On his first day as mayor-elect, Michael Nutter called on the business community to hire ex-offenders as a way to break the cycle of violence that plagues Philadelphia.

“All of us — the private sector and the public sector — we have to change our mindset toward ex-offenders returning to society,” he said during an exclusive interview with the Philadelphia Business Journal.

While a bank may not want to hire a felon to be a teller, he said there are jobs that have little to do with direct handling of finances that ex-offenders can qualify for, depending on their crimes. He cited maintenance, landscaping and food service as examples. As he spoke amid the disarray of a sparsely populated campaign headquarters Wednesday morning, after having had only an hour of sleep, police officers were gathering for the funeral of Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy.

John Lewis, 21, who this week publicly confessed to killing Cassidy on Oct. 31, shares the profile of many of the city’s violent criminals, Nutter said.

They are poorly educated and have a laundry list of crimes behind them. Businesses, and the city as an employer, must act to help break the deadly cycle that creates a revolving door from prison, to the street, and back to the prison by providing employment opportunities, he said.

In assuming the reins as mayor Jan. 7, Nutter would seek to develop a matrix for matching ex-offenders with the types of jobs they could be eligible for upon release, based on their offense and sentence. A new program would begin working with prisoners about six months prior to their release. Whether an ex-offender lands a job within the first two months of leaving prison has a large impact on whether another crime is committed by the individual, Nutter said.

“The one thing that can break that cycle is work,” Nutter said.

In keeping with his goal, Philadelphia City Council unanimously approved Nutter’s Philadelphia Re-Entry Employment Program Nov. 1. The bill, sponsored by City Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr., gives companies that hire ex-offenders a $10,000 per-job credit against the city’s business privilege taxes for three years in exchange for their providing tuition assistance.

“It is in your best interest that we solve this problem,” he later told a group of business leaders assembled at a breakfast event held by the government watchdog group Committee of 70. “We’re either going to redeem people with a second chance or we’re going to condemn people to a life of crime,” said Nutter, who won the election by a four-to-one margin.

While he praised the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce for increasing the number of summer interns hired by businesses from 440 in 2006 to more than 1,000 this year, he said that number needed to keep doubling each year for some time to come.

In his first public speech following the election win, Nutter also called upon businesses to lend their rising stars and leaders temporarily to the city to help improve operations. Such leaders’ expertise could be invaluable in mapping out new procedures to enhance city operations, Nutter said.

“There is a shared responsibility,” he told the group of 400. “There is a sense of partnership that is required in order to get things done.”

In the interview, he touched on his plans for a total overhaul of the city’s Licensing and Inspection department, changes to the Commerce Department and the roll out of technology to help make agencies and departments more accountable. L&I, he said, was in need of an “implosion.”

Tackling business taxes will also be at the forefront, said Nutter, who plans to introduce a schedule for eliminating the gross receipts portion of the city’s business privilege tax in his first year in office. The goal will be to eliminate the tax over the next five to seven years, as well as chip away at the net income tax, he said. But, how deep the cuts will be remains to be seen, Nutter said. Upon entering office, he faces contract negotiations with the city’s four major unions, skyrocketing health care costs and a severely underfunded pension fund, among other issues.

But he did pledge Wednesday to begin business tax cuts in his first budget as a way to send a message that his administration is committed to cuts.

The mayor-elect expressed optimism that the city could both stem the loss of population it has seen in recent decades, as well as the loss of jobs as employers have sought to expand operations in the region’s suburbs.

He called on people to see Philadelphia’s assets and said he would be personally involved in attracting businesses to the city.

Bernard Dagenais contributed to this report.