经济学人:囚犯与工作 军队文化的怪象?(1)

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

　　Prisoners and Jobs: Going Straight 囚犯与工作：直截了当

　　Banning employers from asking about criminal records 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 selling crack cocaine¹. 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 adulthood² bouncing between prison and the streets of Yonkers, in New 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 monk³, 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 on time when a vacancy⁴ 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 applicants⁵ to declare their criminal records, 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 prudent⁶ are collectively bad for the 7m Americans who have spent time in prison and the 70m with a criminal record 但是，有700万美国人曾经坐过牢，7000万美国人有过犯罪记录，

　　numbers that may increase if Jeff Sessions, the hardline attorney-general, pushes through tougher sentencing rules. 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 might be 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 work programmes. 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's doors  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，

　　either received the full complement⁷ of services or very few suggested that the intervention⁸ cuts reoffending by 19 percentage points. 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%。

分享到：