I spot a very tall man with broad shoulders. He’s sporting a sharp pinstriped suit, sunglasses and Bluetooth piece on his ear. He’s standing on the sidewalk, staring straight ahead, like a security guard. We are outside a job fair, and I assume he works there.

Tony Scarbough, 45 and from Los Angeles, turns out to be an ex-offender.

He’s at the job fair because he has spent the past ten years trying to get a job with the city or state, but without success.

Tony used to do drugs and alcohol and got in trouble with the law a number of times. His convictions include possession of cocaine, receiving stolen property and grand theft auto.

In 1994 Tony was released from prison and has been clean ever since. “I’ve been drug and alcohol free for about thirteen years,” he says. He turned his life around, getting married in 1998, having a child and holding down a job at a retail store.

Yet despite his efforts to get his life together, the felony convictions still hang over his head.

“I go to church, I’ve been presently employed, I pay taxes, I own a home, I have kids, and still this thing’s been hovering over me like a shadow,” he says.

A politician helped Tony get the retail job when he got out of prison. He’s been working at a store ever since and is now a manager. He doesn’t want me to write the name of the store. But he wants more. He says he wants a job with a pension, good benefits and the chance to go back to school and expand his career. He says the hours he must work in retail prohibit him from getting more education.

Tony has applied for state and city jobs, which would give him the opportunities he says he feels he deserves, but he hasn’t been able to land any of them. He says he thinks it’s because of his record.

Every time Tony fills out a job application he must write down all of his convictions, from cocaine to grand theft auto.

“I hate to have to list my convictions on the paper because they judge you before they actually get to know the person,” he says. “That was fourteen years ago. I have been a productive member of society for fourteen years. I haven’t seen the inside of a jail. I haven’t had a drunk driving ticket. I pay taxes. I vote. As an ex-felon I can vote, but I can’t get a job. I don’t understand that.”

Another ex-offender, Ricco Daughtrey, got out of prison in 1998. He tried to get a job but couldn’t because of his record. “I was discouraged to the fullest,” he told me last year. “I said ‘forget it’ and ended up going back to the streets, back to the marijuana, back to gangs.”

Daughtrey also went back to jail, he said. He described the next nine years, trying to make it on the outside, but getting sucked back into gangs, drugs and jail. Daughtrey now works at Los Angeles International Airport as a manager at a parking garage and has stayed out of jail for the past four years.

Ex-offenders just need a second chance, he said. “I’m a proven example of that,” he said. “Here is a guy who used to sell drugs and steal to get money, now walks around LAX with loads of money in my pocket.”

After Tony tells me his story we walk around the job fair in Exposition Park. At each booth we approach, Tony asks if they hire ex-offenders. California Highway Patrol? No. Los Angeles Fire Department? No. Sheriff’s Department? No. The best answer Tony gets is when a couple companies’ human resources person isn’t sure which crimes are not permissible, and he should apply just in case.

Kenna Ackley with L.A.’s Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Committee told me last year that most employers do not want to hire ex-offenders for a number of financial and social reasons, including that the other employees may feel unsafe.

“I think some of them may be a little fearful about being known as an employer who hires ex-offenders,” she said. “It’s not a popular kind of position to be in politically and perhaps economically. If they’re a public company and they’re responsible to their shareholders, being known as the company that hires a lot of ex-felons, etc., etc., might not be the way they want to go.”

California State Assemblyman Mike Davis, whose office was co-sponsoring the fair, tells me and Tony that ex-offenders must “focus on their area of strength.”

“It is important that we focus individuals who have had contact with the law in areas that openly employ you,” he says, giving the entertainment industry and the University of Southern California as examples of places ex-offenders can find jobs. “Even if you don’t have a record, if you can’t sing, you are not going to be able to be a recording artist. Doesn’t have a thing to do with your record, it has to do with your skill and your strength…There are opportunities to make a great living if you focus on your strength.”

Civil rights activist Naji Ali is also at the fair, but unlike Assemblyman Davis, he says he thinks the lack of job opportunities is a “very serious” issue for ex-offenders. He is also an ex-offender—he was released on parole fifteen years ago—and has found it difficult finding a job. He now runs Project Islamic Hope but acknowledges that there are many jobs that aren’t available to him because of his record.

Ali says the barrier to jobs contributes to the recidivism rate among ex-offenders. “It’s a revolving door…because once men and women come home from prison they can’t find the work that they want to do.”

Ali says he thinks that unless someone committed a heinous crime like murder or rape, he or she should be free after serving his time. “Once you complete your debt to society, you should be given a clean slate and a chance to start your life over.”

As for Tony, he says he’ll keep applying to jobs and will try to take Assemblyman Davis’s advice about focusing on his strengths. But it looks like he won’t be getting a clean slate to work with anytime soon.

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Hanna Ingber Win is a staff writer and editor at P+P. Pushing Off is a column of her dispatches from twentysomething land. Contact her at hingber@gmail.com. Image: job fair in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, 10-20-07. Thumbnail: craig swanson.