Prisoners and Jobs: Going Straight
囚犯与工作：直截了当
Banning employers from asking about criminalrecords may not work.
禁止雇主要求犯罪记录可能并不奏效。
Dion got his first paying job at 14—which would be admirable, except that he was sellingcrack cocaine.
迪恩在他十四岁时就得到了第一份工作，这本是件极好的事，只可惜他做的工作是销售强效可卡因。
He spent much of his early adulthood bouncing between prison and the streets of Yonkers, inNew York state.
他成年后几年内的大部分时间都辗转在监狱和纽约扬克斯市的街道上。
Then, a few months out of one four-year spell behind bars, he discovered Greyston bakery.
然后，在结束一段四年刑期后的几个月后他找到了格雷斯顿面包房。
Founded by a Jewish engineer-turned-Buddhist monk, Greyston practices “non-judgment”.
其犹太裔创办人以前是工程师，后来信奉佛教，格雷斯顿面包房遵从“不做评判”的原则。
To get a job, people need only provide their names and telephone numbers, and turn up ontime when a vacancy arises.
想要获得工作，人们只需要提供姓名和电话号码，然后在有空缺的时候准时出现就可以了。
Most companies are far more discerning, particularly when it comes to people like Dion.
但大多数公司雇人时都会更加挑剔，尤其是对待像戴恩这样的人。
Perhaps half of America's private-sector employers ask job applicants to declare their criminalrecords, and two-thirds routinely run checks before taking people on.
在美国，可能有一半的私营企业老总在招聘员工时，会问及他们的犯罪记录，三分之二的老总会在雇用员工之前，对他们进行例行调查。
They see it as necessary due diligence.
他们认为这是必要的，是在尽职尽责。
Unfortunately, checks that individual firms believe to be prudent are collectively bad for the7m Americans who have spent time in prison and the 70m with a criminal record—numbersthat may increase if Jeff Sessions, the hardline attorney-general, pushes through toughersentencing rules.
但是，有700万美国人曾经坐过牢，7000万美国人有过犯罪记录，如果强硬的司法部长杰夫·塞辛斯推行更加严格的判刑原则，人数可能还会更多。
Keeping convicts away from jobs may also be harming America.
这些私人企业认为是小心谨慎的做法对这些人来说总体上是坏事。罪犯找不到工作同样可能也会危害美国。
Nearly half of all ex-prisoners re-offend within their first year of release—a share that mightbe lower if more found honest work.
将近一半有前科的人在他们刑满释放一年内会再次犯罪，如果他们中的更多人可以找到一份正当的工作，这个比例可能会降低。
The Centre for Employment Opportunities, a charity, places former convicts in 75-day workprogrammes.
就业机会中心作为一个慈善机构，为那些有前科的人提供了一个75天的工作项目。
Participants are paid daily and receive help to find permanent jobs.
参与者按日领取薪水，并可以通过机构帮助找到一份长期的工作。
A randomised controlled trial in which 977 former prisoners who came through the charity'sdoors either received the full complement of services or very few suggested that theintervention cuts reoffending by 19 percentage points.
一个随机的对照实验以977位进入了这个慈善机构的有前科的人作为研究对象，结果表明，无论他们接受了全部服务，还是只接受了一点儿，这种干预使再犯罪率降低了19%。
In an effort to force employers to change, 26 stateand 150 municipal legislatures have adopted “banthe box” legislation that removes declarations ofcriminal history from job-application forms.
为了设法迫使雇主做出改变，26个州和150个市的立法机构通过了一项立法，把犯罪记录声明的复选框从工作申请表中移除。
On April 1st an executive order by Barack Obama's administration came into effect, banningthe box for all federal jobs, amounting to 250,000 jobs a year.
4月1日，奥巴马政府出台的行政命令生效，为所有联邦岗位取消这个复选框，总数为一年二十五万个工作岗位。
Banning the box may, however, have unfortunate consequences.
然而，这项举措或许也造成了一些不尽如人意的后果。
Two American academics, Amanda Agan and Sonja Starr, have studied the effect of bans inNew Jersey and New York.
Amanda Agan 和 Sonja Star两位美国学者研究了禁令在新泽西和纽约的效果。
They created dummy job applicants with typically black names like Jermaine and Malcolm, andtracked how employers responded to those beside dummy applicants with typically whitenames, such as Cody and Scott.
他们用典型的黑人名字比如Jermaine和Malcolm创造了虚拟的工作申请，对比用典型白人名字比如Cody和Scott制作的工作申请，然后追踪雇主的反应。
They found that whereas black men with invented criminal histories received more responsesfrom companies after the change in the law, black men without criminal histories receivedfewer.
他们发现，自从法律规定改变之后，拥有犯罪记录的黑人反而比没有犯罪记录的黑人得到更多公司的关注。
Presumably, some employers began to interpret black-sounding names as a signal ofcriminality.
大概是一些雇主开始把疑似的黑人名字解读为犯罪的信号。
Two things might, however, persuade employers to change their minds.
但是或许有两件事情能迫使雇主们改变想法。
First, negligent-hiring lawsuits—in which a firm is sued for employing someone who commits acrime at work—are terrifying but rare.
第一，雇佣过失诉讼——公司因为雇佣在工作中犯罪的人而遭到诉讼——虽然后果严重但其实很少出现。
Second, it is just possible that former convicts might be more productive than the othercandidates who apply for a particular job.
其次，有前科的人可能在申请某些特定的工作时比其他候选人更具有竞争力。
Devah Pager, a sociologist at Harvard University, has tracked the performance of 8,000 formerfelons who entered the American army after passing a screening process in the yearsbetween 2002 and 2009.
哈佛大学的社会学家Devah Pager追踪调查了8000位重罪犯，他们在2002年到2009年间通过筛选程序进入了美国军队。
She finds that the ex-cons were slightly more likely to be undisciplined but were alsopromoted unusually quickly.
她发现有前科的人虽然都稍微较不守纪律，但是他们晋升速度却快得出奇。
Is that just a quirk of military culture?
难道这只是军队文化造成的怪相吗?
It would be worth finding out.
这非常值得探寻。
重点词组：
1.criminal records 犯罪记录
例句:The criminal records of all new employeescross your desk.
新雇员的犯罪记录你都看过。
2.came through 渡过;到达
例句:The city had faced racial crisis and come through it.
该市曾面临种族危机，不过已经安然渡过。
3.pushe through 穿过;努力完成
例句:He tried to push the amendment through Parliament.
他力促议会通过该修正案。
4.turn up 打开;出现
例句:Investigations have never turned up any evidence.
调查从没发现任何证据。
5.responded to 回应
例句:The president responded to this with ablistering attack on his critics.
作为对此的回应，总统对批评者们给予了严厉的抨击。
6.executive order 行政命令
例句:An executive order is a directive from the President to other officials in the executivebranch.
行政命令是行政机构中总统对其他官员的指示。
7.apply for 申请
例句:He has to apply for a permit and we have to find him a job.
他得申请一个许可证，而我们得给他找份工作。
8.came into effect 生效
例句:The law came into effect on new year's day.
该法律在元旦开始生效。
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