In addition, if a person does not have a car it makes getting a job even more difficult because you have to stay close to your home area. The stigma of having a criminal record also has a profound impact, almost one third of young black men in this country are out of work, much of this due to criminal records and pasts. There have been campaigns to take away the question of criminal hitory on employment applications, but some scholars claim this may be deleterious because employers can just use other “popular but misguided proxies for criminality” (152) such as public assistance, public housing, and poor education. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did issue guidelines in 1987 saying that employers cannot bar one of employment and could only discriminate against applicants with criminal histories if they were looking at the nature and gravity of the offense, the length of time passed since the conviction, and the nature of the job. These guidelines do not have the force of law but judges often use them in their