The Mark of a Criminal RecordDevah Pager
Department of Sociology
Northwestern University
November 2002
This paper focuses on the consequences of incarceration for the employment outcomes of black and white job seekers. In the present study, I adopt an experimental audit approach to formally test the subsequent employment opportunities. By using matched pairs of individuals to apply for real entry-level jobs, it becomes possible to directly measure the extent to which a criminal record—in the absence of other disqualifying characteristics—serves as a barrier to employment among equally qualified applicants.
I find that a criminal record is associated with a 50 percent reduction in employment opportunities for whites and a 64 percent reduction for blacks. These findings reveal an important, and much under-recognized, mechanism of stratification. A criminal record presents a major barrier to employment, with important implications for racial disparities.
<snip>A second major focus of this study concerns the effect of race. African-Americans continue to suffer from lower rates of employment relative to whites, but there is tremendous disagreement over the source of these disparities.
The idea that race itself—apart from other correlated characteristics—continues to play a major role in shaping employment opportunities has come under question in recent years (e.g., D’Souza 1995; Steele 1991). The audit methodology is uniquely suited to address this question. While the present study design does not provide the kind of cross-race matched-pair tests that earlier audit studies of racial discrimination have used, the between-group comparisons (white pair vs black pair) can nevertheless offer an unbiased estimate of the effect of race on employment opportunities. Figure 6 presents the percent of call-backs received for both categories of black testers relative to those for whites. The effect of race in these findings is strikingly large.
Among blacks without criminal records, only 14 percent received call-backs relative to 34 percent of white non-criminals. In fact, even whites with criminal records received more favorable treatment (17 percent) than blacks without criminal records (14percent).
The main effects of race and criminal record are statically significant. The interaction between the two is not significant in the full sample. The magnitude of the race effect found here corresponds closely to those found in previous audit studies directly measuring racial discrimination. Bendick et al. (1994), for example, find that blacks were 24 percentage points less likely to receive a job offer relative to their white counterparts, a finding strikingly similar to the 20 percent difference (between white and black non-offenders) found here. Thus in the eight years since the last major employment audit of race was conducted, very little has changed in the reaction of employers to minority applicants.
Despite the many rhetorical arguments used to suggest that direct racial discrimination is no longer a major barrier to opportunity (e,g., D’Souza 1995; Steele 1991), as we can see here, employers, at least in Milwaukee, continue to use race as a major factor in hiring decisions.
http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/2002/WP-02-37.pdf
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
