When Johnny Perez left prison in 2013 after 13 years behind bars, he had to relearn how to live. Even being a pedestrian felt alien. "No one crosses the street in prison," he told Refinery29. "I remember just waiting for the red light to turn, and everybody else is crossing on yellow or green, just because there weren’t any cars."Readjusting to the routines of daily life would be hard enough without the challenges a criminal record can create. But things may be about to get a bit easier for ex-cons. On Monday, President Obama announced that he would sign an executive order aimed at helping people convicted of crimes get jobs more easily. Now, federal agencies won't be able to ask about an applicant's criminal record at the beginning of the hiring process. Background checks will still happen but, according to the new executive order, people can't be automatically weeded out of a pool because they checked "yes" in answer to the question "Have you ever been convicted of a crime?"This is good news to the 6,000 people found guilty of nonviolent crimes who were released from prison in the past week thanks to recent changes to federal drug laws. More than 50,000 people could ultimately be eligible for early release under these sentencing reforms, leaving prison to begin new lives on the outside.