The reason I would be hesitant to hire the ex-con is not because they're bad. OR I think they're going to be bad to me and thus I need extra insurance or whatever.

The reason I wouldn't hire them is because the system salivates to put those people back in the system, and I prefer to hire someone less likely to get pulled into the abyss at any random moment and cause me to lose out on my trained workforce. Their PO, any officer scanning automatic plate readers, customs agents, whoever, they're all chomping at the bit to pull that person back out of society and employment.

Could you explain how this conspiracy between customs agents and the prison complex came about?

I was flagged on suspicion of being a criminal and now customs invents absurd shit every time I cross the border. Last time they got a federal search warrant out of thin air based on lies and dragged me to a hospital to internally search me for drugs. Every single time I go through it's something else with hours long detainment. The time before that they accused me of being a gun runner and the time before that they accused me of soliciting females in southeast asia.

I basically always have to wait for an HSI detective to show up after hours until they try everything possible to get me on some absurd made up crime, all because my file says "maybe a criminal" or something like that. If I have work I may miss that too because it could be almost a full day from hitting the border until I'm released, and the officers don't let me sleep in detention.

I live in so much fear of technical violations it isn't even funny. I especially agree on the police cars having automatic plate readers.

Actually the average cost of incarceration appears to be about 30k - if that was offered as a flat credit against employment cost (or some portion of that like 20k) for some term after the end of a sentence then the US would have a much stronger tool against recidivism.