I hate how even though I'm trying to turn my life around and I'm clean off heroin, if I get convicted of any of these pending felonies (possession of heroin, dealing in stolen property and selling a stolen item to a pawnbroker) then I basically wont be able to fucking work anywhere. Its hard enough for people with clean records to get jobs right now, let alone a felon. Even one guilty charge will ruin the nursing career I'm currently in school for. I was the first person in my family to go to college and now I've probably fucked that up. And I got all those charges in Florida, where the justice system is notorious for being fucked...
lol no justice system is quite as fucked as NJ imo you get locked up here for 2 years if you have a *beebee* gun in your trunk FFS. And some kid was already incarcerated for having a beebee gun in his trunk.
But as far as the "I can't get a job" deal I've already done time in state got a 7 flat at 19 years old but in all honesty I got a job the day I was released. It was a pet store and back in 2004 but they didn't even do a background check.
Later on I went through various other positions one handling money another contracting large home renovation jobs and both did a background check on me. *NEITHER* one was able to find my record in doing so.
People will reveal a lot of not so true folk tales about what prison will and won't do to your life another one of them being don't drop the soap in the showers. This is obviously not true. I must have dropped my soap over 50 times in the 2years I served and not once did I ever see a man looking at me in the wrong way. It simply doesn't happen nearly at all like people think.
Also, I've talked to several other people, at least 5 I can remember who all told me their employeers had similar difficult problems pulling up their backgrounds. This was mostly at the parole office but I even remember my PO making a statement about it. And he confirmed that lots of places simply do not understand where to look and many CDS related "crimes" are not put into the registry. After I was at one place for 4 years and had told them I had a record, and they told me they did a background check in the "national registry" and did not find it, I ASKED them to do the check in front of me.
The "expert" put my social security into the phone, and it came back once again "no records found for this number". I laughed and realized a lot of places do it this way. But there is a very large error in how the registry is updated. For a lot of criminals (*especially drug offenders/nonA3o4 violent offenders) their records are simply not put into the registry at all. I am telling you this just so you know it happens a lot.
And even the places I was worried about finding one. Guess what I did? I lied on my application. So many would not even check I suppose based on the fact that I don't come in with my pants sagging and cursing like an idiot. The simple fact is it takes a bit of time to do. And in the fast paced nature of a lot of companies, they simply fuck it up or don't do it at all. I would only seriously worry about it if you are trying to be a cop, or a doctor, or a lawyer, otherwise chances are they will fuck it up and not even know to go to your states DOC site where a lot of employeers have no idea to look.
just so you know is all. I have on idea how bad florida really is but from what I've seen its not as big a problem as you'd think. if you get locked up and bailed out for murder however, I have a feeling they will find a record like that. All those crimes, armed robbery, assault, assault with a deadly weapon, arson, rape, kidnapping, GTA are the real reasons background checks exist. Not possession of a CDS, or in my case even distribution or manufacturing was important enough to put in the registry.
