Justice-Impacted Students
Your identities can be an important part of your career, and may influence how you explore your options, prepare your story, decide on opportunities, or approach your career goals. TC NEXT is dedicated to providing information and resources that can support your career development as a justice-impacted student. The below resources can help you answer questions regarding identity disclosure, evaluating potential employers, the job search, understanding your legal rights, and more. For additional resources, use your TC credentials to access the Resource Library on the Career Resource Portal.
Students who are justice-impacted may identify themselves using a variety of terms. Language is ever-changing, and we have selected justice-impacted for this community page as the one we feel best reflects this community at this time. Here is some information on the different terms people may use:
- Returning citizens – a technical term, meant to replace the stigmatized words “ex-con,” “ex-felon,” etc., is an individual who is returning home after being in prison.
- Justice-impacted people / Justice-involved – SOOP (The State Opioid Oversight Project) defines justice-involved populations as individuals who have contact or interaction with courts, jails, or prisons including drug-courts, child protection cases, probation, jail, prison, and workhouse.
- System-impacted people – a person who is legally, economically, or familially affected in a negative way by the incarceration of a close relative. System-impacted also includes people who have been arrested and/or convicted without incarceration.
Diversity Employers is a print and digital publication offering a job board with career opportunities that specifically target new college graduates of diverse backgrounds in every industry nationwide.
Established by the Legal Action Center in 2001, the National Helping Individuals with criminal records Re-enter through Employment (H.I.R.E.) Network is both a national clearinghouse for information and an advocate for policy change.
Getting Talent Back to Work is focused on “building better opportunities for people with criminal records”, including providing a list of companies which have pledged to give employment opportunities to applicants with a record.
The Re-entry Handbook: Reentering your community can be more manageable when you’re aware of services and resources available to help.
- The Re-entry Handbook contains 3 checklists:
- for before your release,
- just after you return home,
- and later, when you’re a bit more settled in.
- It also includes additional information in specific areas where you may have questions or be looking for tools available to you. Be sure to review these lists, and discuss them and questions you may have with your Case Manager, Bureau Social Worker, or Reentry Affairs Coordinator.
- Reentry can be a complicated process – others have felt the same way. But many of them were able to overcome this and have succeeded in finding work, supporting themselves and their families, and more. We want you to achieve the same. You are a member of your community, and we want to help you transition home and succeed.