Ban the Box, Convictions, and Public Employment

Abstract

Ban the Box (BTB) policies mandate deferred access to criminal history until later in the hiring process. However, these policies chiefly target public employers. The study is the first to focus on the primary goal of BTB reform, by measuring the impact of BTB policies on the probability of public employment for those with convictions. To execute the analyses, the study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort (2005–2015) and difference‐in‐difference (DD) estimation. The study finds that BTB policies raise the probability of public employment for those with convictions by about 30% on average. Some scholars argue that BTB policies encourage statistical discrimination against young low‐skilled minority males. The study employs triple‐difference (DDD) estimation to test for statistical discrimination, but uncovers no evidence to support the hypothesis. (JEL J15, J71, J78, K4).

The Persistent Effect of Temporary Affirmative Action

“…I study the regulation's effect on the employment of black workers, one of the regulation's original targets, the largest minority group over my period of study, and a group that is typically the focus of affirmative action research (Holzer and Neumark 2000a). 1 My work builds on the influential analysis of Leonard (1984), and more recently Kurtulus (2016) and Kurtulus (2012), on the impacts of Executive Order 11246 on the employment and occupational advancement of women and minorities. After describing my findings, I discuss how the present paper contributes to the existing body of work.…”

The Black-White Recognition Gap in Award Nominations

“…Racial bias has been extensively documented in a variety of settings, including hiring decisions (Agan and Starr, 2017;Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004;Craigie, 2020;Doleac and Hansen, 2018), sports umpires (Parsons et al, 2011), judicial and sentencing decisions (Flanagan, 2018;Mueller-Smith and Schnepel, 2017;Park, 2017;Rehavi and Starr, 2014) 26 , and bail decisions (Arnold et al, 2018). The increasing availability of police administrative data has allowed researchers to carefully examine and detect bias in law enforcement as well.…”

Employing with conviction: The experiences of employers who actively recruit criminalised people

“…Only 49% of recruiters were aware of ROA provisions (Brown et al, 2005), creating potential for unnecessary disclosures. Given the ‘social disability’ caused by a criminal conviction (Ramakers et al, 2014: 399–400), campaigns, such as ‘Ban the Box’ (Craigie, 2020; Unlock, 2020) champion disclosure at a later stage than application. Goodman (2020) recommends that jurisdictions regulate criminal record disclosures like those pertaining to disabilities.…”