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 who knows where the books are? I hope they're in various... Yeah, fair enough. was going to ask you about Maybe a little later. ⁓ Thank you for reminding me about you know And I will kind of remind folks listeners to you on how they can also you run through bloom very Yeah, publisher. Yeah, this is my new publisher Which was going to be my regular publisher Roman and Littlefield a bloom Berry About a year or two ago purchased a good chunk of Roman Littlefield a major US publisher where Three of my previous books are found. Okay. So right in the middle of my writing, we changed publishers. Bloomsbury is recognized as a serious academic publisher among other things. I'm very pleased about that. They're in the United States obviously, but also in England. I don't understand. It was pretty fancy. like it. Yeah. Very good. Awesome. Yeah, I was pretty impressed too. ⁓ And your book, by the way, really spoke to me on many levels. Thank you. You're very nice to say that. ⁓ Presently, also, you are on the board of directors of the Redemption Project Reentry Program of the 20th City, is correct? Right. I'm intrigued. You better understand the connection to Prisoner Reentry, the Redemption Project and the idea for your book. Check Second Chances. ⁓ Second-Chance Hidering and economic and ethicalness. Yes, sorry. Yeah. Last time I'll correct you about anything. I have that down somewhere on the... So I know you explained it, but could you go into that a little more on the congruence with the connection to the Prisoner Reentry and how you wrote the book? That's what the Redemption Project does. Reentry... It started, I'd say about six, seven years ago now, by two friends. I had worked with that center, the American Experiment, one of whom was the chair who wound up in prison, federal prison for 14 months. came to believe that ⁓ the people there were better people, frankly, for the most part, than he thought they would be. And his name was Tim Owens. Dwight Constance and they decided after study to start a re-entry program called the Redemption Project. They had a conception of getting people in business to work directly with people who are in prison and then if everything worked well in those conversations, the ex-offenders when they came out, would have jobs with ⁓ those businesses. Well, that proved to be a little too complicated, getting people, business people into prisons and COVID into fear. So it is a program now where there is mentorship, serious mentorship of business people and non-business people. And what distinguishes the program from other re-entry programs, and my aside here is I have the greatest respect for people who... entry programs. ⁓ the Redemption Project uses the cardinal virtues of wisdom and fortitude and temperance and people who are in prison have an opportunity to be in classes led by people in the Redemption Project. And evidently this is working very, very well. It's still a relatively new program and there aren't great numbers of people who have been involved in the program, but it's several hundred now and their recidivism rate is Remarkably low. That's fantastic. Yeah, so I was on the board And it was on the board because of my involvement with Center of the American experiment ⁓ Nonprofits I knew something about nonprofits that they invited me on And somewhere along the way, several years ago, it was suggested to me that I do a said, uh, sounds good. So I started writing the book and one thing led to another and four years later, here we are. Fantastic. Yeah. It's a great book. Again. Thank you. You're very welcome. Um, by the I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. For the camera. Yeah. getting caught in the wires and everything. This is real class when I hold up the book. I'm not sure the video is going to be taken but for our listeners. Thank you. I love the cover by the way. Oh my goodness the cover is magnificent. I it today to a group and I started off by saying please do judge this book by its cover. One of the nice things for me about doing a book, at some point along the way, you get to work with the publisher in coming up with a cover. And in this instance, as I think ⁓ maybe one other time, they sent me, emailed me these graphics, these services where there are hundreds and hundreds of graphics that you can pick for a cover. Interesting. Very cheap for publisher or anybody who wants them to get them, to use them. And I mean, they were hundreds, they were thousands. 10 minutes into my search, I said, that's it. That is perfect. Suggesting what I want to suggest. Freedom. The only thing we changed, the birds originally were flying from right to left. I said, no, we have to reverse it and have the birds fly from left to right. Better show it. Better show it. So very pleased to thank you for that. Oh, you're welcome. No, was fascinated by the, because I come from a kind of an artistic background and I had my podcast designed by a graphic artis
