A good observation, Dan, but what would you suggest as the alternative? It makes no sense to call them anything but what they are--it would, for all intents and purposes, negate their crime. The only option is to create businesses that employ convicts exclusively. The only problem is, who would want to own them because--job or no job--convicts' re-offend rate is still significatnly higher than the "offend rate" for non-convicts. Sad fact of life, but true.

Obviously, you can't get around the "convicted felon" label. That's a consequence of committing felonies; you become a felon.
But, as I've been writing for the last two and a half years, the barriers we've created to employment for ex-cons are too high. All the security threshholds went up even higher after 9/11, and what was already a problem became a more serious one. In Maryland, we spend about $25,000 a year to keep cons in prison, where they receive little in the way of rehabilitative and vocational services. More than half of them are back in prison within three years of release; their unemployment is directly linked to their failure. Bob Ehrlich was a champion of doing what other governors across the country are doing -- changing the culture of corrections to address this. Nothing like this coming from O'Malley. He's building a new prison wing, in fact.