The Legal Action Center has published a must-read report called After Prison: Roadblocks to Reentry.

What I particularly like about this report is that it offers a state-by-state report card that assigns grades based on whether each state’s laws and policies help or hurt those seeking reentry.

They have developed an easily searchable database to see where your state falls on the list.

In particular, those of us who live in Illinois, will be particularly interested in the fact we seem to rank #1 in terms of the LEAST amount of roadblocks that our state poses for reentry.

Yet in practice, we know that formerly incarcerated people in Illinois face a number of barriers to reentry. Employers do sometimes ask about arrests and convictions. Additionally, routine background checks often uncover criminal records and we know that this play a significant role in the decision of employers to hire people. Nevertheless, those of us who work around these issues in the space can take heart that at least we are not Alaska.

According to the report, the states with the least number of roadblocks, or the best record of performance, are:

6.5 Illinois
7 New York
10.5 California
11 Hawaii
11 New Hampshire
19 Kentucky
20 Massachusetts
20 Vermont
20.5 Oregon

The states with the most number of roadblocks, or the worst record of performance, are:

46 Alaska
42 Georgia
42 South Carolina
42 Virginia
41 Pennsylvania
40.5 Delaware
40 Missouri
39 North Carolina
37 Alabama
37 Colorado
37 Mississippi