Second Chance Hiring: An Economic and Ethical Necessity Mitch Pearlstein, PH.D. in this interview, recorded Dec.1st, 2025, Mitch Pearlstein discusses the themes of his latest Book ,Second Chance Hiring: An Economic and Ethical Necessity, puiblished Nov. 13, 2025, Bloomsbury Pub. Mitch Pearlstein has a Doctorate in Education and is a Senior Fellow, Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank, located in Minnesota. saac Shainblum (00:02) Good afternoon, welcome to Voices from the Other Side. ⁓ This is Isaac and I have a very special guest today. am honored to mention that we have Mitch Pearlstein here. good afternoon Mitch, welcome to Voices from the Other Side. I'm especially fond of your style of darkness such as ⁓ Each of us is more than the worst mistake we have made. Could you elaborate on that a little bit, please? Yeah, I would like to say that the line is original to me. I read it someplace. I'd like to think I also gave the guy credit. We have all made mistakes. And some people, when they make a mistake, they wind up in prison. And other people, when they make a mistake, just about as serious and do not. In each instance, people are better than their worst moments. Okay. Thank you. That's Can you that better? Not to throw a lot of statistics at you this afternoon. ⁓ I'm sorry? I said sure. It's been consistently reported and again I'm sort of semi quoting from your book, your wonderful book, Second Chances. it cover to cover. More than 95 % of all people currently incarcerated nationwide will eventually be built. be released. With the US in need of more workers, ex-offenders are struggling to find good jobs after paying their debt to society. Why do believe this is so difficult for ex-offenders eager to work? ⁓ generalist ⁓ I've written a bunch of books but on family breakdown on education questions and I have only become involved with questions of second chance hiring in the last five six years or so once I joined the board of directors of a very good re-entry program in Minnesota the redemption project and why is difficult? People's fears the problems that people who have been in prison have and that they bring to a possible job, mental illness, lack of adequate literacy skills, math skills, mental health problems of all sorts. I don't think we acknowledge that well enough. And from the side of society employers, fear, fear of crime. fear if a company really wants to be of service and hire as many people as appropriate who have been in prison, they wonder quite frequently if they have the wherewithal, the resources, the services to help people coming out of prison who need help. So it is very difficult. My overall point where all this is concerned is that yes, it is indeed Usually very difficult for a person to come out of prison and get on with their lives in a good way It is possible. It is done every day. Yeah, it is very very difficult every day. Mm-hmm. Okay Thank you for that. Yeah, and a little not a correction but My I'm really come from a field of mental health behavioral health and I'm a peer support specialist And but I many years with this with a podcast here and I got really involved with Reentry and I actually have a friend of mine and incarcerated and she's in there for quite a while And I had been trying to keep in touch with her and send her goodies and things Anyways Thank you for that very interesting For the last 25 years you've written professionally as president of the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank you founded in Minneapolis in 1990. You were also a speechwriter for C.Peter, I think it's McGraw, when he was president of the University of Minnesota as well as for Al Quay. He was governor. Yeah, governor. And you were kind of a more, would you say you're more of a journalist? You would say a generalist kind of. I call myself a generalist now. I've been a reporter though not for a terribly long period of time in upstate New York and Binghamton. I was an editorial writer for four years for the Pioneer Press in St. Paul. I describe my style of writing as academically informed journalism. So at root, ⁓ I like to view myself as a journalist, but I'm academically trained. I have a doctorate in education. ⁓ I like reading the kinds of things that people generally don't like reading. And I try to write conceptually. Which is a fancy way of saying I like writing about ideas as opposed to events let's say. Well I would envision, yeah sorry. No problem, that's it. I would envision that your books would be in universities and that sort, is that true academically? One would hope the best way of getting to them is through Amazon. He's sticking my name, Mitch Pearlstein, and about four of them will show up. They're in great supply at Amazon, and they're usually overpriced. If anybody is interested in ⁓ getting one or three of them, if they can get in touch with me, I can do it usually easier, cheaper than Amazon. But...
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