Accelerating Fair Chance Hiring among Los Angeles Employers

With support from the State of California Workforce Accelerator program, the USC Sol Price Center for Social Innovation partnered with LeadersUp, a national nonprofit focused on ending the youth unemployment crisis, to launch the Accelerating Fair Chance Project during the Spring of 2019. The goal of this project was to address unemployment among young people who have been involved in the justice system by identifying employer-led solutions. Through leveraging the expertise of employers and adapting the Design Thinking Model, this project offers a case study for how to engage employers in an iterative, collaborative process to reimagine new hiring structures that expand employment opportunities for justice-involved individuals.

This report presents the findings from the Fair Chance project’s survey, innovation lab sessions, and employer engagement conducted in 2019 and 2020, highlighting both current opportunities and challenges that employers face to expand employment opportunities for justice-involved individuals. As part of this project, we also established an Employer Framework for corporations to identify and develop Fair Chance hiring strategies that align with their unique structures and needs.