Can AI can help job-seekers facing one of the hardest obstacles?

0:00It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, we look at one way AI is changing the job market, and it may not be in the way that you're thinking. Looking for work is always tough, but having a criminal record, well, that makes looking for work even tougher. Noella Sudbury saw it firsthand while she was working for Salt Lake County in Utah to help people get jobs at places that needed workers. And sometimes we could even get people jobs. But then as soon as that background check is run, someone says, sorry, we've got to let you go because of your background. Now, some of those criminal records can be sealed or expunged under most state laws, including for drug charges and retail theft.

0:46But that does not mean the system makes it easy. And Sudbury says the people she talks to have paid the price for their crimes and just want their lives to get back on track. They tell her things like, I want the right to work. I want to be able to earn a wage that can support my family. I want to coach Little League. I want to be like the classroom mom. Helping people clear their records used to be a painstakingly slow and expensive process. But consider this. AI is changing that process. Could it help more people with criminal histories find work?

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2:45It's Consider This from NPR. While it is true that AI is taking some jobs away, it is also providing a new path to employment. NPR's Andrea Hsu reports. Tens of millions of adults in the U.S. have some kind of criminal record. These are felonies, misdemeanors, and in some cases, arrests without a conviction. The kind of histories that scare employers away. Virginia Mireles knew she looked terrible on paper. Five felony records, all due to my drug addiction. Mireles grew up in poverty, started using heroin at 14. For two decades, she cycled in and out of the Arizona prison system. She says while you're behind bars, you think a lot about how you're going to change.

3:29But then you get out. And you can't rent a house under your own name. You can't find a job that's going to help you support your family. So now you just feel terrible about yourself because, you know, your family's looking at you like I thought you were going to be different. It's a problem that Noella Sudbury is obsessed with solving. How do you help someone with a criminal record get a job? It's really hard. Years ago, as a public defender in Utah, Sudbury saw a justice system unresponsive to the root causes of people's problems. Mental health, substance use, trauma, poverty. Over and over, she saw people who had served their time struggle to find their way.

4:10Later, she took a job with Salt Lake County to try to bring change. Employers needed workers. The county wanted to help people get jobs. But their records stood in the way, most commonly drug charges and retail theft. It could be shoplifting. It could be stealing a cup of coffee. It could be something small. But that background's scary to employers, particularly entry-level jobs, retail jobs. Like, I don't want somebody who's dishonest on my team. Now, most states allow for some criminal records, like misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, to be sealed or expunged after a period of time. Some states have passed clean slate laws to make this automatic for low-level crimes and non-convictions.

4:51Those efforts are driven by research showing people are less likely to commit new crimes if they have steady housing and jobs. Sudbury got a sense for how desperately people want those things when she began holding expungement clinics in Utah in 2018. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people came, many of them with their little kids holding hands in line, looking for opportunities. Many told her they wanted to work in health care because in the throes of their addiction, somebody had saved their life. But the process of sealing a record was hard. Just to do the intake, to piece together what was on someone's record, was taking 45 minutes to an hour per person.

5:32Sudbury believed there had to be a better way. She thought, what if we could access the same information the background check companies use? Could I build an app? could I use technology to reduce my time? I just believed it was possible. That was seven years ago. Fast forward to the other week. How are you? It's so good to see you. Noella Sudbury was in Washington, D.C. to raise money for her startup, Rasa Legal, and her AI-powered app. Oh, this is great. I've been following you crazy, so. Oh, thank you so much. Sudbury's vision for automating the intake process is now reality in three states, Utah, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.

6:10You enter some information, answer a few questions, and within a few minutes, you can see your record and what can be expunged. Desmond Lomax, a contractor with the Maryland Department of Corrections, practically begs her, come to Maryland. All of the administrators in Maryland, including the governor, he would love this. In fact, Sudbury's goal is to expand to every state. But it's a huge challenge. There's no national database that AI can just scrape. Every state has its own laws, its own systems and forms. Sometimes counties have their own forms. So it's going to take time and money, but technology is making it possible.

6:48Rasa is also using AI to draft the statements that get sent to court, explaining to the judge why the expungement should be approved. Now, the AI has made mistakes, so their lawyers review everything. But over time, Sudbury says, it's gotten so much better. To now, where it sounds like I wrote it myself. More than 90 % of the petitions they file get approved. And the time it takes to file has been cut by more than half. So RASA can charge just a fraction of what private attorneys charge. Sudbury says legal aid organizations doing this work might be able to help a few hundred people a year. Since we launched in 2022, we are at almost 34 ,000 people now.

7:29Virginia Mireles, the woman with five felonies, is one of them. A few years ago, she met Sudbury at an event and learned about her app. I quickly went home to see what's possible for me and in less than five minutes. She saw her felonies could be cleared. Today, though she could work anywhere, Mireles works for Rasa. She talks with people who've gone through the screening process to see if they want to move forward with expungement. She sees in so many of them a brighter future ahead. You'll never find a harder worker than someone who has something to prove to themselves. She knows you're not always going to get a second chance, so she's not letting this one go.

8:10Andrea Hsu, NPR News. This episode was produced by Megan Lim and Jason Fuller, with audio engineering by Zoe Vangenhoven and Ted Niebuhr. It was edited by Emily Kopp and Ashley Brown. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorney.

8:28It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. This message comes from IXL. With IXL, you get personalized online learning and teaching solutions that help improve achievement, empower teachers, and track progress. This one platform for K-12 helps teachers accomplish what normally would require dozens of other tools. Educators can see how their school is performing in real time to make better instructional decisions. IXL is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts. Learn more at ixl.com slash NPR.