Dive Brief:

• U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who recently completed her first year in the job, has been busy highlighting the Justice system’s efforts to help inmates prepare for their return to society and, hopefully, the American workforce, according to Time.
• The week included a call for state governors to make it easier for returning citizens to get ID cards, efforts to increase health coverage for former inmates, and a proposal to ban the box for federal employees, Time reports.
• In a Q&A with Time, Lynch also encouraged employers to see if former inmates can be a fit within their workforces, citing large employers who have taken a pledge to ban the box that demonstrates how business leaders can recognize the "value of welcoming returning citizens back."

Dive Insight:

Lynch told Time that balancing security needs is important for employers, and the idea is to "strike that right balance so that they can ban the box. If they have to consider an issue —maybe it affects where they place an employee, maybe it affects the kind of training they give that employee, maybe that employee won’t be right for them, but at least they’re making that decision based on everything about the employee."

She also told Time that employers really need to "focus on ways to characterize the work that the guys do and the women do in the prisons as transferable skills. That’s really going to be the key, I think."

Finally, she noted that the federal government could serve as "an example" to the private sector concerning how and why ban the box movements are necessary.