My company has this as their official attitude, but I'm pretty sure we don't have many.  But HR makes the hiring decisions for the basic entry level positions (Which is not a good idea most places.)    The old you can't hit the customers is too hard for many.

No ex-cons but I worked with more than a few who ended up on their way there.

No.
Well, maybe some students, but they don't work here.

I think that the issue here is that YOU will be safer from lawsuits if they are NOT employed by you. Let someone else take that chance.

This is the issue.
These days, the crime on their record is almost certainly far less serious than the crime(s) they committed. I'll pass on any criminal record.

The MAYOR of Jackson, Wyoming, Pete Muldoon, committed felony crimes in two different states. Somehow, these convictions were voided by some convoluted legal process that I don't understand.
The result: when this was brought up during his election campaign, because felons cannot hold office in Wyoming, he was able to claim that he was NOT a felon. The State Attorney General ruled that this was indeed true.
He never denied that he committed the felony crimes. They were committed while he was an adult.

My point: there are multiple ways to get out of criminal records these days: probation, "diversion", "deferred judgement", youth, plea bargains, etc.
Anybody with an actual record these days is someone to avoid.

Same here.

Logging company?

Nope, you have to be squeaky clean, piss in a cup here.

I'm not even sure you can get Fire or EMS certs with felony convictions, much less hired where I work.

Diversion programs and deferments suspend the entry of a judgment. They typically require an admission of guilt, but the court places them under supervised or unsupervised probation and orders them to comply with a set of conditions by a return to court date- generally costs owed, drug treatment, community service.

If they have complied with those terms, the court formally dismisses the case at the end of the time period, and as such the defendant is legally found... well, they technically arent found not guilty, but the case was dismissed and it won't be brought back, so it's a generally unimportant distinction.

I once worked at a fabrication shop with around 100 employees. Of those employees about 87% of them smoked weed. Most of them never missed work and did their jobs like they were supposed to but liked to get high after work. The owner of the company would have a meeting about 40 days before the yearly drug tests for insurance reasons and tell everyone that a test was coming and to study up for it. The rest of us that didn't get high would laugh about it because it never failed that someone wouldn't stop getting high long enough to pass the test and was fired even after being warned of the test 40 days in advance.

Our background check only goes back 7 years and it’s construction.

I was the only person who hadn’t done time.

Yes.    Major emergency response organization.

None that I'm aware of. Then ag'in, HR doesn't or won't say sh*t.  Now there are a bunch of convicts who are, under supervision, doing work around the grounds.  That's normal.

Yes, I've hired them and fired them. Overall, quite a few of them have worked out well and in a few cases extremely well. I've found that if they make 90 days, they are usually GTG and reliable for the long haul. I think once (most of) these guys realize they can earn an honest living and do have opportunities to advance, they find a better life than they thought they could have without risking incarceration.

A kid off the street, not so much. They can do outstanding,  then around the 18 mos - two year mark they sometimes get complacent and eventually go to shit. These are the guys that I regret hiring. Because they did well for so long, they get chance after chance to get back on track, and sometimes do, but usually it's only temporary. We might go another year with a marginal employee before we finally decide to cut our losses and fire them.

So I guess my inclination to hire them is based on my belief I know what I have a lot quicker than most.

I did a search of my works zip code after reading this and yup one of the recent new hires is on there.