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Redemption & Certificates of Rehabilitation - 6. Alternative Strategies for Reintegration

  • Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Statistical Discrimination: A Field Experiment (2016)

    Agan, Amanda and Sonja Starr.

    “Ban-the-Box” (BTB) policies restrict employers from asking about applicants’ criminal histories on job applications and are often presented as a means of reducing unemployment among black men, who disproportionately have criminal records. However, withholding information about criminal records could risk encouraging statistical discrimination: employers may make assumptions about criminality based on the applicant’s race. To investigate this possibility as well as the effects of race and criminal records on employer callback rates, we sent approximately 15,000 fictitious online job applications to employers in New Jersey and New York City, in waves before and after each...

  • Racial Profiling in Hiring: A Critique of New "Ban the Box" Studies (2016)

    National Employment Law Project.

    This article reviews two recent studies on "Ban the Box". It concludes the studies do not show the "Ban the Box" policy as detrimental to young men of color who do not have a conviction record.

  • ‘Ban the Box’ Movement Scores Win in America’s Most Incarcerated State (2017)

    Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards approved legislation that will, beginning Aug. 1, 2017, prohibit the state’s public universities from asking applicants about their criminal backgrounds.

  • Ban the Box and Beyond (2017)

    Ensuring Individuals with a Criminal Record Have Access to the Labor Market

    Each year, more than 600,000 people are released from federal and state prisons in need of jobs that provide economic security. Research shows that having a job and somewhere to live can reduce the likelihood of recidivism. Yet returning citizens often face substantial barriers to re-entering the labor market. This is especially true of returning citizens of color, who already face multiple barriers to labor market entry.


    Recently, there has been a bipartisan push to unwind the policies that have led to mass incarceration and overcriminalization over the...

  • Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Racial Discrimination: A Field Experiment (2018)

    “Ban the Box” (BTB) policies restrict employers from asking about applicants’ criminal histories on job applications and are often presented as a means of reducing unemployment among black men, who disproportionately have criminal records. However, withholding information about criminal records could risk encouraging racial discrimination: employers may make assumptions about criminality based on the applicant's race. To investigate BTB’s effects, we sent approximately 15,000 online job applications on behalf of fictitious young, male applicants to employers in New Jersey and New York City before and after the adoption of BTB policies. These applications varied whether the applicant had a distinctly...