{"id":10664,"date":"2011-10-17T16:00:35","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T20:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=10664"},"modified":"2011-10-17T15:08:44","modified_gmt":"2011-10-17T19:08:44","slug":"detroit-hosts-controversial-jobs-fair-for-ex-convicts-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=10664","title":{"rendered":"Detroit Hosts Controversial Jobs Fair For  Ex-Convicts Only"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>DETROIT<\/strong> &#8211; In a city where over a quarter of its residents are unemployed, and almost 30,000 of them are either on probation or out on parole, Detroit is looking to put ex-convicts back to work. On Wednesday, the city held an &#8220;Offenders Only&#8221; Job Fair.<\/p>\n<p>Detroit City Council President<strong> Charles Pugh<\/strong> organized the job fair, along with Wayne County Community College and Kelly Services. <strong>Pugh<\/strong>, a former television and radio personality in his first term on the council, has been advocating for job opportunities for convicted felons since he took office in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>The city council has even gone as far as trying to get the question &#8216;Have you ever been convicted of a felony?&#8217; removed from job applications in Detroit.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That group (ex-convicts) has difficulties finding jobs,&#8221; <strong>Pugh<\/strong> said in an interview with Detroit Public Radio on Thursday. &#8220;A lot of times, folks who come out (of jail) and get roadblock after roadblock and door closed, they give up and some of them re-commit crimes because they feel that&#8217;s their only option.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The job fair featured up to 200 potential job openings from employers, and the only people allowed a shot at the jobs had to have a felony on their record. Pugh feels that the lack of job opportunities for felons, including violent felons, leads to recidivism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DETROIT &#8211; In a city where over a quarter of its residents are unemployed, and almost 30,000 of them are either on probation or out on parole, Detroit is looking to put ex-convicts back to work. On Wednesday, the city held an &#8220;Offenders Only&#8221; Job Fair. Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh organized the job [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}