This paper has five key objectives:
- Describe the heightened demand for workers in the health care industry and opportunities for hiring qualified workers with criminal records.
- Review employer concerns, barriers to employment, desistance policy goals, and strategies for incorporating desistance into criminal background check policies.
- Document existing recruitment and retention challenges in the health care sector more broadly, along with additional challenges that individuals with criminal records may face.
- Summarize existing estimates on individuals with criminal records in the health care industry and identify where this group drops out in the background check process.
- Provide strategies to improve recruitment, assessment, and retention of individuals with criminal records in direct care work, including the potential advantages of a collaborative and comprehensive model.