Criminal Record Questions in the Era of “Ban the Box”

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12250
• Date: 01 February 2017
• Published date: 01 February 2017

RESEARCH ARTICLE

CRIMINAL RECORD QUESTIONS

Criminal Record Questions in the Era

of “Ban the Box”

Mike Vuolo

The Ohio State University

Sarah Lageson

Rutgers University

Christopher Uggen

University of Minnesota

Research Summary

This study examines three central questions about criminal record inquiries on job

applications, which is a rapidly developing area in criminology and public policy. We

find the following: (1) Among the 78% of employers who ask about records, specific

application questions vary greatly regarding the severity and timing of offenses. (2)

Applications for restaurant positions are least likely to inquireabout criminal histories,

whereas raciallydiverse workplaces and establishments in the most and least advantaged

neighborhoods are more likely to ask. (3) The race gap in employer callbacks is reduced

when applicants have the chance to signal not having a record by answering “no,”

which is consistent with theories of statistical discrimination.

Policy Implications

We conclude with a call to develop standards and best practices regarding inquiries

about juvenile offenses, low-level misdemeanor and traffic offenses, and the applicable

time span. The need for such standards is made more apparent by the unevenness

of criminal record questions across employees, establishments, and neighborhoods. We

This research was supported by the JEHT Foundation and the National Institute of Justice (2007-IJ-CX-0042).

We are indebted to the Council on Crime and Justice, as well as to Ebony Ruhland and Hilary Whitham for

their integral role in conducting this research. We owe special thanks to Devah Pager for consulting on this

project. Direct correspondence to Mike Vuolo, Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, 238

Townshend Hall, 1885 Neil Avenue Mall, Columbus, OH 43210 (e-mail: vuolo.2@osu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12250 C2017 American Society of Criminology 139

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 16 rIssue 1

Research Article Criminal Record Questions

also suggest best practices for Ban the Box implementation to help combat potential

statistical discrimination against African American men without records.

Have you been convicted of a felony using your current name or any other name?

If you do not answer this question, your application will not be considered. —Job

application for laborer position at waste management company

Scholars have long linked employment with desistance from crime. For those with a

criminal past, employment provides direct social controls (Laub and Sampson,2003)

while also fostering significant identity shifts and change in self-concept (Giordano,

Cernkovich, and Rudolph, 2002; Maruna, 2001). Of course, people must first find jobs

to experience such effects—and those with criminal records face formidable barriers in this

process. On this front, the research has not been encouraging. Those with a criminal past

clearly fare worse in the application stage of employment (Pager, 2003; Pager, Western,

and Bonikowski, 2009; Uggen, Vuolo, Lageson, Ruhland, and Whitham, 2014). Across a

host of programs designed to assist those with records in acquiring a job, most evaluations

have found relatively low impact (Bushway and Apel, 2012) or impact limited to particular

subgroups (Uggen, 2000; Uggen and Shannon, 2014; Zweig, Yahner, and Redcross,

2011).

The increasingly common practice of conducting criminal background checks

(Bushway, Briggs, Taxman, Tanner, and Van Brakle, 2007; Raphael, 2006, 2010) quickly

reveals an applicant’s criminal past to potential employers who might screen them out

of consideration (Stoll and Bushway, 2008). Although there is a considerable body of

research on both background checks and the effects of signaling a record in the hiring

decision, few studies have examined the entry portal to the application process, namely,

the job application itself. In theory, law, and policy, it is important to distinguish between

the initial application stage of the process and later stages at which criminal background

checks are routinely conducted. Applications with criminal record questions might have a

gatekeeping function distinct from formal background checks that occur after this initial

employer review of applicants. Research on applications, therefore, is sorely needed, given

the great public attention to criminal records questions, the success of the Ban the Box

movement, and the widespread beliefs that the presence of the question affects employment

opportunities for people with records (see, e.g., Henry and Jacobs, 2007; Smith, 2014).

This article draws on a unique random sample of job applications for open entry-level

positions, which to our knowledge is the first of its kind, to answer the following research

questions about criminal history information at the application stage:

1. What do employers ask regarding criminal records on applications?

2. What employer characteristics are associated with who asks, including the level of severity

queried?

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