{"id":1734,"date":"2013-05-14T18:38:30","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T00:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/?p=1734"},"modified":"2014-02-12T11:35:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T17:35:18","slug":"ban-the-box-now-law-in-minnesota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/2013\/05\/14\/ban-the-box-now-law-in-minnesota\/","title":{"rendered":"“Ban the Box” Now Law in Minnesota"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mnlove\"<\/a>You might have heard that Minnesota\u00a0Governor Dayton just signed\u00a0Freedom to Marry<\/a>\u00a0legislation, but he also made\u00a0Ban the Box\u00a0the law-of-the-land-of-10,000-lakes. \u00a0Megan Boldt describes it succinctly at twincities.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Gov. Mark Dayton this week signed a bill that would ban employers from considering a job applicant\u2019s criminal history until the applicant has an interview or is offered a job.<\/em><\/p>\n

Supporters of the bill, dubbed \u201cban the box,\u201d have argued the change allows people who have made mistakes to be considered for a job on their merits and skills, instead of having their application immediately discarded.<\/em><\/p>\n

Since 2009, Minnesota has required all public employers to wait until a job candidate has been selected for an interview before inquiring about criminal history.<\/em><\/p>\n

I can take no credit (or blame, I suppose) for this development, but I can brag a bit about amazing Minnesota graduate students like\u00a0Sarah Walker<\/a> and Rob Stewart<\/a>, community leaders like Mark Haase<\/a> at the Council on Crime and Justice, and many formerly incarcerated men and women who came forward to tell their stories and build support for this legislation.<\/p>\n

Yes, employers can<\/em>\u00a0and will<\/em> still discriminate on the basis of a criminal record, but the research literature suggests that ban the box is a tremendously important step. In my Minnesota audit study on low-level records, for example, 25% of the hiring authorities we interviewed told us they wouldn’t consider any (hypothetical) applicant with a record, but they were much less likely to discriminate on that basis when confronted with a real human being applying for a job. And in Devah Pager’s important audit studies (and my own as well), personal contact with a hiring authority is a powerful, powerful predictor of “callbacks” from employers. So, I’m optimistic that Ban the Box won’t simply waste applicants’ time — or that of employers.<\/p>\n

For a national perspective on these laws, check the recent\u00a0EEOC guidance<\/a>\u00a0on the topic and a useful page from the\u00a0National Employment Law Project<\/a>.\u00a0And, yes, I’m already scheming to evaluate implementation and outcomes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might have heard that Minnesota\u00a0Governor Dayton just signed\u00a0Freedom to Marry\u00a0legislation, but he also made\u00a0Ban the Box\u00a0the law-of-the-land-of-10,000-lakes. \u00a0Megan Boldt describes it succinctly at twincities.com: Gov. Mark Dayton this week signed a bill that would ban employers from considering a job applicant\u2019s criminal history until the applicant has an interview or is offered a job. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[124,15,85],"class_list":["post-1734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crime","tag-culture","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1734"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1738,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1734\/revisions\/1738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}