Extension of Current Estimates of Redemption Times: Robustness Testing, Out-of-State Arrests, and Racial Differences

“As information technology has increased the accessibility of criminal-history records, and concern for negligent-hiring lawsuits has grown, criminal background checking has become an important part of the hiring process for most employers. As a result, there is a growing concern that a large number of individuals are handicapped in finding employment because of a stale criminal-history record. The current study is an extension of a NIJ-funded project intended to provide the empirical estimates of what we call “redemption time,” the time when an individual with a prior arrest record has stayed clean of further involvement with the criminal justice system sufficiently long to be considered “redeemed” and relieved of the stale burden of a prior criminal-history record. In the current study, we address new issues that that are important in moving the research on redemption forward and making the findings applicable to relevant policy” (p. ii). Sections following an abstract include: introduction; robustness of redemption patterns; concern about the “next crime”; race and recidivism risk in the context of redemption; conclusions and next steps; and outreach-dissemination of these robust findings.