Breaking Barriers: Overcoming Prejudices and Finding Employment with a Criminal Record

2023-09-26 21:55:34

More and more employers are open to hiring criminal candidates. This is what causes the labor shortage.

This is good news for 14% of the Quebec population who have a criminal history.

Finding a job with a criminal record is not easy. At the Radisson Employment Integration Service (SIER) in Trois-Rivières, workers act as a bridge between their clients and employers.

They are there to overcome prejudices and highlight a candidate’s strengths. It doesn’t matter what his crime is.

“Often the fact of working is in itself a protective factor that prevents recidivism, so the opposite is actually happening. When we allow a person to be on the job market, we also help them to stay on the right track,” underlined the interim coordinator at SIER, Michelle Octeau.

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Most of the time, the experience is beneficial for both parties.

“A Léger survey, which was carried out in 2021 among 500 Quebec employers who gave a job opportunity to people in the criminal justice system, shows that 81% of these experiences were positive,” said the president of the Advisory Committee for adult clientele, Patrick Pilon.

If the labor shortage pushes employers to be more open to hiring candidates with criminal records, the opposite is true when it comes to the housing shortage. On the contrary, landlords have the big end of the stick: they can select their tenants.

“We have people who had a rent increase and who were afraid of not finding housing followingwards because they have a criminal record. They also have difficulty communicating their goodwill to the owners,” indicated the coordinator at Infologis Mauricie, Claude Jalette, who has rarely seen this type of clientele raise the problem before July 1.

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