Jordan Brand’s Larry Miller Redefines Second Chances For Formerly Incarcerated Through A Workforce And Education Initiative

Chairman of the Jordan brand Larry Miller announced a new initiative that gives second chances to formerly incarcerated persons with criminal pasts–just like him. 

With the help of his daughter, Laila Lacy, Miller launched the Justice and Upward Mobility Project also known as JUMP to push the formerly incarcerated to the top of hiring managers and chief human resources officers’ pool of resumes. Known as a highly ignored demographic, Miller is using his own story of being rejected by then-Big Eight public accounting firm Arthur Andersen when he told the hiring manager the truth about his past. 

Years prior, Miller had spent time in a juvenile correction center for his role in the death of another teenager that he mistakenly thought was from a rival gang. After fighting for years to turn his life around, Miller was concerned his secret would get out. “Every day I’m worried that somehow the story is going to get out and it’s going to destroy everything that I had built up to that point,” he remembered while speaking at Fortune’s Workplace Innovation Summit. 

The work of JUMP is targeted at correcting this wrong while living in digital days, making it harder for the past to be hidden. Supported by corporate partners like NBCUniversal, Cisco, Jobs for the Future, and the Corporate Coalition of Chicago, according to Forbes, the initiative focuses on four pillars of education and employment, advocacy and policy, media and narrative, and coalition building. 

The first pillar of education and employment focuses on creating workforce development programs that showcase opportunities to youths and adults still tied up in the justice system. Data from the Harvard Business Review showed persons that once spent time behind bars have a 77% of returning between two and three years — but not without a trade. The number drops to 30% if that formerly incarcerated person learns a skill and decreases more to six percent if they obtain a bachelor’s degree.

While encouraging participants to foster relationships with employers in the sports, entertainment, and business fields, Miller’s JUMP is committed to working with policymakers at the local, state, and federal level in effort to curate supportive legislation geared toward education and workforce development. It will also help limit barriers for people with arrest records to gain employment, hence giving second chances to those labeled with a negative perception. 

To the former Portland Trailblazer president, the data proves that there is a space for the formerly imprisoned to thrive. “To me, that’s a clear indication that if people are able to learn a trade, get an education—do something that allows them to rebuild their life, take care of their families, and get back to their communities, people don’t go back to jail,” he said. “That should be the goal.”

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