This was a subject I saw brought up on Twitter just before I left to go on holiday. Would you employ a convicted criminal at your window and door place?

It’s an uncomfortable question to tackle for some. Say you’re looking to hire a new fitter or a new salesmen. You get a ton of CV’s and you start interviewing people. Say the best candidate for job is a cracking future member of your team, but they have a criminal record. Would you still hire them?

Does It Depend On The Conviction?

One of the issues that came to mind was the type of conviction. If it was a lesser one, such as petty theft, would you even give it a second thought. Or would it make you feel uncomfortable to have someone working at your customer’s house with a record for stealing things?

What if it was more serious? Say it was something like drink driving, fraud or worse than that. Would something like that be a complete barrier to you being able to employ them. I think most would initially say yes. The idea of having a criminal work for you and be in your customer’s home might not be all that comfortable for a lot of you. And it’s easy to see why.

Of course the chances of your customers ever finding out that sort of information about that person is slim. It’s not as if they’re going to openly talk about being in prison to prospective customers or while fitting a door for a dear old lady. But it’s that stigma which is pinned to convicted criminals which can be too much for some to look past.

Does Everyone Deserve A Second Chance?

Once a person has done their time for the crime they committed, should that be the end of it? Should society accept that they have done their time, been through rehabilitation through prison and should now be given a second chance?

I guess that would depend on whether you believe some people can genuinely change and put a mistake behind them, or whether a bad person is a bad person for life who can’t change and should therefore not be given the same opportunities as other law abiding people do.

It’s a tough one, and certainly a test for the morality of some people. If I was to give my own opinion on this, I guess that in the end, my sympathy would win over my logical thoughts and probably give someone a second chance who had been in prison. But it would be under certain conditions that would allow the business to keep track of them and their progress. In the end, I’d like to think not all people who make mistakes are bad people, and that many of them can redeem themselves after serving their time. That’s not to say everyone can be saved, some will always be in trouble with the law.

When looking at this issue, there are personal gripes to get over. Things like security. Can you trust an ex-thief in handling money, tools, materials etc. Would you trust that person going into a vulnerable person’s home to do work? You get the idea. If you can get past those mentally and practically, and you think that person could be very good at what they do, then they could still be an asset to your company.

As I’ve said, it’s a tough one to decide, and there will be opposing views. All comments on this are very welcome in the section below.