Effects of Unemployment, Conviction and Incarceration on Employment: A Longitudinal Study on the Employment Prospects of Disadvantaged Youths

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effects of a history of unemployment, conviction, and incarceration on the likelihood of being employed in a sample of disadvantaged youths. All youths (N=540) were institutionalized in adolescence. From age 18 to 32 official data were available on employment, convictions and incarceration. To control for unobserved heterogeneity, fixed effects models are used to estimate effects of unemployment, conviction, and incarceration on the likelihood of employment. Results show that for men, a criminal background does not damage employment prospects when a history of unemployment is taken

The stigma of a criminal record in the labour market in Spain: An experimental study

“…Third, this research has only focused on young men. However, as shown by studies conducted in other countries, the impact of a criminal record could be different in older age groups (Bernburg and Krohn, 2003) and, particularly, in women (Decker et al, 2015; Galgano, 2009; Verbruggen, 2016). The research also omits the additional problems that a criminal record might generate in the migrant population (see Larrauri, 2016).…”

“…In recent years, the stigma of criminal record has received growing attention in understanding the relative precarious employment conditions of former offenders (Bushway, 1998; Nagin and Waldfogel, 1995; Pager, 2007; Uggen et al, 2006; van der Geest et al, 2016; Verbruggen, 2016; Western, 2002). On the one hand, a number of studies show that different laws complicate the re-entry of ex-offenders in the labour market (Mauer and Chesney-Lind, 2003).…”

“…On the one hand, in contrast to surveys (see, for example, Holzer et al, 2007) and in-depth interviews (Backman, 2012), these techniques capture the actual behaviour of recruiters. On the other hand, in contrast to longitudinal studies (Ramakers et al, 2012) or studies linking social security and convictions databases, audit tests allow researchers to control for the effect for the full range of factors that could intervene in this relationship (Lott, 1990; van der Geest et al, 2016; Verbruggen, 2016). Thus, this methodology ensures that the only differences are in the variables under study, such as the effect of a previous conviction, allowing the existence of the selection and sentence effects to be ruled out.…”

Educational and Employment Patterns in Serious Adolescent Offenders With Mental Health Disorders: The Importance of Educational Attainment

“…The consistency of evidence that justice involvement during adolescence is associated with poor employment outcomes (Apel & Sweeten, 2010; Bushway, 1998; Ramchand, Morral, & Becker, 2009; Tanner, Davies, & O’Grady, 1999; Verbruggen, 2016) is also not surprising. Youth in the juvenile system often lack important vocational and job-readiness skills necessary to secure and maintain employment (Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2015), and a juvenile placement may keep them from having some of the normal teenage jobs that provide experiences and skills valuable for making the transition to higher level jobs as well as the social contacts to obtain and maintain employment (Caspi, Wright, Moffit, & Silva, 1998; Coleman, 1988; Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999; Mulvey & Schubert, 2012).…”

Impact of Incarceration on Employment Prospects

“…A distinct advantage of cross-national research is that European scholars frequently have access to population-wide digital registries on many individual circumstances, including education, marriage and cohabitation, fertility, military service, and residence, in addition to criminal justice involvement and employment. To date, the most rigorous research on the incarceration-employment relationship outside the U.S. has been performed in the Netherlands (Ramakers et al, 2014;Ramakers, van Wilsem, & Apel, 2012;Van der Geest, Bijleveld, Blokland, & Nagin, 2016;Verbruggen, 2016) and the Nordic countries (Aaltonen et al, 2017;Andersen, 2015;Landersø, 2015).…”