BANNING THE BOX IN NEW JERSEY: A SMALLS TEP TOWARD ENDING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST EX-OFFENDERS

The cost of recidivism bears heavily on our society. On a national level, approximately 43% of prisoners return to lockup within three years of being released. In the last two decades, the cost of maintaining the corrections system has quadrupled to approximately $52 billion per year across the states, thus putting an extremely large burden on taxpayers. This reality has spurred a multitude of proposed solutions to reduce the likelihood that ex-offenders will return to a life of crime. Ban the box legislation has been one of these solutions, and it has been adopted by lawmakers at state and local levels across the country. In March 2015, such a law went into effect throughout the Garden State. View More