad ways.

“We're asking for an opportunity literally to just live, and to just be able to grow as people and to really participate in society,” Simpson told me recently.

Most barriers after prison are employment-related. In a 2021 report, the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center — a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank — found that 72 percent of all post-release restrictions impact job opportunities. For example, people seeking work in trades bound by occupational licenses, like cosmetology or addiction counseling, are subject to stringent background checks — though some states have loosened these rules in recent years.

There have also been some changes around hiring for jobs without licensing. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than half of states in the U.S. have passed some version of “ban the box” legislation. These laws aim to remove conviction and arrest history questions from job applications, and to delay background checks until after a job interview. The hot labor market in recent years has also helped somewhat, as businesses desperate for workers have warmed to hiring people with criminal records. Despite all of that, formerly incarcerated people have much higher rates of joblessness than the general public.

Read the full article about housing and job discrimination by Jamiles Lartey at The Marshall Project.