Making it easier for ex-convicts to get a job could backfire

An effort to make it easier for people with criminal records to land job interviews could actually backfire.

The “ban the box” campaign is fighting to persuade employers to remove the “check box” on applications that asks if an applicant has a criminal record. The idea behind that is to even the playing field and help get ex-cons a foot in the door.

But there’s a caveat. According to Sonja Starr, professor of law at the University of Michigan, not having that box on a job application can actually make it more difficult for people of color to get an interview.

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“Sometimes ban the box has been presented as a means of reducing racial disparity in employment, in particular the obstacle to employment posed by criminal records disproportionately affect people of color…” Starr said.

However, if an employer doesn’t know whether or not someone of color has a criminal record, a study found that person is even less likely to get a call back. It’s what Starr refers to as the “theory of statistical discrimination.”

Starr says when employers or decision-makers lack individualized information, they may end up assuming that people of color — specifically black men — are more likely than white men to have a criminal record. That, in turn, makes it easier for white men with a criminal record to get a job.

That begs the question from KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross: If you’re a person of color applying for a job who wants to make sure the employer knows you don’t have a criminal record, why not state that on the application?

Starr says she has never heard of applicants doing that.

“If applicants started doing that on a wide-spread basis, it would basically undermine the original point of the box,” she said.

Of course it would. But the law is already having a harmful impact, Dave points out.

“If I was a black man and you had to stay with this law that was causing me to suffer worse discrimination than before, I would darn sure put in my application ‘by the way, I have never been convicted of a crime.'”

“That’s an interesting point,” Starr said. “We hadn’t really thought of that…”

If that caught on and everyone who had never been convicted of a crime began willingly providing that information on their applications, then you might as well keep the box.

Listen to the entire conversation below.

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