Document Type

Article

Publication Date

January 2020

Abstract

The United States faces a national crisis to provide adequate carefor its aging population. A critical component of this crisis is thenation’s inability to provide enough home health care aides to assistwith important, if not vital, long-term care needs.This Article identifies a labor pool to help resolve this crisis: quali-fied workers with criminal convictions. But home health care aideswith criminal convictions face an inhospitable landscape. Employersin the health care field are risk-averse to hiring these workers.Furthermore, most states’ laws impose permanent employment banson home health aides with criminal convictions.The Article examines the warren of laws used to disqualify homehealth care aides with criminal convictions. It urges policymakers toreexamine the underlying reasons for permanently disqualifying thispotential group of employees and concludes by outlining severallegal paths that would allow employers to hire home health aideswith criminal convictions.

Publication Title

Criminal Law Bulletin

Volume

56

Issue

3

First Page

405

Last Page

443

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