Lessons learned: Hiring ex-offenders pays off, but the workers need help
Sitting at her kitchen table in Chester, in her moments of deepest despair, Dayna Chandler, 33, began this calculation: Maybe her three children would be better off if she were dead. A former bank teller, she had a criminal conviction for theft, had been in prison and hadn’t been able to keep a job for four years, not with that record, even though it was only a misdemeanor.