THE LANGUAGE OF STIGMATIZATION AND THE MARK OF VIOLENCE: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION AND USE OF CRIMINAL RECORD STIGMA

• Date: 01 August 2017
• Author: JUSTIN T. PICKETT,MEGAN DENVER,SHAWN D. BUSHWAY
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12145
• Published date: 01 August 2017

THE LANGUAGE OF STIGMATIZATION AND THE

MARK OF VIOLENCE: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

ON THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION AND USE OF

CRIMINAL RECORD STIGMA

MEGAN DENVER,1JUSTIN T. PICKETT,2

and SHAWN D. BUSHWAY3

1College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University

2School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, SUNY

3Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, University at Albany, SUNY

KEYWORDS: labeling theory, criminal record, background checks, stigma, public

opinion

After years of stagnation, labeling theory has recently gained new empirical support.

Simultaneously, new policy initiatives have attempted to restructure criminal record

stigma to reduce reintegration barriers, and subsequent recidivism, driven by labeling.

For example, in a recent Department of Justice (DOJ) language policy, person-first

terms (e.g., “person with a conviction”) were substituted for crime-first terms (e.g.,

“offender”). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has also issued guide-

lines to structure how decision-makers use criminal records. Unfortunately, little is cur-

rently known about the social construction and use of criminal record stigma or the

potential effects of such policy changes. In the current study, we provide two unique

empirical tests. In study 1, we examine the social construction of stigma by testing

DOJ’s language policy with experimental data from a nationally representative sample

of American adults (N =996). In study 2, we use a separate nationwide experiment

(N =1,540) to examine how the contextualization of criminal records influences so-

cial exclusion decisions. Across both studies, we find consistent evidence of a “mark of

violence.” The public perceives that individuals with violent convictions are the most

likely to commit future crimes, and it is more supportive of excluding these individuals

from employment. Crime-first terms exacerbate perceived recidivism risk for individu-

als with violent convictions.

The authors are grateful to the editor and four anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and

comments. Megan would also like to thank Nancy La Vigne at the Urban Institute for introducing

her to the person-first/crime-first distinction. Shawn would like to thank Daryl Atkinson, Senior

Staff Attorney at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, for engaging in productive conversa-

tions about the issue of stigmatizing language for individuals with criminal records. This research

was funded by a grant through the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis (CSDA) from the

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24HDO44943).

Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2017.55.issue-3/issuetoc.

Direct correspondence to Megan Denver, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida

State University, 112 S. Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306 (e-mail: mdenver@fsu.edu).

C2017 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12145

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 55 Number 3 664–690 2017 664

THE LANGUAGE OF STIGMATIZATION 665

The currently renewed theoretical and empirical interest in the labeling perspective,

in part, reflects advances in developmental criminology (Farrington and Murray, 2014;

Matsueda, 2014). Early theorists suggested that social reactions to norm and rule vio-

lations (Becker, 1963) that involve “tagging” a person as deviant (Tannenbaum, 1938)

might lead to further deviance and crime (Goffman, 1963; Lemert, 1951). One leading

motivation for the contemporary focus on the labeling perspective involves the underly-

ing implications—namely, that the stigmatization of people who have committed deviant

acts can impact social and economic opportunities, ultimately influencing the trajectory of

the life course (Sampson and Laub, 1997). A now sizable and growing body of evidence on

the effects of criminal record labels (Bernburg, Krohn, and Rivera, 2006; Chiricos et al.,

2007; Restivo and Lanier, 2015) lends strong support to the key tenets of labeling theory

(Barrick, 2014; Petrosino, Turpin-Petrosino, and Guckenberg, 2010).

Unfortunately, the criminal record stigmatization1process remains a black box. Lit-

tle is currently known about the semantic techniques used in the social construction of

criminal record stigma or about whether and how social actors contextualize such stigma

in decision-making. An improved understanding of these issues is needed given ongoing

policy efforts to reduce stigmatization and improve reentry outcomes. For example, in

April 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a policy change regard-

ing the language used to describe individuals with criminal records. Instead of crime-first

language, which includes typifying nouns—like “(ex-)offender,” “criminal,” or “felon”—

that classify people into a group distinguished by its criminality, DOJ is promoting the

use of person-first language, such as “person with a felony conviction.” The central, but

currently underdeveloped, theoretical assumption underlying the DOJ policy is that the

semantic techniques used by social audiences in communications about deviance have

important implications for the process of constructing and reproducing criminal record

stigma (see Coyle, 2013).

A second set of recent policy reforms has been concentrated on restructuring the use (to

prevent the misuse) of criminal records. Ban-the-Box (BTB), one of the most visible state-

and local-level policy initiatives, involves requiring employers to postpone inquiries about

a criminal record until after the application stage of the hiring process “so that employers

consider a job candidate’s qualifications first, without the stigma of a criminal record”

(Rodriguez and Avery, 2016: 1). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

(EEOC) released federal guidelines in 2012 that direct employers to make individualized

assessments, which should balance the type and age of the criminal record, its relevance

to the specific job, and any evidence of good conduct and rehabilitation. Nevertheless,

given deeply ingrained stereotypes in American culture about people with criminal

records as dishonest and untrustworthy (Hirschfield and Piquero, 2010; Holzer, Raphael,

and Stoll, 2006; Lageson, Vuolo, and Uggen, 2015), an important question is whether

people in general (or employers, landlords, or other decision-makers in particular) are

able or willing to balance the intricacies of a criminal record with other characteristics of

the person. Outside of employer perspectives for certain jobs types and discrimination in

1. We define “criminal record stigma” as any unfavorable or negative beliefs about and perceptions of

persons with criminal records (Hirschfield and Piquero, 2010). The use of criminal record stigma

in decision-making can result in differential treatment or discrimination solely on the basis of a

person’s criminal record. Individuals who do not have, but are believed to have, a criminal record

could also experience this form of stigma.