When individuals did secure employment, they were often at low-paying jobs with poor benefits, which were usually the only ones available to applicants with a criminal record. Their criminal records followed them wherever they applied for work. 

• “There are places that don’t do the background checks, and they’re not great places because they don’t offer health insurance. There’s no guaranteed direct deposit with your check. They give you checks that bounce, or they want to pay you under the table.”
• “I don’t know how many applications [I sent out]. And I even had some pretty good interviews, but they all always asked [about my record].” 

Some individuals could not go back to their prior line of work, and others found that certain professions were closed off to them entirely. Many made the difficult decision to not disclose their records in order to obtain employment.

• One woman who found work cleaning people’s homes shared that, when she really needed the money, she would lie about her record to get a job. She shared: “I tell ’em, yeah. Sometimes, I tell ’em no. It just depends on if I was in real bad need of money.”
• “…I was basically told by the [state’s Public] Works [Department] here in [state] to lie on my applications and don’t tell them that I’m a felon. Well, as soon as I did that, of course, I was able to find employment.”