Over 4,500 people on average are released from prison each year in Missouri, of those 480 in Boone County. After being locked up for weeks, months or even years, how do people adjust back to life outside prison and find a job? One obstacle confronting ex-offenders is the little box on job applications that asks about criminal history.
Missouri Business Alert’s Michaela Marshall Dungey looked at the paths people in Columbia can take to integrate back into society. She also looked into a measure called ban the box, which is an effort to remove that box on job applications.
The next story takes a look at IT infrastructure in mid-Missouri. CenturyLink just launched a new high-speed Internet service available in select neighborhoods in Columbia and Jefferson City. The service transfers data at up to 1 gigabit per second.
Professor Dong Xu of the computer science department at the University of Missouri said this service will help retain and attract businesses.
Toby Rush of Kansas City based EyeVerify uses a similar service offered by Google Fiber and said it has made a difference in the company's efficiency and the way they do business. But others said that until this service is ubiquitous across the nation, it’s not a big deal.