20 years later and still paying for a crime committed in his youth. Read “Boxed in: How a Criminal record keeps you unemployed for life” here: http://www.thenation.com/article/177017/boxed-how-criminal-record-keeps-you-unemployed-life#

With over 30% of America’s adult population having a criminal record, how can an employer find enough candidates to fill all its openings if it excludes people with criminal records from the applicant pool? The answer is simple: It can’t. Employers need to consider all applicants and exclude people with criminal records only when it is a legitimate disqualification. Read more at: http://www.diversityinc.com/legal-issues/how-to-fairly-hire-applicants-with-criminal-records/

How easy it is to be labeled a "sex offender" in Georgia. ONE day in 1996 the lights went off in a classroom in Georgia so that the students could watch a video. Wendy Whitaker, a 17-year-old pupil at the time, was sitting near the back. The boy next to her suggested that, since it was dark, she could perform oral sex on him without anyone noticing. She obliged. And that single teenage fumble wrecked her life. Because the boy was 3 weeks shy of his 16th birthday, she was arrested, charged with sodomy and required to register as a sex offender. Almost 20 years later, Wendy is still treated as a perverted predator.

Georgia has more than 17,000 registered sex offenders where it is fiendishly hard for anyone browsing the registry to tell the dangerous ones from the ones who are absolutely no threat at all! In 2008, the Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board assessed a sample of offenders on the registry and concluded that 65% of them posed little threat, 30% were potentially threatening, and only 5% were clearly dangerous. Read the rest of Wendy’s story here: http://www.economist.com/node/14164614