records

each year, i get about a dozen calls or emails from people with criminal records who are interested in graduate study. many of them ask whether their record would bar them from becoming a professor. i usually say, “that depends” and offer stories in which certain records have or haven’t precluded employment at certain places. i then say that the academic track is tough (but not impossible!) and that their records will just make it that much tougher (but not impossible!).

so, i was disheartened to read this advertisement* while preparing a letter for an applicant to my beloved alma mater. i have nothing but love for wisconsin sociology, but i found that last bit about the background check disheartening. i bet it wasn’t the department’s idea to include it, since such lines usually emanate from university human resources departments. in fact, i’d wager that my friends and mentors in the sociology department would go to the wall (so to speak) for a good social scientist who had moved beyond his or her criminal record.
nevertheless, we know that advertisements send strong signals to potential applicants and — in light of wisconsin’s standing as one of the great departments of the world — to the discipline of sociology. employers certainly have a right to conduct background checks and to provide fair warning to potential applicants, but my worry is that these applicants view the line “Employment may require a criminal background check” as a much tougher screen that it actually is.
it makes me wonder who would be disqualified (e.g., arrestees, those convicted of felonies, or particular felonies), for how long (e.g., a conviction within the past 5 or 10 years), and at what stage of the hiring process they would be screened out. without such details, i’d guess that this boilerplate language has a chilling effect on applications from anyone ever arrested for anything.
*here’s the ad (emphasis added):
The University of Wisconsin Madison. The Department of Sociology invites applications for a position at the assistant professor level with preferred starting date August 2009. Applicants must hold a PhD or equivalent prior to the start of the appointment. Areas of specialization are open. Applicants should demonstrate excellence and productivity in research and a commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching. Submit a letter of application, a curriculum vitae, and three letters of recommendation by mail to: Ivan Ermakoff, Search Committee Chair, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin‐Madison, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, WI 53706‐1393. Finalists will be asked to supply copies of published and unpublished manuscripts for evaluation. To ensure full consideration, send all application materials by November 1, 2008. Unless confidentiality is requested in writing, information regarding applicants must be released upon request. Finalists cannot be guaranteed confidentiality. Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and minorities are urged to apply. Employment may require a criminal background check.

i just served as discussant for an american sociological assocation session on incarceration and the labor market and as guest editor for a set of upcoming criminology & public policy papers on the effect of criminal background checks. in each case, some fine sociologists, economists, policy school folks, and criminologists weighed in on research and policy questions surrounding employer access to criminal records.

the stark differences in disciplinary approaches make for stimulating exchanges. for example, in his forthcoming essay, harvard economist richard freeman argues that employers should have greater access to criminal history and post-conviction information. i’ve long taken the opposite view, citing the poor quality and biases in much arrest and conviction information, the proliferation of trivial records for traffic and misdemeanor offenses, and larger concerns about encroachments on individual privacy rights.

nevertheless, professors freeman and holzer cite theory and emerging evidence suggesting that cloaking such information may have ugly unintended consequences. in the absence of reliable signals about applicants’ criminality, the argument goes, employers will rely instead upon statistical discrimination — screening out applicants from groups thought to be characterized by high crime rates. the upshot is that young african american males without records could face greater discrimination if employers lose access to criminal record data.

if i remember my undergraduate economics courses correctly, more information is generally better than less information — and perfect information is best of all. i buy this argument to a point, but would suggest instead that public release of a more uniform, standardized, and parsimonious set of criminal history information might be the best policy course.

here is a list of the papers:

american sociological association session:

Session Organizer: Bruce Western (Harvard University)
*
Collateral Costs: The Effects of Incarceration on Employment and Earnings Among Young MenHarry Holzer (Georgetown University)
* Sequencing Disadvantage: Race, Criminal Background, and the Diminishing of OpportunityDevah Pager (Princeton University)
*Incarceration Length, Employment, and EarningsJeffrey Kling (Brookings Institution)
Discussant: Christopher Uggen (University of Minnesota)

criminology & public policy papers (volume 7, issue 3, august 2008)

*Uggen, Christopher. 2008. Editorial introduction: The Effect of Criminal Background Checks on Hiring Ex-offenders. Criminology & Public Policy.
*Stoll, Michael A. and Shawn D. Bushway. 2008. The effect of criminal background checks on hiring ex-offenders. Criminology & Public Policy. This issue.
*Freeman, Richard. 2008. Incarceration, criminal background checks, and employment in a low(er) crime society. Criminology & Public Policy. This issue.
*Western, Bruce. 2008. Criminal background checks and employment among workers with criminal records. Criminology & Public Policy. This issue.