Hiring People With Criminal Records in South Carolina: Examining Businesses’ Hiring Practices and Views on Incentives

• Author: Barbara A. Koons-Witt,Tara E. Martin,Robert Brame,Amanda Huffman
• Published date: 01 May 2020
• Date: 01 May 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0887403419831062
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403419831062

Criminal Justice Policy Review

2020, Vol. 31(4) 532 –554

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/0887403419831062

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Article

Hiring People With Criminal

Records in South Carolina:

Examining Businesses’ Hiring

Practices and Views on

Incentives

Tara E. Martin1, Amanda Huffman1,

Barbara A. Koons-Witt1, and Robert Brame1

Abstract

The stigma of a criminal history has well-documented adverse effects on the efforts

of ex-offenders to secure employment. What is less well understood is whether

interventions or educational efforts targeting employers would improve access to

the labor market for this population. We report results from two surveys to better

understand attitudes toward hiring ex-offenders among samples of South Carolina

businesses. Our results suggest that about half of employers routinely conduct

background checks and approximately 60% would consider hiring someone with a

criminal record. A key additional focus of our study was whether businesses were

aware of various programs and incentives to encourage the hiring of ex-offenders.

Our results suggest relatively low levels of awareness among the surveyed businesses

and provide limited support for the idea that awareness is linked to more favorable

attitudes toward hiring ex-offenders. We conclude with an assessment of study

limitations and directions for future research.

Keywords

criminal histories, ex-offenders, employment, collateral consequences

Individuals with criminal records face substantial barriers to finding employment in

the United States. Businesses use an assortment of information and hiring procedures,

1University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Barbara A. Koons-Witt, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina,

Currell College, Columbia, SC 29208, USA.

Email: bakoons@mailbox.sc.edu

831062CJPXXX10.1177/0887403419831062Criminal Justice Policy ReviewMartin et al.

research-article2019

Martin et al. 533

including a person’s credit history, work experience, and references to identify quali-

fied job candidates, yet they are increasingly using background checks to screen out

problematic job applicants for positions they are attempting to fill (Hickox & Roehling,

2013; Lageson, Vuolo, & Uggen, 2015). Criminal history information is gathered by

the criminal justice system both for recordkeeping reasons and for purposes of making

decisions about people with whom it has contact (e.g., sentencing decisions); however,

the information is also used for non-criminal justice purposes and represents a lucra-

tive endeavor for those businesses that compile such information (Jacobs, 2005-2006;

SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, 2005).

Criminal records are more accessible to businesses than ever before because of

advances in technology, resulting in easier access to information and lower costs asso-

ciated with the collection, storage, and dissemination of criminal background informa-

tion (Blumstein & Nakamura, 2009; Hickox & Roehling, 2013; Jacobs, 2005-2006).

The number of people affected by criminal records is staggering. For example,

Christensen (1967) relied on court records and FBI arrest statistics to project that

about half of all males would be arrested within their lifetime, while Brame, Turner,

Paternoster, and Bushway (2012) used survey methods to infer that nearly one third of

the U.S. population who were 12 to 16 years old in the mid-1990s had been arrested at

least once by age 23. In 2014, more than 11 million arrests were made by law enforce-

ment (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015). While this number includes multiple

arrests of the same person, juvenile arrests, and arrests that resulted in no formal

charges, other estimates give additional perspectives on the number of people living

with the stigma of a criminal record. For example, at the end of 2014, just more than

1.5 million prisoners were housed in U.S. federal and state correctional facilities, and

almost 750,000 were detained in local jails (Carson, 2015). An estimated 3.9 million

offenders were under probation supervision, and another 857,000 were being super-

vised on parole (Kaeble, Glaze, Tsoutis, & Minton, 2015). Overall, researchers esti-

mate that one in four U.S. adults, or an estimated 65 million people, are living with a

criminal record (Rodriguez & Emsellem, 2011).

The damaging consequences of having a criminal record are far-reaching. This

includes having restricted access to federal benefits such as Temporary Assistance for

Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, public housing,

and student loans, as well as restrictions on exercising their civic duties such as serv-

ing on juries, holding public office, or voting (Hirsch et al., 2002; Mukamal & Samuels,

2002; Uggen, Manza, & Thompson, 2006; Whittle, 2016). In terms of employment,

federal and state laws prohibit ex-offenders from obtaining certain types of occupa-

tional licenses or holding particular types of jobs (Fahey, Roberts, & Engel, 2006;

Harrison & Schehr, 2004; Hirsch et al., 2002; Uggen et al., 2006; Whittle, 2016).

Furthermore, these consequences are unlikely to be equally distributed among the

population given the increased probability of arrest among Black males (Brame,

Bushway, Paternoster, & Turner, 2014). Although the U.S. Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission (EEOC) warns that not hiring a person because of arrest his-

tory may violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial dis-

crimination in employment, employers may choose to deny employment based on an