Strong words, perhaps? They're not my words, but that's one view of how the City of Philadelphia's legislation to promote hiring of ex-offenders would affect the city.

In the wake of a spate of shootings of police officers, the Philadelphia City Council passed the bill unanimously yesterday:

Democratic mayoral candidate Michael Nutter scored a legislative victory yesterday in advance of his expected win at the polls Tuesday when City Council sent his bill to promote hiring of ex-offenders to Mayor Street.

Street is expected to sign the bill, which offers businesses a credit of up to $10,000 annually on business-privilege taxes for each ex-offender hired for up to three years. Those jobs must pay 50 percent above minimum wage.

In return, the ex-offender must pay 5 percent of wages back to the city, and the business must provide a total of $5,000 over three years for education and training and benefits on par with other full-time employees.

Nutter, in a statement, thanked Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr., who introduced the bill on Nutter's behalf, and other Council members, who unanimously approved it.

"This legislation will help to tackle Philadelphia's crime emergency by helping those who have made bad choices get back into the workforce," Nutter said.

Although Street had called for further review to improve the bill, Managing Director Loree Jones yesterday said Street would sign it.

I think that's highly questionble, because it assumes that employers will offer employment and released ex-offenders will seek it. Part of the difficulty is that employers don't want to hire ex-convicts, and for very rational reasons. This study examines many of them.

....in many states employers can be held liable for the criminal actions of their employees under the theory of negligent hiring. Legally, negligence is premised on the idea that one who breaches a duty of care to others in an organization or to the public is legally liable for any damages that result (Glynn 1988). Under the theory of negligent hiring, employers may be liable for the risk created by exposing the public and their employees to potentially dangerous individuals. As articulated by Bushway (1996), "..employers who know, or should have known, that an employee has had a history of criminal behavior may be liable for the employee's criminal or tortuous acts." Thus, employers may be exposed to punitive damages as well as liability for loss, pain, and suffering as a result of negligent hiring. 3 Employers have lost 72 percent of negligent hiring cases with an average settlement of more than $1.6 million (Connerley, et. al. 2001).4 The high probability of losing coupled with the magnitude of settlement awards suggest that fear of litigation may substantially deter employers from hiring applicants with criminal history records.

It strikes me, though, that because of the voluntary nature of an incentive based system, an employer who availed himself of the benefits could not claim that as a defense. (Which begs the question of whether or not the city could impose ex-convict hiring requirements, in a manner analogous to affirmative action.)

An interesting public policy question is whether it is fair for governments to establish what amounts to a preference for hiring criminals over law abiding citizens. And what about the obsession with having employers run criminal background checks? Isn't this a bit of a contradiction?

Michael Washburn (writing in the leftish alternative Philadelphia City Paper) looked at some of these factors, and warned that the consequences could be dire. He began with the case of a woman who "unwillingly drew the attention" of a ex convict hired as a bouncer, who followed her outside, and eventually bound, raped and murdered her:

...Her devastated family filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the bar owners, citing them for negligence, since they knew about Littlejohn's rap sheet -- which included violent crimes -- but hired him anyway. Now, New York City has a law on the books that provides for the closure of bars, clubs and other institutions that fail to screen job applicants and keep out criminals and ex-convicts.

Many ex-cons become murderers. Under PREP, the kitchen staffs that prepare your food, the school personnel who oversee your children from day to day, the hospital workers who are at your side during life-and-death procedures and even the lower-echelon staff at your office will include employees who have intentionally hurt innocent people. It is likely that criminals involved in data entry will gain access to your Social Security, bank account and credit card numbers, along with other sensitive data.

Employers could hardly be getting more confusing signals. On the one hand, an industry of lawyers, analysts and security services sternly tells them about their duty to employees and to the public, and outlines steps that the bosses can take to make sure that background checks overlook nothing. On the other hand, Nutter's campaign tells consumers and employers of the need to be "compassionate" and try to reintegrate the hardest-luck cases back into society. Never mind that the region is awash with Iraq War veterans who deserve to be rewarded for their heroic service -- let's be compassionate to the muggers and child molesters, Nutter's campaign tells us.

The hypocrisy of the liberals has gone a step further, and their "compassion" stands to turn Philadelphia into a hellhole of empowered criminality. The employers lose their business, and you may very well lose your life.

Over the years, I've had a lot of friends who spent time in the joint, and I don't think I'm prejudiced against anyone simply because he has been convicted of a crime. But common sense is involved. When I ran a nightclub, one of my best and most trusted employees was your basic stereotype ex-con who had done time, belonged to gangs, and looked the part. Very scary looking, beefy dude -- the kind of guy who would smile if someone was dumb enough to hit him, because that meant he was allowed to have fun hitting back. I trusted him with the keys to the place and large amounts of cash, and there was never the slightest problem. We became close friends, and when he was eventually arrested for stuff unrelated to the business I was very sad, and did my best to get his sentence reduced. But that sort of thing comes down to personal trust, and it cannot reduce itself to bureaucratic rules and government incentives.

So, while I'm not prejudiced against convicts per se, I am skeptical about creating government incentives to hire them. Such decisions should be voluntary individual ones based on trust, not bureaucratic and impersonal decisions made by companies that want city kickbacks or want to curry favor with politicians.

While I'm not an insider in the Philadelphia city government, I find myself wondering whether a system of paying money to hire people might also encourage corruption.

I'd hate to think that crooked politicians might pay crooked businesses to hire crooks and then get kickbacks for it, because that would be, well, crooked!