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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Nick Beadle: My readers might not be familiar with your story, but it’s always been impressive to me. For folks who don’t know, can you tell me how you came to this work?

Joshua Johnson: I'll take you back to the beginning. In 1995, when I was about two weeks away from graduating high school, I ended up getting arrested for armed robbery in the city of Milwaukee, state of Wisconsin. I served 10 years in prison out of a 20-year sentence, then served 10 years on parole after that. I made a commitment to myself in the year 2000 when I saw the parole board, and that commitment was “I'm never coming back to prison.”

When I was released from prison in 2004, I ended up having a mentality that I would work any job, whatever job there was. [Somebody asked], “Have you ever thought about being an apprentice?”

I went down [to apply for a construction apprenticeship], filled out the application. I got to question number five or six, which is, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” I remember the moment because three young men walked from a back room and they started looking at applications that were on the desk. One of them remarked as they were looking through applications, “I would never hire somebody who's been to prison.”

For me, that was a moment of, “I guess this is not a place for me to work.” There was one man who I didn't know. I didn't even see him when I came in. He was sitting behind a desk. His head popped up and he said, “Not me. If someone is desperate enough to steal, then they're desperate enough to come to work every day and make money.”

I finished filling out my application, turned it in, and I asked the administrative assistant, “Is it possible for me to talk to whoever that man is?” She was like, “Yeah, it’s fine.” I talked to him, and I shared with him within 90 seconds that I was just released from prison six months ago and that I just needed someone to give me a chance. He said to me, “Great, so this is what I want you to do. I want you to call WRTP | BIG STEP.” At the time, they had a program that was incentivizing employers to hire individuals that went through their programming.

That was Thursday. On Saturday morning, me and my father—and I share this because it seemed like it just happened yesterday—we were driving to the lake to go fishing. We were in his red ’98 Dodge Ram with the loud pipes. We pulled over and went to an ATM so I could pull out cash to buy bait. As soon as I got out of the car, I got a phone call saying, “Hey, Josh. I'm calling to find out if you still want to work in construction.” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “Report Monday morning.”

For two weeks, I worked and worked. I shoveled sand. I dug dirt. I did everything I could. And I remember when the union rep approached me and asked me to sign my apprentice contract. I signed my apprentice contract in 2005. Fourteen years later, in 2019, my signature is on every apprentice contract as the State Director of Apprenticeship in Wisconsin.

Nick: When it comes to people who have been incarcerated, I have heard plenty from employers over the years, “We're just reluctant.” “Why are you reluctant?” “We're just reluctant.”

How do you convince employers to give these folks a chance?

Joshua: The piece that I always said that employers struggle with is understanding that the same risk exists whether you're hiring somebody who's been formerly incarcerated or someone that you just meet off the street [who has not]. The risk is the same. There is no difference. In fact, there may actually be less risk with someone who's formerly incarcerated because they actually have a built-in accountability system. Their parole, probation officer, [the worker] may have rules they have to follow. Their family might be their built-in support system that an individual off the street may not have.

So we have to eliminate this idea that it's more risky to hire individuals who have been formerly incarcerated. Employers have individuals right now on their teams that may be committing crimes that they don't know about, or that are at risk of committing a crime faster than someone who's been formerly incarcerated.

Also, employers have to move away from this idea that just because you went to jail, you're not qualified for any job. That's obvious. It's false.

I challenge employers to at least think about it from this perspective: think more broadly about how someone's crime and what they did actually plays into the job that they're applying for. And if there's no correlation, no relation, let's stop judging people based on their past and give them the opportunity to grow.

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Nick: Much of the broader policy conversation about workforce is framed in terms of efficiency. From an efficiency perspective, you could argue it doesn’t make sense to leave this much talent underused just because of something they did in their past.

Do you think there’s value in that inefficiency argument for opening more doors to workers who were in jail?

Joshua: Let's be respectful to employers and understand employers are really focused on the bottom line. “We need to stay in the black and we can't be in the red.” That's just where we always have to be, right?

Within that, many employers have built systems that don't allow them the flexibility or the ability to create efficiency in their processes. They say they do, but they don't have that built in—whether it's a lack of staff, lack of money, or a lack of understanding for how to build their systems to create efficiency.

I spoke at the Medical College of Wisconsin recently, and as I was speaking to their HR team during Professional Development Day, we talked about this. They have a system where the recruiters are blind to the background checks. They recruit, this person is great, there's a central person who gets the background checks, they see what it is. They make an assessment based off of the job that they're applying for and if this crime aligns with it [for the purposes of screening]. To me, that's a system that is highly efficient.

But I also think about it from the other side as well. One of the most challenging things that I think individuals have after they've been formerly incarcerated is being able to share their story, being able to tell what they've done, being able to share their past.

What I did within the book [Released and Redeemed], is there are three chapters that are focused on helping individuals tell their story to employers, to their family, and to their community. Just focusing on employers, being able to share your story to an employer will help you to remove some of your anxiety going in, but it also allows that person sitting across the table from you or across the Zoom video from you to also let down some of their anxiety about someone who's been formerly incarcerated.

Now, it's two different things, right? I just talked about Medical College of Wisconsin, who their recruiter screened and then somebody else screens to find out. But this is for those individuals who are ready and willing to share their story when challenged on what they did and being able to share that. What we have is we have a society that while we champion second chances, we have a society that also doesn't accept individuals who have been formerly incarcerated.

Nick: The punishment lasts forever.

Joshua: It lasts forever. Essentially the day I committed my crime, May of 1995 at the age of 17, and the day I got my Department of Corrections number, inmate number 305178, essentially is supposed to go with me to the grave. The worst mistake I ever made in my life now is going to dictate what the rest of my life is going to be. Which is absolutely ridiculous.

If we can find a way to tie it together and allow employers to scream from the mountaintops, “I hire people who have been formerly incarcerated!” And [if]we can get that message down to individuals to get that confidence that they walk in the door and say, “Hey, I'm so-and-so,” and when asked on it, they're able to explain, I think then we can help employers move forward with just engaging that one specific population level.

That was the goal of the book—to really use my own personal career and how I built my career to help elevate why it's so important to share your story [as a person who was incarcerated].

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Nick: That's one of the things I really loved about your book. Because if you're coming through that system, you internalize that you’re always going to be punished and always going to be marked. That’s going to stay with you.

And you do need a field guide to have the confidence to move back into the world. I thought that was a brilliant approach.

Josh: Many times people will say, “Well, how'd you do it, Josh?” And I'm, like, “Well, you know, all I did was x, y, and z.” And they're [still] like, “Well, how do I do it?”

I really don't know how you do it. I don't know how to tell you to do it. So when I wrote the book, it was to give an individual, at the bare minimum, when they're done reading the chapters, an outline on how to start sharing their story. Because I firmly believe that the most powerful thing we have after incarceration is our story.

But we [formerly incarcerated people] don't tell our story. And if we do tell it, many don't tell it properly. I wrote the book with the idea that I want you to tell your story confidently. Not confidently [meaning], “I confidently committed armed robbery,” but I confidently in, “After I committed armed robbery, I changed my life, and this is who I became.”

Always enjoy chatting with Joshua, and I appreciate his taking time to talk with me on a convention center Veranda in Upstate New York.

That convention is one of many places I’ve had some deep conversations lately about apprenticeship, which is a frequent, but important topic in this space because it’s where we’re seeing the most tangible (and potentially promising) action on workforce. There are big questions there, though, that I feel like I’ve started to get some of the answers to. I’ll share those in Thursday’s edition of THE MONEY. Also, the White House is up to shenanigans on its attempts to switch up grants rules.

See you then.